Pride and Prejudice
Directed by Robert Z. Leonard
Written by Aldous Huxley and Jane Murfin based on the novel by Jane Austin
1940/USA
Loew’s
First viewing/Netflix rental
[box] Mr. Darcy: You must allow me to tell you how much I admire and love you.[/box]
I have several quibbles with the adaptation with of one of my all-time favorite novels but, setting that aside, I found this a polished and enjoyable production.
Mr. (Edmund Gwenn) and Mrs. Bennett (Mary Boland) have five marriageable daughter sand no dowries in sight. Mrs. Bennett is an annoying flibberty-gibbet whose match-making efforts are actually counter-productive. The two eldest girls, Jane (Maureen O’Sullivan) and Elizabeth (Greer Garson) are appealing beauties but the three youngest take after their mother as “the silliest girls in England”.
Things start looking up when a wealthy bachelor, Mr. Bingley, rents a neighboring estate with an even wealthier friend, Mr. Darcy (Laurence Olivier), in tow. Bingley and Jane hit it off immediately but Elizabeth takes an instantaneous dislike to the proud and reserved Darcy. You are guaranteed a wedding or two at the end of all of Austen’s novels. How she gets there is the delight. With Ann Rutherford as the wayward Lydia, Melville Cooper as Mr. Collins, and Edna May Oliver as Darcy’s battleax aunt Lady Catherine de Bourgh.
I find the novel endlessly re-readable and have watched most of the adaptations and it seems I have all of the plot and most of the dialogue memorized by now. Some of the liberties taken with the story threw me for a loop. The unctuous Mr. Collins has been transformed from a clergyman to a librarian, I suppose in deference to the Hayes Code. But the worst is the final transformation of Lady Catherine into a gruff but secret ally of Elizabeth! The writers also manage to invent beaus for all the girls by the end, including the bookish and socially clueless Mary.
That said, Garson is one of the most charming of all Elizabeths and Olivier shines as the sophisticated Darcy only a year after he convinced us as the untamed Heathcliff. The supporting cast is quite wonderful. On balance, Austin lovers should check it out.
Cedric Gibbons won an Oscar for his Black-and-White Art Direction.
Clip – Lady Catherine confronts Elizabeth Bennet
2 responses to “Pride and Prejudice (1940)”