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...
