1995: The Year Jane Austen Came to the Movies
Wednesday, July 22, 2015 at 3:33PM Our look back at 1995 continues with Lynn Lee on an unexpected breakout...
Clueless turned 20 this week, but as the Internet has constantly reminded us, it hasn’t aged a day. At once timeless ("a classic," as Cher would say) and delightfully dated, it’s a modern riff on a period piece – Jane Austen’s Emma – that's become something of a period piece itself. The latter aspect tends to draw attention away from the former, but I happened to see the movie again at a recent party and was reminded not just how perfectly it captures the ’90s, but also (1) how brilliantly it adapts Emma, and (2) how 1995 really was the breakout year for Jane Austen in film.
Keep in mind that prior to 1995, the only film version of a Jane Austen novel was the 1940 B&W “Pride & Prejudice” starring Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier. 1995 changed all that...
In addition to Clueless, we got the much-fêted Sense & Sensibility, directed by Ang Lee and scripted by & starring Emma Thompson, and the quieter but still-acclaimed Persuasion starring Amanda Root and Ciarán Hinds. Not to mention the BBC six-part miniseries adaptation of Pride & Prejudice which, while technically made for the small screen, had far more pop-culture impact than all of the (many) previous BBC TV adaptations of Austen combined and propelled Colin Firth towards the movie-star status he still enjoys today.
In short: In 1995, Austen was a hot property.
And she’s stayed hot ever since, enjoying polished, high-profile, generally well-received big-screen adaptations of her novels, including the 1996 Emma with Gwyneth Paltrow, a revisionist Mansfield Park (1999), and Joe Wright’s more-Brontë-than-Austen take on Pride & Prejudice (2005). She’s also bred countless spinoffs and modern-day retellings, some more memorable than others, from Bridget Jones’ Diary (2001) to the Bollywood-touched Bride & Prejudice (2004) to the imagined Austen romance Becoming Jane (2007) to the Austen theme park fantasy Austenland (2013) and the upcoming Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, based on the bestselling & most shameless cannibalization of the novel ever. It seems every year or two there’s some kind of homage to Austen in the movies, and it doesn’t look like the well’s running dry any time soon.
Yet 1995, which began it all, still remains the high water mark for Austen on film. Clueless was the first to show how her themes, characters, and sharp eye for social comedy, could be transferred to a contemporary setting – and did it so well that no movie since has topped it. As a straight adaptation, Sense & Sensibility, too, remains unsurpassed. It epitomized everything a top-notch director, screenwriter, and cast could do to make Austen’s actual world feel vivid, immediate, and lushly real. If it comes off a little glossier and more made-cute-for-Hollywood now than it did at the time, it’s still hugely enjoyable to watch, skillfully balancing the elements of social satire and more uncomfortable moral underpinnings of Austen’s work and tempering its joyful, feel-good romanticism with sober, Elinor-like realism about a society in which money could and did trump love. S&S also gave us two of the best actressing performances of the ’90s, as the film that introduced Kate Winslet to the world – or at least the part that hadn’t seen Heavenly Creatures – and reminded us of just how great Emma Thompson could be. Meanwhile, Persuasion, despite suffering from some fundamental miscasting, effectively captured the more melancholy, bittersweet, autumnal side of Austen that’s too often overlooked, and that I haven’t really seen in any subsequent Austen-based films.
Which leads me to wonder: has the well run dry?
Is there anything left for filmmakers to mine from Austen that wasn’t already done at its best 20 years ago and revisited with diminishing returns since then? Personally, I wouldn’t mind seeing a contemporary take on the Gothic-spoofing Northanger Abbey (the only one of Austen’s novels that hasn’t been adapted to film) and maybe on Persuasion as well. But it’ll take a truly exceptional film to dislodge the preeminence of 1995 as the Year of Austen, and I’m not holding my breath.
Are you?
Reader Comments (15)
I hadn't noticed this Austen year but now that you mention it it's great, I love both Clueless and Sense and Sensibility from 1995 and while I've never ready any of the books their based on I clearly get the voice of Austen because these movies along with P&P a decade later showed me how much a fan of her writings I must be without reading her works.
Lynn Lee: I actually think that P&P with Zombies movie actually has a shot of being very good for what it is. Nat complained about the "lingerie ad ready" costuming, but would you REALLY want a movie with that title to have Amadeus level accurate costuming?
