this heretic narrative

In which I become mesmerized by Orson Welles, confused by clothes irons, and covetous of a sparkly black wedding dress...

I really need to step up the pace to have any hope of finishing these write-ups by the time the new movie comes out. This entry covers the 1944 film.

Before we go too deep, I'd like to draw your attention to the tagline of the film ("A Love Story Every Woman would Die a Thousand Deaths to Live!") and the amazing poster, where Orson Welles looks just as likely to throttle Joan Fontaine as to embrace her. It's a dark place, but that's where we're headed this morning.

BACK OF THE BOX

Year: 1944
Type: Film
Starring: Joan Fontaine and Orson Welles
Dramatized by: John Houseman, Aldous Huxley (!), Henry Koster, Robert Stevenson
Length: 97 minutes

CHARACTERS

Jane: Joan Fontaine looks too old, too substantial, too matronly...but I could easily ignore these things if I thought her acting was any good. Admittedly I am not a fan of that over-the-top pre-Method style of acting, but I think there's something especially off about her. Her line delivery has a touch of zombie about it, and I don't get a sense that her character has any kind of inner life. The end result--sort of unheard of for me--is that I didn't care much about what happened to Jane.


"Do you think I am an automaton?--a machine without feelings?"

Rochester: Welles has a nice, dark, peremptory manner, and he is magnetic in the way that Rochester ought to be. Sometimes, like during the proposal scene, I found his intensity almost frightening. He doesn't match my mental image of Rochester, but...well, remember when Jane Austen called Darcy (paraphrasing here) the kind of man to whom one should never dare refuse anything? That's kind of how I feel about Welles: there is something so compelling about him that I feel like, "Okay, Orson, if you want to be Rochester, then you are Rochester."


"Your forehead resembles what, in some very astonishing poetry, I once saw styled, 'a blue-piled thunderloft.'"

Chemistry between Rochester and Jane: Yes. There's no sexual connection between them, and they rarely touch, but Joan Fontaine, like everything and everyone else, gets swept up in the wake of Orson Welles's epic charisma.


"And if I had loved him less I should have thought his accent and look of exultation savage"

Young Jane: I like how very thin she is. The film doesn't mention that Jane is a plain or homely-looking child, and indeed she's quite beautiful here. It's a sickly, unhappy sort of beauty, though, and it works for me.


"I must keep in good health and not die."

Helen: Hello, Elizabeth Taylor! She doesn't have much to do here, but she looks good while doing it.


"a beauty neither of fine colour nor long eyelash, nor pencilled brow, but of meaning, of movement, of radiance."

Adele: When I think about this Adele, I make the same face she's making in the photo below. Cutesy, pouty, with an egregious French accent--the worst of the worst. And she gets way too much screen time. Maybe she's supposed to function as comic relief, but that's no excuse.


"I am not fond of the prattle of children."

Pilot: An unorthodox choice! He kind of looks like a scarier version of a harlequin Great Dane. I like him.


arf

Blanche: Well, she's not very like Blanche, but I kind of love her white sausage curls and her amazingly over-the-top costumes, like a 19th century Lady Gaga. While she has an extremely bitchy look, her portrayal is somewhat sympathetic. She isn't that nasty to Jane, and she seems confused about why Rochester is being such a jerk to her, which only seems fair.


Amazing eyebrows...amazing feather thingy...amazing hairdo


sad because I don't own this amazing dress

Bertha: All she does is growl and fly at Rochester's face--she's only on screen for an instant, and we only see her back (hence no screencap). It's pretty clear that the production doesn't think about her as a person, or doesn't want the audience to.

St. John: There is no St. John at all. There is no Moor House at all. It's a mess. More about this later.

KEY SCENES

Rochester's horse falls in Hay Lane (Chapter 12): Nicely misty, tense, and mysterious. It's a short scene, without much of the original dialogue and without much contact between the two of them. He doesn't lean on Jane to get back to his horse--in fact, they don't touch at all.


