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The Classic Movie Adaptations

Movie adaptations of Jane Eyre, both classic and modern, usually benefit from generous budgets and good production values but struggle with length. Because they have to tell the whole story in approximately two hours, they tend to leave out anything that doesn’t involve the love story. This works up to a point, but it’s unsatisfying when you get to the end of the movie and realize that Jane has basically the same relationship dynamic with Rochester that she had during their first engagement.

Jane Eyre, 1934—The One With Colin Clive and Virginia Bruce (½)

This movie doesn’t have much in common with Jane Eyre, but it’s wonderfully entertaining in its unabashed cheesiness. This is the first movie adaptation of Jane Eyre with sound, and you can tell they were excited about it, because not only does Jane play the piano, but she also sings a song, and poor crazy Bertha screams her head off all the time.

They didn’t mess around in the 1930s, so we get to zip right through this story, leaving crucial plotlines in the dust. Jane is a sassy kid who becomes a sassy adult. She’s blonde and beautiful and has ringlets and giant ruffles on her dresses. Rochester is nice from the start—at least until he makes Jane try on earrings. He makes Jane pick out the furnishings for his soon-to-be-wife’s room, and jewelry for his soon-to-be-wife, all the while claiming that the soon-to-be wife is Blanche until suddenly he’s telling Jane that actually he’s going to marry her now. Jerk.

Jane has a small inheritance and Rochester is eagerly awaiting an annulment from poor Bertha, which really removes all the actual conflicts, doesn’t it? I mean, except for the lying, but then you have to wonder why on earth the lying would even come up. Why wouldn’t Rochester just say, “Hey Jane, would you marry me as soon as my annulment arrives in the mail? Also, have some jewelry!” Rochester is already polite and Jane is already a confident and outgoing independent person, so that removes all the actual character growth. This is possibly the most pointless adaptation of all time, although it must be admitted that the stars are very pretty to look at in that 1930s-movie-star way.

I’m listing these adaptations in chronological order, but this was actually one of the last ones I had actually watched. So by the time I watched this, I had seen a lot of Jane Eyre. This adaptation is a mess, but it includes a grown-up Jane calling Mr. Brocklehurst a crocodile, and it’s only an hour long. An hour! I know somewhere out there some English Literature majors are toiling through their Jane Eyre thesis. This movie was made for you, and only for you. Gather your fellow students together, make lots of popcorn, and throw it at the screen every time Jane seems inappropriately cheerful. Everyone else, stay away!

Jane Eyre, 1943—The One with Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine (★★★)

The great thing about this adaptation is that someone finally noticed that Jane Eyre is a really creepy story. A defenseless, penniless, naive young woman is essentially trapped in a totally isolated house, with no cell phone or electric lighting, and someone keeps trying to get into her room at night and starting fires and chewing on people. This is scary stuff, and the movie goes all-out with the gothic. The moors have never been so misty nor Thornfield so ominous.

Obviously no force on Earth can make Joan Fontaine look “plain and little,” and they don’t even try—she even sleeps in full makeup and perfect hair. But she’s very expressive, which is the most important element an actress can bring to Jane, since Jane doesn’t often speak her mind. Meanwhile, Orson Welles is a force of nature as Rochester. He’s rude, he stalks around wearing a billowing cape, he’s not particularly good-looking (as suits the part), but he’s charismatic as all get-out. He spends a great deal of time delivering dialogue while looking straight into Jane’s eyes, and let me tell you, when Orson Welles looks at you intently, by golly, it makes an impression. He’s beyond intimidating—he’s scary. Yet he’s also a tragic, magnificent, sinisterly sexy character. He keeps the story eerie while also making it plausible that Jane is drawn to him.

The supporting cast (Agnes Moorehead as Aunt Reed! Elizabeth Taylor as Helen!) is wonderful, as is the cinematography and the music by Bernard Herrmann (who also wrote an opera based on Wuthering Heights). Many of these people worked with Alfred Hitchcock, most notably Joan Fontaine, who starred in Rebecca and Suspicion, and Bernard Herrmann, who composed the score for Psycho. The whole movie has a Hitchcock feel to it. The only problem is that it doesn’t feel like Jane Eyre, and that’s because so many plotlines are cut that the message of the movie become this: be a moral person and everything will work out. Not a bad message, and certainly one Jane would approve of, but all that great stuff about self-respect and autonomy is lost. At the end, Jane finds Rochester where he is living in the burned ruins of Thornfield (as one does), and instead of the banter that establishes her as his intellectual and financial equal, she tearfully begs him to let her stay. Jane is still his “little friend.” The only things that have changed are that the house has been forcibly redecorated and Rochester is now single.