Get a pair of actors with solid chemistry in the leads, and you can cobble together a halfway decent Austen adaptation, so I don't think they'll slow down any time soon. They're not necessarily wastes of time/film - all of Austen's stories have such large casts of characters that there's a lot of room for different reads on them, especially as examinations of class conflict and relationship/sexual mores. In recent years, I've appreciated Wright's Pride and Prejudice, as well as the BBC's new Sense and Sensibility in 2008 and Emma in 2009, for takes on some of Austen's more overtly comic characters - Mrs. Bennett and Mr. Collins in P&P, Mr. Woodhouse in Emma - that are more human and less shrill than those of the mid-nineties boom. While I like Ehle and Firth, I prefer nearly every supporting character as they're rendered in Wright's adaptation. I don't think any new adaptation of P&P, S&S, or Emma can exist outside the shadow of the mid-nineties, but I'd love to see new stabs at the other three, especially Persuasion.
I think it would be a fool's errand to try and top this version of Sense and Sensibility or Joe Wright's version of Pride & Prejudice. Both Clueless and the Paltrow version of Emma pretty much sew that book up and the sharp take on Mansfield Park would be hard to top.
But it would be great to see Northanger Abbey finally make it to the big screen and while Persuasion was okay it was missing a certain snap so it could certainly stand another version. The only reason to attempt any of the others again would be a re-imagining along the lines of Clueless.
1995 was a very good year, I love "Clueless" and "Sense & Sensibility", they hold up very well on re-watch.
I agree with @Liz regarding the Joe Wright adaptation of Pride & Prejudice. The BBC Pride and Prejudice adaptation was reverent, but I don't find it as much fun. The supporting cast for the 2005 (10 year anniversary) film includes Brenda Blethyn, Judi Dench, Tom Hollander, Donald Sutherland, Rosamund Pike, Carey Mulligan, Jena Malone, Simon Woods, to the winning Keira Knightley, and Matthew Macfadyen can't be beat.
Emma Thompson helped with the screen adaptation for P&P as well as S&S, which leads me to the conclusion that she should be unleashed on another Austen novel.
Austen along with Agatha Christie is a gift that keeps on giving if you love actresses.
I too hadn't realised that 1995 was such a breakthrough year for Austen in film. I agree that the adaptations to come out that year set a pretty high standard, which has to been hard to top since.
I can't agree, however, with the notion that the 1995 version of Persuasion was miscast. Amanda Root was perfect for the part of Anne Elliot and Ciaran Hinds, if not physically what I'd picture as Captain Wentworth, completely nails his characterization. Perhaps you say that because they were lesser known actors? Also, the tone and themes of the book are so perfectly conveyed in the 1995 Persuasion version. I confess I much prefer that in an adaptation, compared to Joe Wright's P&P for example, which, despite having a superb cast of well known actors that suited their parts splendidly (Keira Knightly makes for a perfect Elizabeth Bennet), completely mangled and distorted what the book was all about. For all the fleshing out of the supporting characters (as someone commented above) that it might boast of, the essence of the book was lost in favour of a cliched romance, complete with lightning flash to the heart first glances and declarations in the rain - precisely what Austen despised and not the story she set out to tell. I squirmed in pain all the way through the viewing of that one, I have to say.
So that being said, for me, there's room for more Austen in film. There's still not a good film version of P&P (and until then nothing tops the 1995 series, I'm sorry), Mansfield Park as you pointed out hasn't had a close to the book adaptation (Fanny makes for too much of a prudish heroine for modern audiences, I'm afraid, so don't see that happening soon), and if someone like Tim Burton or Terry Gilliam got their hands on Northanger Abbey, well that would be something worth watching.
Austen's novel Northanger Abbey has been adapted twice, in 1987 and 2007, though I do agree that it needs another round.
I would love to see Austen's most wicked heroine Lady Susan Vernon brought to screen and will get my wish when the venerable writer/director Whit Stillman's Love and Friendship releases in 2016.
Jane Austen fans are all anticipation. There will always be interest in her work. They are ultimate "classics" that Cher would give snaps too.
I don't really have anything to add, but this was a very good read. Thanks.
Lynn here. So first off, I want to clarify that I actually liked Joe Wright's P&P (good point re: making the supporting characters less caricature-ish) - in fact, I probably liked it better than the BBC Firth/Ehle version, though the latter seems generally truer to Austen's spirit and anyway it's not really fair to compare adaptations in two different media. But neither version quite captured my conception of P&P.