"I think he was swearing, but am not certain"

Rochester's bed on fire (Chapter 15): After Jane saves him, they rush to Adele's room to make sure she's okay, so we don't get that great goodbye scene/dialogue in his room--instead, Rochester segues into an explanation of Adele's parentage, but it isn't the right moment for that. I don't feel any tension or love between Rochester and Jane at this point. I found this scene disappointing and lacking in emotion, though I do love Rochester's ornate dressing gown with snazzy metal chain.


"I am glad I happened to be awake."

Telling Jane her fortune (Chapter 19): This was cut entirely. I'm sad to lose the chance to see Orson Welles in a dress.

Proposal (Chapter 23): Very intense--when Rochester asks Jane to marry him, he is sort of terrifying. The music swells, the wind swirls, and he brings to mind one of those enormous old-fashioned movie monsters like Godzilla. (I mean this in the very best way.) The scene is not romantic at all, and I can't tell if that's by design or because Joan Fontaine is just spewing her lines without emotion. There is some dramatic tree-splitting action that was probably state-of-the-art 70 years ago.


"Man meddle not with me: I have her, and will hold her."

Jane hears Rochester across the moors (Chapter 35): I think Rochester does a great job calling to Jane--he doesn't sound dumb or whiny, but nicely hungry and still a little bit imperious. Joan Fontaine is fine here, too--she mainly just looks picturesque and anguished, which she does pretty well. The scene definitely loses something for being set at Gateshead instead of out on the moors.


"Eye and ear waited while the flesh quivered on my bones."

Reunion at Ferndean (Chapter 37): This was another really short scene. Since Jane and Rochester have been separated for all of 3 minutes and we haven't seen Jane suffering, the reunion doesn't carry much emotional weight. There's no Ferndean--instead, Jane goes back to Thornfield and seems to find Mrs. Fairfax and Rochester living in the busted ruins of the hall. Jane and Rochester have a surprisingly fierce make-out session after being reunited.


"What sweet madness has seized me?"

RELATIONSHIP TO THE TEXT

Time spent per location: As you can see, we spend a lot of quality time at Thornfield.




Translation of first-person POV: At the beginning of scenes, we get a dull voiceover setting up the next scene or summarizing what's happened since the last scene. Sometimes it involves language from the book, but more often it doesn't. During these voiceovers, a printed page is shown on screen, which I suppose makes things seem more literary.

How closely does the plot hew to the book?: Not closely. For one thing, they had to cut a lot to fit the story into 97 minutes (A few examples: Jane is not locked in the red-room and spends no time at Gateshead before going to Lowood, she's never a teacher at Lowood, she doesn't go to Moor House...) Aside from truncation, though, there were a couple peculiar changes and additions:

Like a lot of adaptations, this one changes what happens after the aborted wedding, but I don't care for how they handled it here. Basically, Jane flees Thornfield and returns to Gateshead, having nowhere better to go. The chunk of the book that takes place at Moor House is excised completely--there's no St. John or any other romantic rival, no inheritance from her uncle, no wandering and starving on the moors. When Jane is at Gateshead, Mrs. Reed dies, then Jane starts to write to Mr. Brocklehurst asking for employment, there's a storm, and she hears Rochester. It lacks the punch of the original.

There's also an original character called Dr. Rivers, who, despite the name, is more like Miss Temple than St. John (though he does his share of moralizing, too). He's a kind, friendly physician who cares for the children at Lowood and tells Mr. Brocklehurst to treat them better. He's on screen for a fair amount of time--my guess, without having counted, is that he has more lines than Blanche or Mrs. Fairfax. Most often he shows up to talk to Jane about right and wrong, that kind of thing. I don't see the point of his character, and I don't understand the impulse to add new material to an adaptation that's already suffering due to having cut too much from the text.

