In which different accounts of Mr. Darcy puzzle PhysicsGirl exceedingly: P&P #24

Pride and Prejudice, 1940

This movie puzzles me. I get that it is played as a comedy, and there are aspects that are well done in that sense. It's just that there is so much wrong with this movie, and yet? I kind of like it.

The good?

The whole tone of the movie is bright and cheerful. Right from the beginning, I felt happy to be watching this movie. In spite of the fact that I've seen it before and knew what was coming...

Bingley is a lovely person. Bruce Lester plays an engaging character. He's intelligent and sensible and you could see why everybody likes him. So refreshing after some of the recent, goofy Bingleys.

The comic characters are well done, although poor Mary is only Hollywood plain (glasses apparently make you plain in Hollywood). Mrs. Bennet and Mr. Collins in particular. Melville Cooper plays Collins with the right amount of pomposity, and Mary Boland is very funny. Edna May Oliver seems on track to being a delightfully obnoxious Lady Catherine. Seems.

As for the other characters, they are quite fun, too, even if I could never tell Kitty and Lydia apart.

The so-so?

I love Greer Garson as Elizabeth. She totally captures Elizabeth's lively wit. (She is, of course, too old, but then everyone in MGM movies is too old. Little Women, anyone?) I don't particularly like what they did with her character at the beginning; despite all the extremely evident evidence to the contrary, she persists in thinking Darcy is a rotter solely because he insulted her. Which makes her seem kind of petty. Also, she refuses to dance with Darcy and immediately agrees to dance with Wickham in front of Darcy. !!!? And what on earth do they keep putting in her hair?

Which leads me to the bad.

(Are you sitting comfortably? 'Cuz there's a lot of bad about this movie.)

They move the setting to the 1830s, which bothers me only in that the cleverly-recycled-from-GWTW-yay-for-war-frugality dresses are unflattering; they're an ugly shape, have too much fabric, and seem to take up too much room on the screen. And there are too many weird things on their heads -- two bows, my friends. Stacked. Also, I'm pretty sure that the militia at that time was practically defunct, but I'll let it pass, since they seemed to have turned it into the army.

Darcy is the main problem in this movie. Laurence Olivier is haughty and arrogant, for about 30 seconds. Then he becomes downright gregarious. He practically falls all over himself to charm Elizabeth and it should be a surprise to absolutely nobody in the movie when he proposes. I might like that guy if I met him, but whoever Laurence was playing, he isn't Darcy. So irritating. He's also really inconsistent. Not five minutes after he makes the 'tolerable enough' comment, he is eagerly asking for an introduction to Elizabeth? So he can ask her to dance (which he has just told Sir William every savage can dance)? And then Elizabeth, though charming, is really, really, rude to him (for no reason that he can see), but he's still into her? He goes to comfort her when she's upset? Oh, hell no.

I mean, they work in a reason for her to genuinely dislike him before the proposal when he firmly rejects her at the Netherfield, but her "your arrogance, your conceit, your selfish disdain for the feelings of others" speech rings hollow. He doesn't really have to change that much. He talks at the end about being proud, but you don't really see it. He might have said something about acting like a jerk that one time, maybe.

And then the ending, with Lady Catherine? Oy. I won't spoil it for you if you haven't seen it, but. Oy. Talk about a personality transplant. It starts out well...

... but then it takes a turn for the what-is-this-I-don't-even.

All that said, the movie's a fun romp. Fluffy. That's what it is, fluffy. Because it doesn't take itself seriously, neither do I.

By the way, I discovered a couple of posts languishing in the drafts which I hastily finished and posted. In August, I had to eat some of my previous words about the 1995 version -- although now it seems that Davies wanted Darcy not just wet, but naked when he met Elizabeth at Pemberley, which just leaves me dumbstruck with horror at the stupidity, plot-wise^*, not to mention that my eyes rolled so far up inside my head I'm still trying to get them unstuck, so right now I'm back to feeling uncharitable about it.

In September, I improved my mind through extensive reading of annotations and criticism. They were good reads, despite the lack of naked men in ponds.

^*Davies claims it would have been only for historical accuracy and that he didn't anticipate the female response to the wet scenes. To which I say a) bull and b) you want historical accuracy? Lizzy would probably have had to marry Darcy immediately or be ruined herself if that had happened. Oops!