Jane Eyre, 1970—The One with George C. Scott and Susannah York (★★)

You can tell that this movie was made in the 1970s, because while every adaptation seems driven to cast a gorgeous actress as “plain” Jane, at least they usually have the sense to wash off the actress’s makeup (Joan Fontaine, from the above-mentioned 1943 version, aside). Not so here: Susannah York plays Jane as a tall, statuesque, glamorous woman, with red hair in a fancy hairdo and full makeup. Meanwhile, George C. Scott doesn’t even attempt a British accent. So, although they both act up a storm, their efforts are unintentionally and consistently hilarious. I actually liked both performances—if I thought of them as completely different characters. George C. Scott is quite funny, and Susannah York exudes sheer class, so it’s an enjoyable movie to watch once you release any memory of the book.

There is one thing that this movie gets just right. I think that filmmakers have a hard time showing the audience why Jane shouldn’t stay with Rochester after she discovers that he has a secret wife. In this version, Jane lays it all out in a wonderful speech. She specifies that she wants a relationship with him in which she is equal and respected. As his mistress, she has no legal or social or economic power. She would be socially and legally disposable. Susannah York really rocks this speech, and pairs the fiery discourse with a moment of great tenderness and great determination.

Incidentally, I don’t talk much about how these adaptations deal with Jane’s childhood, but this one really brings on the sadism. These adaptations have a hard time figuring how to fit Jane’s childhood into the narrative, knowing that the viewer wants to get to the grown-up romance. Some of them deal with this by making the child abuse in the original book, which is extensive, even more extravagantly over-the-top just to make sure that we get the point—Jane’s childhood sucked. So, in this version, it is Jane who has her hair cut instead of Helen, and instead of Helen’s stoic response, Jane begs and screams and sobs through the ordeal (contrast this scene with the one in our next adaptation, from 1996, which also diverges from the book but in an empowering manner). Helen is basically murdered by having to stand in the rain, in a bit clearly influenced by Helen and Jane’s rainy punishment in the preceding version from 1943. I find the sadism in both this version and the 1943 version to be ugly, emotionally manipulative and desensitizing.

Modern Movie Adaptations

Jane Eyre, 1996—The One with William Hurt and Charlotte Gainsbourg (★★)

This film takes all kinds of liberties with Jane’s childhood and yet does the best portrayal of her childhood that I’ve yet seen by conveying the spirit of it, if not the details. For one thing, Miss Temple is shown to be the strong mentor that she is in the book. For another, Helen manages to be a moral guide without being hopelessly treacly. In the book, there’s a scene in which Mr. Brocklehurst orders Helen’s hair to be cut. The movie takes this scene and elaborates it into something more Hollywood-y, but it works, because it shows that Jane is a passionate and loyal friend without the preachy dialogue of the book. This is especially notable in comparison to the 1970 version, in which Jane has her hair cut instead of Helen, and she wails and begs for mercy. That version shows Jane purely as a victim, whereas this version shows both her victimization and her refusal to be broken by it. I must say that this scene was quite a kick-ass moment for young Anna Paquin, who plays Jane as a child.

Charlotte Gainsbourg is one of my favorite Janes—up to a point. I love that she has a truly odd little face. It’s beautiful in its own way, but she has a strange jaw and imperfect teeth, and it’s easy to see why she’d be described as plain or as elfin or unearthly. I love her quiet intensity and the fact that she truly seems young. However, the book’s Jane is capable of some laughter and mischief, especially toward the end of the book, and I would have liked to have seen that in the movie. Part of the joy of the story is seeing Jane come into her own, and Gainsbourg’s Jane never does.

