Interesting article in today's New York Daily News in the Gossip section concerning the lastest version of Austen's Pride & Prejudice. Apparently members of the Jane Austen Society of America are up in arms because they don't think the male lead, Matthew MacFadyen has sufficient matinee idol looks to play Darcy, not to mention that apparently there's some overt sexual energy in the film. Apparently that's not very Jane Austen, although it is pretty Regency, considering the raunchiness beneath the surface of that era.
Weren't they also upset when the Colin Firth/Jennifer Ehle version came out because of Darcy's wet shirt scene? That's not in the book either.
Anyway, you can read the article here. The director certainly isn't going to win friends with his comments on the brouhaha.
I for one am anxious to see it just out of curiousity the same way I watched the Mormon version. Frankly when the Colin Firth/Jennifer Ehle version came out, I compared it unfavorably with an earlier version with Elizabeth Garvie and David Rintoul. The 1995 version grew on me after repeated viewing, plus I'm a sucker for Colin Firth, always have been. I plan on seeing the film this weekend, so I'll try and post a review on Saturday and let you know what I think.
I actually saw a preview screening several months ago and my opinion was that the film has some serious problems. One of them was not Matthew MacFayden; I felt he did a quite credible job of Darcy, giving the audience a man who's always kept his passions under control and suddenly finds himself in the position of having them threaten to overwhelm him.
ReplyDeleteI quibbled with the tone the script took because I felt they lost a fair amount of Austen's humor (and it really was a bit too modern for my taste), but the big problem was the ending, which brought forward momentum to a screeching halt. Guess what are the screening questions focused on? Hopefully they've managed to find a way to fix it.
And, yes, the Austen Society did complain about the Firth/Ehle version because of reports of sex and a shirtless Darcy. I do know people who still claim that version was "too informal". If these people see the new version, their heads might well explode.