Speaking of unnecessary additions, I keep thinking about this scene at Lowood where Jane and Helen are punished for their disobedience by being forced to pace in circles outside during a torrential rainstorm, wearing insulting placards and carrying what seem to be clothes irons in each hand. You know, it's scenes like this that really catapult me out of the moment and into the grumpy place I go when adaptations stray from the path. What is gained by having Helen die because of a ridiculous ordeal? Can't she just die of consumption like normal? If it was good enough for Charlotte Brontë, it's good enough for you.


I truly do not get it.

How closely does the dialogue hew to the book?: It's inconsistent: sometimes, especially with Rochester, the dialogue is quite close to the book, with a little bit of modernization. But the added scenes are either summary and paraphrase or totally different in substance from anything in the novel. Overall, so much has been cut or changed so much that if you go in hoping to hear a favorite line there's a good chance you'll be disappointed.

Sample dialogue comparison: I had to exercise some creative license in these comparisons, because some of the added scenes don't have analogues in the book.

Book	Adaptation
Opening passage of the book There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of the question. I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons: dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw twilight, with nipped fingers and toes, and a heart saddened by the chidings of Bessie, the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of my physical inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed.	Opening voiceover of the film My name is Jane Eyre. I was born in 1820, a harsh time of change in England. Money and position seemed all that mattered. Charity was a cold and disagreeable word. Religion too often wore a mask of bigotry and cruelty. There was no proper place for the poor or the unfortunate. I had no father or mother, brother or sister. As a child I lived with my aunt, Mrs. Reed of Gateshead Hall. I do not remember that she ever spoke one kind word to me.
Conversation between Jane and Helen about duty and wanting to leave school [Jane:] "You must wish to leave Lowood?" [Helen:] "No! why should I? I was sent to Lowood to get an education; and it would be of no use going away until I have attained that object." "But that teacher, Miss Scatcherd, is so cruel to you?" "Cruel? Not at all! She is severe: she dislikes my faults." "And if I were in your place I should dislike her; I should resist her. If she struck me with that rod, I should get it from her hand; I should break it under her nose." "Probably you would do nothing of the sort: but if you did, Mr. Brocklehurst would expel you from the school; that would be a great grief to your relations. It is far better to endure patiently a smart which nobody feels but yourself, than to commit a hasty action whose evil consequences will extend to all connected with you; and besides, the Bible bids us return good for evil." "But then it seems disgraceful to be flogged, and to be sent to stand in the middle of a room full of people; and you are such a great girl: I am far younger than you, and I could not bear it." "Yet it would be your duty to bear it, if you could not avoid it: it is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear."	Conversation between Jane and Dr. Rivers about duty and wanting to leave school "Jane, remember what you say in your prayers every day? 'Thy will be done.' Do you think you're doing God's will by giving way to despair? God wants children to be brave and strong. Won't you do what God wants?" "I'll try." "That's right. Don't forget, the harder you try, the more God will help you. Now, let me take you back." "No! I can't go back to school. I'll never go back. I'll run away!" "Jane. You know what duty is, don't you? Duty is what you have to do, even when you don't want to do it. I may not want to go out in a snowstorm to visit a sick child, but I know I have to go because it's my duty. Now, what is your duty, Jane?" "I don't know." "Yes, you do, Jane. In your heart you know perfectly well. Your duty is to prepare yourself to do God's work in the world, isn't that true? And who can do God's work? An ignorant woman, or an educated one? Yes, you know the answer to that. And where can you get an education, Jane? Where?" "At school." "Precisely. So you know you have to go back to school, even though you may hate the very thought of it. Isn't that true?" "I suppose it is true." "Good, Jane. Very good."
Jane and Rochester on parting, in the novel "Farewell, Miss Eyre, for the present; is that all?" "Yes?" "It seems stingy, to my notions, and dry, and unfriendly. I should like something else: a little addition to the rite. If one shook hands, for instance; but no--that would not content me either. So you'll do no more than say Farewell, Jane?" "It is enough, sir: as much good-will may be conveyed in one hearty word as in many." "Very likely; but it is blank and cool--'Farewell.'"	Jane and Rochester on parting, in the film "Goodbye, Miss Eyre. Jane, is that all? It seems stingy, to my notion--dry and unfriendly. Won't you do more than just say goodbye?" "Well, I'll--I'll shake hands, sir." "Oh, you'll shake hands. Goodbye, Jane."