William Hurt is a terrible Rochester but a very good William Hurt—that is to say, pensive, intelligent and bland. His Rochester is polite from the first meeting and always seems like he wants to take a nap. I am sad to report that he and Charlotte have no chemistry whatsoever. St. John, on the other hand, is so delightful that I’m at a loss as to why Jane doesn’t just marry him. Another side character who shines is Bertha, who conveys vast amounts of suffering and emotion without uttering a single line.

Jane Eyre, 1997—The One with Ciarán Hinds and Samantha Morton (½)

What in the name of all that is holy is this? Did a producer sleep with Cthulhu and pop this out like some sort of Elder God baby? Ethics compels me to tell you that this is only a partial review, because at about the halfway point I turned the gibbering monstrosity off and fled, screaming, “My eyes! My eyes!” Poor Samantha Morton struggles gamely along as Jane, but Ciarán Hinds, who by all accounts is normally a terrific actor, seems to have contacted some particularly horrid form of rabies as Rochester. He yells, he screeches, his eyes bulge, he drools over Jane’s hand, “So little…so [drool] delicate.” It’s at this point that I fled the scene. Rochester is supposed to be way too old for Jane and he’s a manipulative, secretive jerk, but he isn’t supposed to be a rage-aholic shrieking pedophile.

Here’s what I do think is good about this particular adaptation: it forces you to look at just how dark Jane Eyre is. First of all, the opening sequence, in which Jane is trapped in the room where her uncle had previously dies, is creepy as hell. Secondly, I guess somebody had to take on the job of reminding us that Rochester really is an incredible asshole to this young woman, who has no money, nowhere to go and no helpful knowledge about the world beyond. Rochester isn’t a sexy heartthrob—he’s a wreck of an older man who takes advantage of Jane’s good nature and dependent condition, and Hinds shows this.

In terms of the rest of the movie, it looks like it was shot on a very small budget. The production values are quite poor, and the movie is so dumbed down with helpful exposition rendered in voice-over, that for a while I assumed that it was made for schools as a study aid as opposed to an actual movie for regular viewers. It moves at lighting speed—seriously, Jane’s entire childhood is over with in about ten minutes. The entire movie is only 108 minutes long. This is the CliffsNotes version of Jane Eyre, with much helpful narration from Jane to help us along. For instance, as Jane is being carried away from Helen’s corpse, she says, in voice-over, “I missed Helen so much. No one could take her place. I remained at Lowood for a further eight years. Six as a pupil, two as a teacher. But I was desperate for change.” And…she’s off to Thornfield. The maxim is that in art, one should show, not tell. And this production is all about telling.

Jane Eyre, 2011—The One With Michael Fassbender and Mia Wasikowska (★★½)

As a fan of pretty much all the actors in this movie, I had high hopes for the 2011 Jane Eyre. I was disappointed to the point of fury. This movie is difficult to follow, stilted and monotonous. Fassbender and Wasikowska are clearly charismatic actors, but everything that makes the Jane and Rochester relationship dynamic has been stripped away by the director. I’m suspecting that the reviewers who liked the movie, and there were many, thought of Jane Eyre as “Wuthering Heights Part II”. Otherwise I can’t see why you’d like a movie in which Jane is given nothing to say but has to spend an extremely long time wandering the moors and whimpering.

There were some good points to the movie. For one thing, Judi Dench is Mrs. Fairfax, and she adds all kinds of layers to a character who is usually portrayed simply as a dotty old lady. I thought the narrative structure had potential, with the movie beginning as St. John’s, where his sisters take Jane in and ask her to explain what happened to her. Unfortunately, it grew difficult to follow, especially for my viewing companion who *gasp* had not read the book. Jamie Bell plays St. John, and he bears absolutely no resemblance to the character of St. John in the book, but I liked him. He is very cute and awkward and dorky. If you simply accept that he is a completely different character who has the same name and serves the same narrative purpose, all is well. It adds some suspense that his character is at least relatable, because it creates the possibility that Jane might actually want to marry him or at least keep him as a pet (although she doesn’t).

