Stevenson’s Jane EyreBritish Novel to Film

Fu Jen University

Dr. M. Connor

Popular with film-makers Charlotte Bronte’s most famous novel, the beloved

Jane Eyre is well-loved by film makers as well. There have been a whopping 17 versions of it filmed, the earliest in 1910 and the latest as recently as 1997.

According to the Internet Movie Database, another mini-series is currently being filmed starring Toby Stephens as Rochester and Ruth Wilson as Jane, though when this will arrive is not announced as of yet.

Many cuts As would be expected, the television

adaptations keep the most subplots, as they have more time.

But a number of the cinematic releases keep the spirit of the novel, if inevitably cutting out much of the interesting bits not centered on Jane and Mr. Rochester.

Background Before going into the Stevenson version, I’d

like to present some information on another version.

Clive/Bruce version and the Code In 1934 Christy Cabanne directed the first

talky version of Jane Eyre for Monogram Pictures Corporation, an American film studio which mostly produced B films secondary films to be the first in a double feature

with an “A” film. I think the year in which it was produced has

much to do with the radical changes in the book’s text.

Hayes Codes I think I did this for Frankenstein, but just in case... The year 1934 was the first year that the Movie

Production Codes--the Hayes Codes—went into effect. In 1930, responding to public pressure, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) drafted a set of codes in order to regulate the movie industry. It was drafted by William Harrison Hays and was known as either ”the Production Codes” or the ”Hays Code.”

1934 important year Between 1930-34, the MPAA had no

effective way of enforcing the Code, but then started enforcing it in 1934.

An amendment to the code established the Production Code Administration, and required all films to obtain a certificate of approval before being released.

Changes for the Code? Adele is now a Rochester, Rochester’s much pampered and

petted niece. There is no word of her being an illegitimate child of a paid mistress.

And during the proceedings, Rochester is working with his London lawyer to get his first marriage to Bertha annulled by the courts. He says no word to anyone, but it is never his intention to join into a bigamous marriage.

Jane leaves him anyway, and runs to work in a soup kitchen run by Rev. Rivers, a much older man whom she plans to marry and follow to India.

Through a meeting with a now down-and-out Thornfield servant, she learns of the fire and Bertha’s death, so she returns to the blind, but two-handed Rochester.

A bad film On the whole, this is a bad

film. It has been released on DVD as a cheap version, so the print is dark and sound quality is relatively poor.

The acting is very stagey. Colin Clive, perhaps most

famous as Henry Frankenstein of the Whale Frankenstein films, tries, but he obviously is enamoured of Jane from almost the first.

Virginia Bruce is no Jane She is tall, beautiful, blonde and

in some ways, too “tough”. She is not a bad actor, but she is

too 1930s “new woman” for the role.

This is a Jane with too much spunk.

She yells at her Aunt Reed, she yells at Brocklehurst and gets herself fired from Lowood, and she’s already inherited her money before she becomes a governess, so she’s not really a dependant. She also sings a song for Rochester. Lovely voice, but again, doesn’t fit.Virgina Bruce around the time she starred in Jane Eyre.

This is no plain Jane! Source: http://www.cineyestrellas.com/Elenco/Actrices/B/Bruce_Virgina_1.jpg

Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine Ten years later, Robert Stevenson directed

Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine in a classic version of the novel, which you watched.

With a screen play by John Houseman and Aldous Huxley and a stellar cast, including the child actors Margaret O’Brien (Adele) and Elizabeth Taylor (Helen Burns), many viewers call this the “best” Jane Eyre ever filmed.

True film of its day Again, much is cut out, and

there are a number of changes to the text, but the core of the story remains. It’s done in a true 1940s style—melodramatic, swelling music, dramatic lighting, costuming done by a Hollywood ideal not based in reality—but at the heart, this is Jane Eyre and it’s well worth watching.

Orson Welles as Rochester and Joan Fontaine as Jane Eyre. Source: http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/cbmc/images/jane-eyre.jpg

Underappreciated actor Orson Welles makes an excellent Rochester. Unlike

most Rochesters before and after, Welles is not a handsome man. He’s not ugly, but Jane can say that she doesn’t think him handsome and the audience won’t snort in derision.

