Jane Austen’s six main novels have been adapted to film more than 50 times. In 1940, a black-and-white film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice featuring Laurence Olivier earned an Oscar; in 1995, a California-set modern version of Emma by Amy Heckerling made the then 19-year-old Alicia Silverstone famous. The Colin Firth, smoldering with repressed feelings, set new standards a year later in one of the many serialized BBC productions for the handsome aristocrat Mr. Darcy.
Bollywood produced in 2000 a music- and dance-filled adaptation of Sense and Sensibility titled “Kandukondain Kandukondain,” one of the few adaptations with a non-white cast, including – among other Indians – a Mexican actor. And stars such as Anne Baxter, Emma Thompson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet, Keira Knightley, Kate Beckinsale, Anya Taylor-Joy, Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson continue to prove that apparently every generation wants to fall in love anew with the old figures.
Pretty Annoying Pests
That both the female and the male classic Austen characters can at times be quite annoying pests—who present themselves as serious, studious, stubborn, and buttoned-up, depending on the story—is something most versions, whether historical or modernized, tend to gloss over. By contrast, the works that do not cling so tightly to Austen’s figures, dramaturgy, and narratives because they are not adapting novels but telling the story on a meta level about the Austen world handle the material in a noticeably freer way.
“Even the name Darcy seemed quite silly to me,” Bridget Jones writes in her diary. And to avoid merely prosaic confusion with the heroine Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice, she adds mockingly: “As if from a Jane Austen novel.”
On December 16, there will be the 250th birthday of the author Jane Austen to celebrate, who as a woman could initially only write in secret and became a major classic of world literature. The marks this anniversary with a Jane Austen Week: Each day we illuminate an aspect of her works. All published texts can be found here.
“Bridget Jones’s Diary,” penned in 1996 by Helen Fielding, is the basis for a film series that remains successful to this day, with Renée Zellweger in the title role. The first of the four films was shot in 2001—and probably marks the cornerstone of the Jane Austen secondary filmography.
Rather than letting the marriage-minded, yet pressed by their status and society’s expectations young women and the complicated and ultimately equally inexperienced young men flutter around each other in more or less faithful stories, the secondary work creates its own discourse universe.
The Bridget Jones Films
In the first Bridget Jones film, “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” the educated, independent Elizabeth figure survives only as Bridget’s claim that she “has studied English literature.” That she is not really a true Austen fan, but—at least in matters of love—exhibits a similar passion, was woven by the screenwriters Helen Fielding, Richard Curtis (“Four Weddings and a Funeral,” “Notting Hill”) and Andrew Davis into a plot that is at times highly amusing, at times extremely old-fashioned, through which Zellweger, as the supposedly over-, but actually ordinary-weight Bridget, tromps on, smoking, drinking and swearing. The pretentious Darcy, of course, played by Colin Firth, is not arrogant but sweet, reserved and charming.
Later over-Austen films mostly address Austen fans, this enormous, gender-homogeneous international “Society,” for whom the Regency era with its stiff dresses, the blinkered headpieces worn by women, and the preference for longing over experience simultaneously represents a beautiful dream and an escapist refuge.
Just as the six people who, under the direction of the American Robin Swicord in 2007, meet in a “Jane Austen Book Club” to officially talk about the six novels of their favorite author. The adaptation of a book by Karen Joy Fowler uses exegesis only as a framing device to tell the shaky, ending, or beginning love stories of the club members.
Among them is Grigg (Hugh Dancy), initially a lay Austen reader but also a sci‑fi expert, a man who falls in love not only with the books but with a clubmate (Maria Bello) — and who kindly offers the others a stereotypically male external perspective: “Isn’t love first about physical attraction?” he asks the group. “Not with Austen,” Prudie (Emily Blunt) replies, manic in her devotion.
Indignant Yet Subtle Critique of Civilization
In addition to the classical, from a distance perceivable love stories that drive two unhappy couples back into the arms of their (boring and adultery-prone) husbands, Swicord’s film attempts a stock-taking of the “modern,” digital world with mobile phone traffic and – new! – constant card payments. This indignant-yet-subtle critique of civilization, paired with the compulsive endings of marriages, makes the likable but fundamentally bland film morally more stern than any Austen novel.
Beyond the two-dimensional reading experience, Jerusha Hess’s 2013 film “Austenland” is marketed as a “one-time immersive Austen experience,” a pricey vacation trip for which the protagonist, Jane (Keri Russell), a single American woman in her mid-30s — the peak age for Austen heroines — scrapes together her last money.
For Jane is Austen Ultra: The librarian not only has a life-size Mr. Darcy cardboard cutout that, in her flower-strewn 19th-century knickknack-filled bedroom, wards off would-be lovers, but she obviously cannot imagine anything more exciting than a trip into the stiff etiquette of England in the 19th century, where in a suitably decorated house a crowd of performers should render the experience realistic.
Hess and her screenwriter Shannon Hale, who adapted the story from her novel, have fun not only parodying the classic Austen figures with their forced after-dinner conversations and the sticks-up-their-buns etiquette, but also letting the whole thing erupt into a clash of cultures.
First Rejection, Then Fiery Love
In addition to Jane, the nouveau riche American heiress “Miss Elizabeth Charming” (the wonderful Jennifer Coolidge) has also signed up for the Austen-Experience—and she injects sex-appeal and cultural insensitivity into the noble society. In its basic structure Hess, however, follows the template: as with Austen, the first encounter between Jane and a Darcy-lookalike (JJ Feild) is marked by dispute. One of Austen’s love rules states that from initial rejection especially strong flames arise.
And the flames continue to burn: just a few weeks ago Laura Piani’s comedy “Jane Austen and the Chaos in My Life” opened in theaters, a French production that feels like a conglomerate of all existing Austen meta-stories. The French librarian and Austen aficionado Agathe (Camille Rutherford) gains a writing residency in a bizarre English Austen paradise full of whimsical writers; included are costume parties and the two usual beaux between whom she must choose.
Although the premise, the source material, and the material itself are well known, Piani succeeds in a surprisingly funny film — in part because, next to her Austen country house, there is an alpaca farm and Agathe, wandering through the woods, learns that the hum of alpacas is one of the silliest sounds in the world (and their good-natured smiles do not protect them from being spit at).
Already in 2016, the film “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” appeared, in which Colonel Darcy (Matt Riley) must kill zombies. And naturally, Jane Austen has long appeared in the nude: In 2011 the LA Times reported on a “reimagined” Austen novel with a “handsome Mr. Wickham, wickeder than ever!”. On the usual adult sites, film versions have long been available. And thus Elizabeth no longer has to choose between Mr. Darcy and Mr. Wickham.