Michael Fassbender and Mia Wasikowska are both powerful actors who seem to be suffering from terrible direction. Fassbender is a great brooder, but he simply has nothing to do. He has no opportunities to show Rochester’s wit or menace or charm—he just broods, while looking sexy. Also, he cries a lot. The only notable thing about his role is that he’s the only Rochester I’ve seen who actually wears a nightshirt to bed. Mia has this wonderful calm, clear, penetrating gaze that is pure Jane, but she doesn’t have anything to do, either, except alternately weep and look calmly at things. When they are together, the couple stares at each other longingly, and speaks in low, repressed voices. Mia’s one great moment is when she discovers that St. John and the sisters are her cousins, and she lights up with joy. It’s the only moment in the movie where she seems fully awake.

A huge amount of the story is cut, most notably all the conversations that Jane and Rochester have that build their relationship, and most of Jane’s important lines about herself. Instead, there are long sequences of poor Mia wandering the moors, whimpering with hunger and despair. Granted, the cinematography is gorgeous. If you have to film someone wandering the moors, cinematographer Adriano Goldman is your guy.

This movie is a great example of a case where the story is filmed very prettily, and yet, all the meaning is leached away. There’s not much contact between Jane and Rochester, so there is no reason to think that they would fall in love—except for the fact that there appear to be only two men in England, and we know Jane will end up with the first one. Jane doesn’t grow very much and there’s no indication of why she is a role model for so many readers, or why the story is important. It’s just another story about a poor girl who marries a rich man and lives happily ever after.

The Miniseries

Jane Eyre, 1973—The One With Michael Jayston and Sorcha Cusack (BBC) (★)

In my notes for this adaptation, I have three words: bland, nice, faithful. Purists will delight in this series because it is faithful to a fault. Nothing is omitted and most of the lines come directly from the book. Jane even delivers quite a bit of her internal thoughts in voice-over, although sometimes the script adds lines to fully explain exactly how Jane feels at any given moment, which is a bit insulting to the viewer.

Readers, it is my painful duty to inform you that I failed as your reviewer. I watched the first two-thirds of the series and then gave up. It’s not because it’s awful, it’s simply boring. If I put all these adaptations on a spectrum, the Colin Clive/Virginia Bruce adaption would show just how thoroughly you can destroy your adaptation by changing too much of the source material, and this adaptation would illustrate the grave dangers of failing to change anything at all. Jane Eyre is a splendid book, but you can’t just throw the lines on the screen and call it a miniseries. It is deadly lifeless and dull, even as it is clearly made with a deep love for the text.

It doesn’t help that Cusack and Jayston seem like very nice but not terribly compelling people. Cusack is a lovely woman, and she sure seems like a nice person, but she lacks passion and drama. Jayston, likewise, seems smart, funny and nice. And the thing is, these characters aren’t “nice.” Jane is “good,” but she’s not simply nice—she has many layers. Rochester is certainly not “nice”—he’s sexy, menacing, kind, patronizing and mysterious by turns. I hate to criticize this series, because it truly seems that everyone who worked on it loved the book, but it is totally lacking in a sense of mystery or drama or passion. It does have a huge fan base among purists, though, and it is certainly very complete in its delivery of the book’s content.

Jane Eyre, 1983—The One with Timothy Dalton and Zelah Clarke (BBC) (★★★★)

This miniseries is the real deal. My personal favorite is the Ruth Wilson/Toby Stephens version (see the miniseries review that follows), but let’s face it, it’s Jane Eyre–lite. If that version is candy, then this version, with Timothy Dalton growling (growling!) with irritation, is like a really wonderful, nourishing loaf of bread warm from the oven.

I had grave doubts about being able to believe in Timothy Dalton as Rochester because he’s permanently marked in my brain as several hammy and delightful science-fiction/fantasy characters. Well, never underestimate Timothy Dalton, because as Rochester, he strikes just the right balance between subtlety and grandiosity, and tenderness and crankiness. He has a wicked temper and an even more wicked, and clever, sense of humor. He gets so cranky that he growls. Mysteriously, he sleeps fully dressed, including pants and vest, and yet he manages to make the one undone button of his shirt convey a greater sense of nudity than, well, actual nudity. Unlike other Rochesters, who tend to sport a post-fire eye patch and a hand bandage, he actually loses his hand and eye to the fire, and he’s real pissed about it. There’s no hiding how cruel he is to Jane and yet there’s also no denying how magnetic his personality is. It’s certainly not mysterious that Jane would be hopelessly attracted to him.