Jane Austen Collection (Sense & Sensibility / Emma / Persuasion / Mansfield Park / Pride & Prejudice / Northanger Abbey)

Jane Austen Collection (Sense & Sensibility / Emma / Persuasion / Mansfield Park / Pride & Prejudice / Northanger Abbey)
by Cyril Coke, Giles Foster

Jane Austen Collection (Sense & Sensibility / Emma / Persuasion / Mansfield Park / Pride & Prejudice / Northanger Abbey)
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Category: DVD
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DVD Cover Information

Actor: Geoffrey Chater, Googie Withers, Katharine Schlesinger, Peter Firth, Robert Hardy
Director: Cyril Coke, Giles Foster
Brand: WARNER HOME VIDEO
Cinematographer: Nat Crosby
Producer: Jonathan Powell
Producer: Louis Marks
Writer: Fay Weldon
Writer: Jane Austen
Writer: Maggie Wadey
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 1336 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-08-24
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: BBC Warner

Movie Reviews of Jane Austen Collection (Sense & Sensibility / Emma / Persuasion / Mansfield Park / Pride & Prejudice / Northanger Abbey)

Movie Review: Mixed Bag
Summary: 3 Stars

As you can tell from the other reviews this set is a mixed bag. I am going to discuss Emma, as I have just finished seeing it. Jane Austen thought that people would not care for her chief character, Emma, although she liked her. In this video you'll probably find that you don't like her. I did not. First let me say that with the exception of Emma, the casting is excellent. Harriet is perfect, Mr. Elton, Mrs. Elton, Mrs. Weston,all wonderful. Emma was not well cast, and as she is the chief character this is a drawback. The difficulty is that there are two sides to Emma. On the one hand she is a spoiled young woman who acts almost to spite Mr. Knightly (also well cast), and on the other during the story she matures, learns the errors she has been making and the consequences for herself and others of her blunders. She becomes less of a smirking school girl and more of a sensible woman. This transition does not really occur in this movie. The story calls for it, the plot moves of as if it happened, but the actress can't carry it off. She has the smirking, self-satisfied, attention grabbing Emma down to a T, but lacks the ability to present to us the chastened, more realistic and sober Emma that comes to be. On the other hand, what Emma are you going to watch:? This is a long production, and I will watch it again, which is more than I can say for some of the set.

Northanger Abbey came off fairly well, but it may be too shortened at the expense of some of the story. More later.

Summary of Jane Austen Collection (Sense & Sensibility / Emma / Persuasion / Mansfield Park / Pride & Prejudice / Northanger Abbey)

Movie DVD
The socially restricted lives of 18th-century women hardly seems like a subject that would inspire dozens of 20th (and 21st) century adaptations--but the brilliant novels of Jane Austen are flush with sparkling dialogue, razor-sharp wit, marvelously realized characters that range from adorably sympathetic to grotesquely comic, and--above all--ingeniously intricate plots, which arrive at a seemingly inevitable happy conclusion yet keep you seized with suspense every inch of the way. The Jane Austen Collection pulls together six BBC miniseries from 1971 through 1987, one for each of Austen's much-beloved books.

Unsurprisingly, the gems of the lot are also the best of the novels: Pride and Prejudice and Emma. Pride and Prejudice, expertly translated to the screen by novelist Fay Weldon, skillfully chronicles the ups and downs of the sensible but quick to judge Elizabeth Bennet (the adorable Elizabeth Garvie) and the snooty Mr. Darcy (played with an imperious scowl by David Rintoul). Any adaptation of Emma rests firmly on its central character, and Doran Godwin wonderfully captures Emma Woodhouse's resilience, determination, and exasperating self-satisfaction. Definitely the funniest of Austen's novels, Emma's satirical humor is perfectly balanced with romantic yearning, and this 1972 version succeeds delightfully.

Persuasion, though more melancholy in tone, has a wonderfully sympathetic heroine in Anne Elliot (played by the graceful Ann Fairbanks), who once turned away the man she loved but is given the chance, seven years later, to set things right. Sense and Sensibility suffers from comparison to the star firepower and cinematic sweep of the 1995 movie with Emma Thompson (a must-see for any Austen fan), but the dueling characters of gracious Elinore and headstrong Marianne, two sisters struggling with fallen fortunes, make for enjoyable viewing in this 1981 adaptation. Mansfield Park has perhaps the dullest hero and heroine of any Austen novel, yet the story zips along, powered by some of Austen's most outrageous supporting characters, here brought to deliciously comic life by Anna Massey and Angela Pleasence. Northanger Abbey satirizes gothic romances and the overheated imaginations that loved them; but though the tone is more broad and melodramatic than most of Austen, this 1987 adaptation suits the novel and rounds out this very satisfying boxed set. --Bret Fetzer

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