And of course his acting is excellent. Welles was often undervalued by his contemporary audiences, but he’s sometimes riveting to watch. And that voice—his famous deep voice rolls over us, hypnotizing us along with Jane.

Not everyone agrees with me! “Welles's part in Jane Eyre was undeniably designed as a star-making

role: the adaptation transforms Charlotte Bronte's gruff, hard-featured, middle-aged Rochester into a tall, dark, svelte matinee idol. At times Welles's performance seems in harmony with this design. He uses his voice, size, and baby-faced good looks to suggest Rochester's violence, sweetness, and odd vulnerability. Yet the more characteristic notes here are dissonant. Deliberately or not, as an actor Welles undermines his purported comeback in this project. Sometimes he focuses so insistently on Rochester's mordant, ironic wit that he seems to be smirking at the entire project, perhaps because of self-consciousness at his lack of physical grace.” From Gardner Campbell ”The presence of Orson Welles in Robert

Stevenson's Jane Eyre (1944),” Literature Film Quarterly,  2003, http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3768/is_200301/ai_n9228494

NY Times agreed “They tossed Mr. Welles most of the story

and let him play it in his hot, fuliginous style. As a consequence, the heroine of the classic, little Jane, played by Joan Fontaine, is strangely obscured behind the dark cloud of Rochester's personality.” From the NY Times review by Bosley Crowther,

Feb 4, 1944.

Welles didn’t like it When Peter Bogdanovich interviewed him nearly

thirty years after the film's release, Welles said that Jane Eyre was "not my kind of picture. I was delighted to act in it, and very happy to do it, but I would never have chosen it. I think, if I had a chance of directing sixty movies, Jane Eyre wouldn't be one of them" (Welles and Bogdanovich 176). Campbell,

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3768/is_200301/ai_n9228494/pg_3

Radio versions Welles was fairly

intimate with Bronte's book.

He had already performed it at least twice on the radio, first in 1938 during the first season of The Mercury Theatre on the Air

Source: http://www.thegoldenera.net/images/radio_music/1938_Orson_Welles_radio.jpg

Fontaine’s work Fontaine doesn’t get to

do much other than gaze, tremble and sigh, but her face is expressive, and we feel moved by Jane’s story.

Rochester and Jane before their aborted wedding. Source: http://www.standaard.be/Assets/Images_Upload/FL_EYRE.MM.jpg

NY Times on her performance “Miss Fontaine's

performance is so modest and subdued that one comprehends from it only anxiety and awe. No wonder there is no sense of love or passion between them.”

Source: http://classicmoviefavorites.com/fontaine/fontaine68.jpg

A weak Jane? “The Encyclopedia of Novels into Film quotes critics

complaining that this Jane is completely bereft of intelligence, and that Welles's star in turn robs her character of the presence and authority she enjoys in Bronte's novel (202-03). Kate Ellis and E. Ann Kaplan's 1981 critique goes even farther in suggesting that "the limitations of film form," as well as director Robert Stevenson's "reversion . . . to patriarchal structures," lead to a "dilution of Jane's rebellious vision" in which she "is seen, for the most part, from a male point of view" (83-84). From Campbell,

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3768/is_200301/ai_n9228494/pg_2

More from The Times The film “makes Jane a sort of bloodless Trilby from

the time Rochester sweeps upon the scene. She becomes, as it were, a hypnotic under his Svengali spell, and exists in a world of shapeless horrors which are governed entirely by him. Under these circumstances the early part of the film, which gives a very moving comprehension of Jane's sad childhood at Lowood School, seems remote from the rest of the picture. It is almost a separate tale. The emphasis is taken away from Jane Eyre as soon as she goes to Thornfield Hall.”

Sources Campbell, Gardner ”The presence of Orson Welles in Robert Stevenson's Jane Eyre (1944),”

Literature Film Quarterly,  2003, http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3768/is_200301/ai_n9228494

Crowley, Bosley, “THE SCREEN; 'Jane Eyre,' a Somber Version of the Bronte Novel, With Joan Fontaine and Orson Welles, Opens at the Music Hall,” New York Times, Feb 4, 1944 http://movies2.nytimes.com/mem/movies/review.html?_r=1&title1=Jane%20Eyre&title2=&reviewer=BOSLEY%20CROWTHER&pdate=19440204&v_id=&oref=slogin