The miscasting in Persuasion has nothing to do with the actors being less famous. It's been a while since I've seen the movie, but I remember thinking Amanda Root was too mousy (shallow, I know, but Anne's supposed to be pretty!) and Ciarán Hinds too dour (he's supposed to be gallant!) for their respective characters. And the actress who plays Elizabeth, the older sister, was so unappealing it didn't seem realistic that she could ever be considered the more desirable sister. Though I suppose that was meant to drive home the point that she wasn't nearly as desirable as she and her dad thought she was.
Oh, and I think both adaptations of Northanger Abbey were TV movies. I'm not aware of a big-screen version?
Thank you so much for this article! I have always been a huge Jane Austen fan and have eaten up all adaptations. My psyche is so influenced by these adaptations that throughout the whole Harry Potter movie series I staunchly maintained that Snape had to have some good in him because there's was no way Colonel Brandon could be evil (do not speak to me of "Die Hard"!) And likewise I was devastated when Captain Wentworth was put to the stake in Game of Thrones.
I had no problem with the casting in Persuasion of Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth. The thing about Jane Austen is she never really describes her main characters physical characteristics and much of what is assumed comes through others, usually tainted, opinions. So film makers are actually quite free to cast whom ever they wish and as Persuasion is all from the quiet, steady perspective of Anne, we have to remember Captain Wentworth was always reserved in her presence. Ciaran Hinds played this well. Elizabeth Elliot and her father are caricatures caught up in there own vanity and self importance. In their world, It's the Elliot name that is desirable. While I think it's not to the taste of many modern viewers Persuasion to me is actually one of the truer adaptations. That's not to say I like it any more. My favourite JA adaptation is the daring (at the time) 1995 P&P followed by Joe's Wrights grittier adaptation.
Oh I could watch anything that has a Jane Austen touch and hearing that P&P & Zombies was to be adapted I decided I better give it a read. I was pleasantly surprised. it neatly captured JA's perceptive, satirical tone and blended it with the modern penchant for insatiable walking dead. I'm looking forward to the movie :)
"The BBC Pride and Prejudice adaptation was reverent, but I don't find it as much fun" !!!!!!!!! The the thing that kills the 2005 adaptation for me is its absolute lack of humor. There are fun bits that come across as a bit awkward and cruel, but in general it dispenses with the wit and verbal love-hate sparring that defines Jane Austen. And I saw it as an impressionable teen, years before I had the pleasure of seeing the BBC adaptation.
Until we see Batman v. Elizabeth Bennet, or Mary, Kitty & Lydia: The Untold Story, then Austen hasn't run its course.
I was shocked to read that the Garson & Olivier version was the only bigscreen version up until 1995. I just assumed there were multiple English movie versions of the books that I hadn't yet seen.
Once we've finally finished with Austenmania, then it will lie low for three or four decades until they want to create a hologram simulation movie transmitted directly into your brain, or you know, whatever technology exists. Then it will all start up again.
I recently watched the BBC Pride and Prejudice and Jennifer Ehle is so good! I now want her to play the lead in a Wes Anderson film.
Has anyone read "As If!: The Oral History of Clueless" by Jan Chaney? It just came out and I absoutely devoured it. It helps explain some of the Clueless/Emma parallels since I had never read "Emma" and wasn't sure how much inspiration from it actually made it to the screen. Turns out a lot of it did; the scene when they leave in different cars from the Val party were originally carriages, for example.
But here's what I found juicy:
While common wisdom didn't have Gwyneth Paltrow as a condescending snob until well after the '00s, the star of "Emma" is quoted in 1996 as rolling her eyes and saying "I think it's a shame that this generation is going to first be introduced to Emma from 'Clueless." Take a seat, Gwyneth! No one remembers your movie..
Also, "Clueless" got nominated for a WGA for Original Screenplay and its chances at an Oscar nom for Screenplay were derailed when the Academy decided that its inspiration from "Emma" would place it in Adapted. There was no way "Clueless" would get in there, especially when competition was from a much different Jane Austen adaptation.
jakey: But I'd almost say that's a good thing. Nixon and Braveheart were secure due to naked prestige factor, The Usual Suspects was secure due to being generally perceived as a smart adult thriller and Mighty Aphrodite was secure because it was a Woody Allen movie. If it really was a down to the wire fight between Muriel's Wedding, The American President, Clueless or TOY STORY for that last slot, I'm glad the Academy wound up nominating Toy Story.