*I wrote this paper in 2000 and received an 85/100. The instructor was being too kind. I suppose this paper is considered a spoiler alert for the novel and three film adaptations, so you have been warned.*
The Internet Movie Database shows thirteen different filmed versions of Charlotte Bronte's novel, Jane Eyre. Three of those films are available on video: a 1944 version starring Joan Fontaine and Orson Welles, a 1983 BBC version featuring Zelah Clarke and Timothy Dalton, and a 1996 version with Charlotte Gainsbourg and William Hurt. While all three of these films use Bronte's novel as the source, all three differ in the way the fire at Thornfield Hall is portrayed. This essay will point out the differences between the three films' interpretations of this crucial scene in the novel, and determine which one was most successful.
In the novel, Jane has returned to an inn located close to Thornfield Hall, her former place of employment. She walks from the inn to the house, and finds it is in ruins. She had been missing from the house for months and upon her return, "gathered evidence that the calamity was not of late occurence" (Bronte 432). Jane returns to the inn, and questions the middle-aged innkeeper about the condition of the house. Jane finds out that Edward's lunatic wife, Bertha, escaped, set fire to the house, and committed suicide by throwing herself off the roof. The innkeeper describes her as "dead as the stones on which her brains and blood were scattered" (Bronte 436). Edward has been injured as well, in his vain effort to save his crazed wife. He lost one eye, had a hand amputated, and was blind in his remaining eye. In the end, Jane goes to him, he rejects her out of self-pity, then agrees to take her back, and eventually regains his sight shortly after the birth of their first child together.
A problem filmmakers have had with the scene as it reads in the novel is that Jane gets the information about the fire second-hand. She does not witness the fire or Bertha's suicide, and only discovers it after she returns to Thornfield. Of course Bronte could not have had any inkling of filmmaking technology back in 1847, when the novel was published, so how could film directors dramatize this climactic scene?
The first film viewed for this essay was 1944's "Jane Eyre," with Joan Fontaine as Jane and Orson Welles as Edward. The film tries to put all the elements of a 461 page novel into a scant ninety-six minutes. Joan Fontaine is woefully miscast as Jane, she was twenty-eight years old and playing a girl of eighteen. Orson Welles was thirty-four, trying to play a middle-aged landowner. Often, during the viewing of the film, Fontaine would look older than Welles. The film was directed by Robert Stevenson, whose most popular film would come over twenty years later in the form of Walt Disney's "Mary Poppins" (1964). He would direct many other Disney live-action films, including fodder like "That Darn Cat!" (1965) and "The Shaggy D.A." (1976). "Jane Eyre" was his sixteenth effort as a director, and his twenty-second as a writer. It would also be the last film he is credited as having a hand in writing. Stevenson co-wrote the screenplay with two giants of film, theater, and literature: Aldous Huxley and John Houseman.
Huxley is best known as the author of Brave New World. He only co-wrote one other film in addition to "Jane Eyre," 1940's "Pride and Prejudice." The rest of his filmography are films based on his works. John Houseman was a member of Orson Welles' Mercury Theater. "Jane Eyre" is his only credited screenwriting work, and Houseman would later come to prominence in front of the camera in his Academy Award winning role as the tyrannical law professor in "The Paper Chase" (1973).
Stevenson and his screenwriters open the film with a book of Jane Eyre and the heading "Chapter 1." However, the prose Fontaine narrates and the printing on the page are not the way Bronte began her novel. Most of the film takes place on studio sets and backlots. The fire climax is only accurate in that Jane comes back and finds Thornfield in ruins. Instead of an innkeeper telling her what has happened, it is the housekeeper. The filmmakers decide that only part of Thornfield Hall has burned, thereby explaining why Edward suddenly stumbles upon the scene, blind. Edward still has both hands and eyes, and no scarring from his battle with the flames. In order to show Edward is a disheveled state, he wears a few days' growth of beard and has a cane. Edward and Jane make up there in the ruins, and Jane's voiceover lets the audience know the rest of the story about Edward regaining his eyesight. This film came out a few years after Gothic romantic productions such as "Rebecca" (1940) and "Wuthering Heights" (1939). 1944's "Jane Eyre" tries to imitate their success and fails, perhaps, in part, due to World War II. The frame announcing the end of the film also urges the patrons to buy war bonds at the theater. With the war, budgets for major motion pictures may not have been very large.
Mick Martin and Marsha Porter write in their video review that devotees of the novel may be disappointed in the film (563). Leonard Maltin's video guide quibbles that this version is "artistically successful" (689). If you measure how closely the fire scene was reenacted, the film comes up short.
The next version was originally shown on the British Broadcasting Corporation networks in 1983. This version, clocking in at four hours, is able to take its time and tell the story almost as closely as Bronte wrote it. The director, Julian Amyes, is know as a reliable director of other versions of British novels for the BBC, such as "Great Expectations" (1988); and its screenwriter, Alexander Baron, also adapted the BBC mini-series "Oliver Twist" (1985) and "Vanity Fair" (1987). This "Jane Eyre" version comes closest to capturing the fire scene as written in the novel.
