From a visual point of view, the plain-looking Gainsbourg, the daughter of British actress Jane Birkin and French singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourg, is an intriguing choice, even down to looking somewhat like Bronte herself. Soon enough Paquin is replaced by Gainsbourg, an actress who has worked largely in France. Unfortunately, Paquin’s acting notwithstanding, this opening half-hour is so overdone it verges on parody, and when we’re told that Jane’s young friend Helen has “gone to a better place,” we suspect it’s to another movie. Brocklehurst (John Wood) makes unsuccessful attempts to break her spirit. Underlining that casting difficulty is the segment that focuses on the young Jane, played by “The Piano’s” Anna Paquin, perfect for the part and immediately believable as someone in whom passion runs amok.Īn orphan forced to live with cruel relatives, Jane is soon shipped off to the grim Lowood School, where the humorless Mr.
1996 JANE EYRE MOVIE MOVIE
But the casting of Charlotte Gainsbourg as Jane and William Hurt as Rochester, though well intentioned and defensible, delivers so skimpily on the emotional level that the movie feels as if all the feeling has been leeched out of it. Working from a well-made script by Hugh Whitemore (“Stevie”) and Zeffirelli, “Jane Eyre” sticks fairly close to the novel, does well in conveying the physical atmosphere of mid-19th century England and is in all respects an honorable version. So it is baffling to have to report that Zeffirelli’s version of “Jane Eyre” suffers from, of all things, a shortage of intense, identifiable passion.
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Every bit as fiery as her heroine, Bronte saw her novels as a kind of antidote to the more distant work of her near-contemporary Jane Austen, of whom she tartly wrote, “Her business is not half so much with the human heart as with the human eyes, mouth, hands and feet.”ĭirector Franco Zeffirelli, as well known for directing operas as films like “Romeo and Juliet” and “Endless Love,” is certainly familiar with excessive emotions, so much so that going over the top is always a potential pitfall for his projects. Keeping everybody enthralled from that day to this has been the combustible passion author Charlotte Bronte poured into her book.
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A Romantic novel with a capital R, its tale of a plain governess coping with a fancy house and the man who owns it is so potent the work has never been out of print since its original publication in 1847. The movies have always been fond of “Jane Eyre,” as well they might be of a book capable of inspiring ad copy like “A love story every woman would die a thousand deaths to live” (crafted for the 1944 Joan Fontaine-Orson Welles version).