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Miss Woodhouse is near
Jan. 18th, 2010 10:23 pmRecently I was looking over a list of noted films from several years ago, and noted that while I'd seen and enjoyed a few, I'd experienced little desire to see any of them a second time. (The ones I had seen twice were those like Memento and Mulholland Dr. which are designed only to make sense the second time.)
What do I re-watch frequently? Jane Austen adaptations. I have a large shelf of these on DVD, since most of the novels have been remade several times. When a sheaf of tv adaptations of all six novels came across the Water not long ago, only four of them were new (and all four were dull, unfortunately). The Pride & Prejudice and Emma were repeats of classic adaptations from the '90s.
Well, a new Emma has been made, it was aired in the UK last month, and it's coming to PBS on Sunday; here's their website. I see that Mr. Knightley is being played by Jonny Lee Miller, who thereby achieves a rare double in Austen heroes, having been Edmund Bertram in the feature film Mansfield Park. Judging from his brief speech in a clip, he appears to be a lot closer to copying Jeremy Northam in the same role than reprising the simpering Edmund.
Austen adaptations tend to come in clusters. There were actually four British and American tv adaptations of Emma between 1948 and 1960, none of which I've seen. A 1972 BBC miniseries is the only one I have of four that appeared on British tv in 1967-72; it is notable for feeling more like a staged reading than a dramatization. The cast are mostly colorless, the most memorable being a Mr. Knightley who is not played by James Mason but sounds exactly like him, and the most whining and cantankerous Mr. Woodhouse imaginable. The rather bleak, low-budget early 80s Austen cluster which saw the first adaptations ever of Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey skipped Emma, but in 1996 we got a double - a livelier tv adaptation with the fine Kate Beckinsale as Emma but a miscast, lumpish-looking Mr. Knightley from Mark Strong (now playing as the villain in Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes) of all people; and the feature film with Gwyneth Paltrow and the suave aforementioned Northam, which was eccentric but clever and likable. Both these dialed down Mr. Woodhouse considerably, and nearly cut out John Knightley, my favorite character, but they each had an excellent Miss Bates (Prunella Scales and Sophie Thompson, respectively) and other felicities of casting (the Beckinsale had Olivia Williams, more recently the cucumber-like Adelle on Dollhouse, as Jane Fairfax; while the Paltrow had for Harriet Smith the remarkable Toni Collette, who looked too old for the part, but made up for it by acting young and flighty, which other Harriets never quite managed).
Not to mention Clueless, cited by numerous Austen scholars as more true to her spirit than any adaptation. Brittany Murphy, the actress who died recently, played Tai, the Harriet role, as sullen, clumsy, and gum-chewing, with a strong east coast accent, who only brightens up when she finds the correct Mr. Right.
So on with the new one. What with those four TV adaptations, and that equally unfortunate feature film of Pride & Prejudice a few years ago, and now this, we have another cluster, of all six novels remade in the last five years. Let's hope this one is better.
What do I re-watch frequently? Jane Austen adaptations. I have a large shelf of these on DVD, since most of the novels have been remade several times. When a sheaf of tv adaptations of all six novels came across the Water not long ago, only four of them were new (and all four were dull, unfortunately). The Pride & Prejudice and Emma were repeats of classic adaptations from the '90s.
Well, a new Emma has been made, it was aired in the UK last month, and it's coming to PBS on Sunday; here's their website. I see that Mr. Knightley is being played by Jonny Lee Miller, who thereby achieves a rare double in Austen heroes, having been Edmund Bertram in the feature film Mansfield Park. Judging from his brief speech in a clip, he appears to be a lot closer to copying Jeremy Northam in the same role than reprising the simpering Edmund.
Austen adaptations tend to come in clusters. There were actually four British and American tv adaptations of Emma between 1948 and 1960, none of which I've seen. A 1972 BBC miniseries is the only one I have of four that appeared on British tv in 1967-72; it is notable for feeling more like a staged reading than a dramatization. The cast are mostly colorless, the most memorable being a Mr. Knightley who is not played by James Mason but sounds exactly like him, and the most whining and cantankerous Mr. Woodhouse imaginable. The rather bleak, low-budget early 80s Austen cluster which saw the first adaptations ever of Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey skipped Emma, but in 1996 we got a double - a livelier tv adaptation with the fine Kate Beckinsale as Emma but a miscast, lumpish-looking Mr. Knightley from Mark Strong (now playing as the villain in Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes) of all people; and the feature film with Gwyneth Paltrow and the suave aforementioned Northam, which was eccentric but clever and likable. Both these dialed down Mr. Woodhouse considerably, and nearly cut out John Knightley, my favorite character, but they each had an excellent Miss Bates (Prunella Scales and Sophie Thompson, respectively) and other felicities of casting (the Beckinsale had Olivia Williams, more recently the cucumber-like Adelle on Dollhouse, as Jane Fairfax; while the Paltrow had for Harriet Smith the remarkable Toni Collette, who looked too old for the part, but made up for it by acting young and flighty, which other Harriets never quite managed).
Not to mention Clueless, cited by numerous Austen scholars as more true to her spirit than any adaptation. Brittany Murphy, the actress who died recently, played Tai, the Harriet role, as sullen, clumsy, and gum-chewing, with a strong east coast accent, who only brightens up when she finds the correct Mr. Right.
So on with the new one. What with those four TV adaptations, and that equally unfortunate feature film of Pride & Prejudice a few years ago, and now this, we have another cluster, of all six novels remade in the last five years. Let's hope this one is better.