A drawback to this BBC version is that all the interiors are shot on videotape and all the exteriors are shot on film. This creates a sometimes jarring juxtaposition for the viewer. Zelah Clarke is probably too old to play Jane, but her work is excellent, as is Timothy Dalton's non-flashy turn as Edward. The BBC version has Jane returning to Thornfield Hall, and the innkeeper accompanying her. There he tells her what happened, as the film flashes back to the dramatization of the suicide. The dialogue of the innkeeper is almost identical to the novel, as are Jane's questions about the fire and Edward's fate. The fire is rather awkwardly staged on videotape; the filmmakers thereby betraying that the scene was shot on an interior set. However, the injuries to Edward are accurate: he is missing his hand and Dalton wears effective makeup to look like he has lost an eye. Edward does not stumble from behind a wall like the 1944 version, he is found at another house later, just as Bronte wrote. The cast is great, and Martin and Porter are accurate when they label this a "thrilling and thorough adaptation" (563).
Finally, I viewed the 1996 version of "Jane Eyre," directed by Franco Zeffirelli. Zeffirelli also worked on the screenplay with Hugh Whitemore, author of "84 Charing Cross Road" (1985). Zeffirelli is famed for his ability to bring literary classics to the screen: from William Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" (1968), "The Taming of the Shrew" (1967), and "Hamlet" (1990), to accessible operas such as "La Boheme" (1965) and "La Traviata" (1982), to melodramatic dreck like "The Champ" (1979) and "Endless Love" (1981).
Zeffirelli's film is only one hour and fifty seven minutes, but he and Whitemore are able to give an accurate feel of the Bronte novel that the 1944 version misses completely. Gainsbourg plays a plain but strong-willed Jane almost as well as Clarke's Jane, but closer to the right age. Almost forgotten is Joan Fontaine's pensive, teary-eyed performance. Zeffirelli, however, makes a choice to stage the fire just as Jane is leaving Thornfield after the failed wedding ceremony, instead of months after her departure. Therefore, we see the entire fire sequence instead of having it described or shown in flashback. When Jane returns later, she is not told what happened, but the audience can assume she has figured it out. This version also loses Edward's eye with effective makeup, but he gets to keep both of his hands. The Zeffirelli version is the most sumptuous version of the story with an experienced supporting cast including Joan Plowright, Billie Whitelaw, Anna Paquin, Geraldine Chaplin, and model Elle MacPherson. The film had a large budget, and it shows, especially in the detailed set design and costuming. Hurt is a brooding Edward, and Gainsbourg is finally portraying Jane accurately, in both age and physical appearance. While this film does not follow the fire scene word for word, it still works dramatically (at least better than the two earlier versions reviewed).
This film was criticized harshly for a hurried tone to the climax that truthfully was barely noticed. Martin and Porter write that the film "concludes with dissatisfying abruptness" (563). Leonard Maltin mentions the rushed ending, then shockingly writes "the 1944 version remains the best attempt" (689). Stephen Holden of "The New York Times on the Web" writes: "After the story's climactic fire (which is not convincingly staged), the movie hurtles pell-mell through critical events in Jane's life as if the rest of the story were an afterword instead of a resolution. It feels as if the director has simply lost interest" (1).
James Berardinelli gives the film a favorable review, stating "ultimately, this film is on par with the 1944 Orson Welles/Joan Fontaine version" (Berardinelli 1). People Weekly gave the film a grade of "C," criticizing Gainsbourg's performance, while the National Review found fault in Hurt's performance.
There are many other filmed versions of Jane Eyre, including a few silent versions, a 1934 sound version with Virginia Bruce and Colin Clive, and one not available on video- a television movie made in 1973 with Susannah York and George C. Scott in the vital roles.
Of the three versions viewed, Zeffirelli's films was the better entertainment, but Amyes' fire scene was the closest to the novel. Stevenson's version is simply a misfire, perhaps buoyed by its reputation and cast than its inherent quality.
Works Cited
-Berardinelli, James. "Jane Eyre (1995)". 14 April 2000 (http://www.movie-reviews.colossus.net/movies/j/jane-eyre.html)
-Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. 1847. New York: Signet Classic, 1997.
-Holden, Stephen. "Jane Eyre". New York Times on the Web. (http://www.nytimes.com)
-Internet Movie Database. 13 April 2000 (http://imdb.com)
-"Jane Eyre". Dir. Robert Stevenson. Perf. Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine. 20th Century-Fox, 1944.
-"Jane Eyre". Dir. Julian Amyes. Perf. Timothy Dalton and Zelah Clarke. BBC/CBS/Fox, 1983.
-"Jane Eyre". Dir. Franco Zeffirelli. Perf. William Hurt and Charlotte Gainsbourg. Miramax, 1996.
-Maltin, Leonard, ed. Leonard Maltin's 1999 Movie & Video Guide. New York: Signet, 1998.
-Martin, Mick and Marsha Porter. Video Movie Guide 1999. New York: Ballantine, 1998.
-Rozen, Leah. "Jane Eyre". Rev. of "Jane Eyre," dir. Franco Zeffirelli. People Weekly 22 Apr 1996: 19.
-Simon, John. "Jane Eyre". Rev. of "Jane Eyre," dir. Franco Zeffirelli. National Review 17 Jun 1996: 57.