Quotation Checklist: I'm going to be generous here and give them 0.5 out of 4.

• Does Rochester say, "In the name of all the elves in Christendom, is that Jane Eyre?": No.
  
• Does Rochester say, "You shall walk up the pyramids of Egypt!"?: No. (He says, "You'll do nothing of the kind.")
  
• Does Rochester say, "Say Edward -- give me my name -- Edward"?: No. (He says, "Say 'Edward, I'll marry you.'")
  
• Does Jane say, "Mary is in the kitchen"?: No.
  

MISCELLANEOUS CONSIDERATIONS

Production values: High. This version differs from most of the adaptations I've been watching in that care has obviously been taken to make things look good. Camera shots are framed beautifully. The sets evoke a sense of place. The costumes are great (though Jane has way too many dresses). It adds up to a comprehensive, attractive vision that I found absorbing.

Jane's paintings: Jane isn't an artist here--she doesn't paint or draw anything in the film. I think it would've been quite interesting to see what this production made of them, but it was not to be.

Thornfield stand-in: Thornfield is not a real place--just a set/sound stage. I really like the vast, cavernous interiors and the darkness.


I know you didn't need to see four Thornfield shots, but I couldn't decide.


window view


"That house is a mere dungeon: don't you feel it so?"


busted view

Bertha's laughter: high-pitched and witchy.

Rochester Mangledness Rating (1-10): 3. He has a limp, a cane, and a beard. That's about it. His face, eyes, and hands look completely normal. His hands look like they were just manicured, actually.


"A mere scratch. Don't be so overcome, man: bear up!"

Other comment-worthy occurrences:

The score is very obtrusive. There are worse things, but I could have done with, say, 50% fewer trumpet blasts.

I like this tidy set of servant-summoning bells at Gateshead. One is labelled Red Room, though the red-room was never mentioned in the film. I guess it's an easter egg.


I can hear the bells

Also, I find this pupil's record about Jane's admittance to Lowood hilarious.


APPEARANCE: UNPREPOSSESSING

ULTIMATE JUDGMENTS

High Point: Orson Welles is just a treat to watch. I found him really larger than life. Like other aspects of the production, he's not afraid to be menacing, and I love it. My new time travel goal, if I can spare the time away from Haworth in the 1840s, is to hit up the 1940s to meet Orson Welles.

One small moment of his I really liked: when Rochester is telling Jane about his jealousy of Céline Varens's lover, he's standing over a music box with figures of a man and a woman on top, and he gives the male figure this perfectly contemptuous flick with his finger. That's star presence, ladies and gentlemen.


This doesn't really capture the thrill.

Low Point: Dr. Rivers. There's nothing wrong with the actor, but the character was deeply unnecessary. I'd trade him for Miss Temple or any of the real Riverses in a heartbeat.


unnecessary picture of an unnecessary dude

Most Suitable Viewing Situation: Alone in a dark, abandoned movie theatre, drunk on gin cocktails.

Predominant Emotion Experienced: spellbound

Bottom Line: An attractive, atmospheric, often mesmerizing production that suffers from some unfortunate plot-futzing. But the more times I watched it, the less I was bothered by the alterations and the more I was charmed by the whole endeavor. It inhabits a dark world, and I wouldn't want to live there, but it's nice to visit.


If you missed my post about the 1983 miniseries, you can find it (and an explanation of what I’m doing) here.

And if you missed my post about Yuletide, one of the stories I wrote this year was about Jane Eyre: Were We Not Four?