In movie language, Jane Eyre is one of those literary classics for which the term “oft-filmed” was invented. Nothing wrong with that, either. I mean, if you’ve got a good story, why not run with it? In fact, some people contend that there really exists only a limited number of stories and plots and we simply keep telling them to ourselves over and over — with variations. Those variations are usually the genesis of the remaking of classics. There’s a twist, or a perspective, or a reformulation that the new storyteller wants to add to the canon. A work is a classic because it continues to speak through the ages, yet each age adds in the retelling something new to the work. Thus, whether we’re dealing with the numerous feature films known as Jane Eyre or something like the Val Lewton/Jacques Tourneur voodoo version of the story I Walked With a Zombie, it’s still the same old story about the new gal on the estate that has a mysterious master and a mad wife in the belfry — with variations. This time, the twist in the Jane Eyre retelling is that its director — the renowned film reinterpreter of Great Classics, Franco Zeffirelli (The Taming of the Shrew, Romeo and Juliet, La Traviata, Jesus of Nazareth) — wanted his version to be faithful to Charlotte Brontë’s original text. For the most part, he appears to have succeeded in this mission, although I’m not convinced that the things that make a 19th-century English novel great are the same things that give sustenance to a nearly 21st-century film. Still, there’s an authentic sensibility to the appearance of things: the plainness of the faces and costumes, and the ordinariness of their routines. William Hurt, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and Joan Plowright all offer seamless performances. And though they’re pleasurable to watch, there seems to be a decidedly undramatic pace to the whole endeavor. Pacing may be one aspect of the story that doesn’t withstand faithful re-creation. But if you like your Brontës stripped of the Hollywood tinsel, then this Jane Eyre‘s likely to be your best fix until another Jane Austen adaptation rolls around.
This article appears in April 12 • 1996 (Cover).
