Pride and Prejudice (1940)

Pride and Prejudice has been adapted many times for film and television. After reading the novel last month, I thought I'd take a look at the most prominent adaptations. I start with the 1940 film, starring Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson.

This is a perfectly acceptable film, without elevating itself to outstanding status. As with the book, it covers the five Bennet sisters, and their attempts to get married, as they cannot inherit their father's estate because they are female. The foremost plot is the relationship between Elizabeth (Garson) and the proud Mr. Darcy (Olivier), which has her hating him at first, but then marrying him.

The film was directed by Robert Z. Leonard, and adapted, by of all people, Aldous Huxley. It was not adapted directly from the novel, but by way of a stage adaptation by Helen Jerome. The script touches on all the high points, but does so rather perfunctorily. I did enjoy Melville Cooper as the "pudding-faced" Mr. Collins, and Mary Boland as the excitable Mrs. Bennet.

The biggest deviation from book to film is the treatment of Lady de Burgh, here played by Edna Mae Oliver, who was born to play haughty women. She and Elizabeth have a big scene at the end, in which the old lady demands that Elizabeth never marry Darcy that has its origins in snobbery. But the film softens the old bag, and sets up the scene as a ruse to help out Darcy. It doesn't work if you've read the book.

Also, Garson was in her mid-thirties at the time, and while a lovely woman, she looks it. Elizabeth is supposed to be 20. Her older sister, Jane, was played by Maureen O'Sullivan, who in reality was seven years younger than Garson. Oh, the vagaries of Hollywood.