Exclusive“Pride and Prejudice” (1940): First Costume Piece

🎵 🎵Flow gently, sweet afton, among thy green braes🎵 🎵Flow gently, I'll sing thee a song in thy praise🎵 🎵My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream🎵 🎵Flow gently, sweet afton, disturb not her dream🎵 🎵Thou stock dove, whose echoes resound through the glen🎵 🎵Ye wild whistling blackbirds in yon thorny den🎵 🎵Thou green-crested half-wing, thy screaming forebear🎵 🎵I charge you, distant man, thy slumbering fair🎵 Good afternoon, sister. Good afternoon. What have you there? Nothing. But I am certain you were reading a letter. What letter? There, in your hand. Oh, this is but a letter from my cousin. Which cousin is that? You don't know him. But is it not true that your cousins are also my cousins? This is my personal cousin. Alas, sister, I fear it is news of my suitor that you are loth to tell me. Why, you accuse me of deception. Why would I do such a thing? If you feared the news was bitter to hear. Alas, it is indeed news that he has gone to London, I fear never to return, for such is the power of pride and prejudice. I'm Rebecca Brannan. And I'm Tiffany Brannan. Welcome to Real Thoughts on Cinema. In the last few years, one of the most popular series has been Bridgerton. This historical fiction drama has really revived interest in the Regency era. That's so true. And especially, I want to say, Jane Austen novels are really popular. Like, I follow a lot of literary accounts on Instagram, and they're always making reference to Jane Austen books, particularly Pride and Prejudice and all the various movie adaptations of them. And I think Bridgerton kind of fits in with that because it is that era, and I think it's trying to kind of evoke that same feeling. That popularity wasn't true in the Golden Era of Hollywood. Ironically, even though many classic novels were adapted to film during that time, like the 30s to the 50s, they had a very strange habit of always changing the time periods from the Regency, which is to 1810, to a later Victorian, like the 1830s. Well, I think it was because the fashion for most of the Golden Era was they really liked the hourglass shape, and that was very strong in the Victorian era as well with corsetry and so forth. The Regency era is a very straight silhouette, and that was a look that hadn't really been in since, I would say, the 20s. But even that was the drop waist as opposed to the really high-waisted look. The empire waist, yes. The empire waist. It's just not as, frankly, as flattering to the female form, and obviously they were very high fashion then, so they knew that. But it's very popular now because I think the hourglass has gone out somewhat. Perhaps for this very reason, Jane Austen novels were not popular for films in the Classic Era. There are a lot of adaptations of Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey. There are a lot of movies, but most of them are more recent, like probably starting in the 80s or 90s, I would say. But the one noteworthy exception to this is the 1940 MGM film Pride and Prejudice. That's right. That starred Greer Garson, Laurence Olivier, that's a very famous name. Yes. And, as you said, it was made by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, or MGM. Directed by Robert Z. Leonard. Oh, yes, a great MGM director at the time, made some great musicals. And it includes some of the other popular stars of the day, like Anne Rutherford. Mary Boland. Marsha Hunt. Yes. All the sisters pretty much are actresses that you'll recognize if you've seen other MGM films of the era. Yes, yes they are. Maureen O'Sullivan. And Heather Angel is one of them, right? Yes. If you're not familiar with the plot of Pride and Prejudice, it's rather simple. It's about the five Bennet sisters, who are the five children of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet of Longbourn Estate. They're members of the landed gentry, so they have some degree of position, but not much wealth. And none of the girls have dowries, because the situation in their family is that their father's estate will go to a male relative. So their cousin, Mr. Collins, is going to inherit the estate. Thus, Mrs. Bennet, a nervous, frazzled, high-strung woman, is intent upon getting her five daughters married off, so that they'll have proper security. Ideally to wealthy men. Ideally, yes. The eldest two daughters are the main focus of the story, Elizabeth and Jane. Jane is the oldest daughter, but some people say in this movie it seems that Elizabeth is the oldest. I would definitely say that's true. They don't say for sure. But she has the attitude of an older sister. And she was, the actress Greer Garson, was seven years older. So Greer Garson played Elizabeth, who is a very intelligent, strong-minded young woman, and beautiful as well. Whereas Marina Sullivan plays Jane, the more romantic, sensitive sister, who is the more noteworthy beauty. Wouldn't you say Elizabeth is sort of like Jo March from Little Women? She kind of goes in that same sort of category of character? Yes, she does, but she's less of a tomboy. Definitely. She is very intelligent and strong-minded, though. And I would say the film focuses more on Elizabeth than the book. Definitely. And the main intrigue of the story happens when two very eligible, wealthy bachelors arrive at a nearby estate. And these two gentlemen are Mr. Bingley and his aloof friend, Mr. Darcy. Mr. Darcy is really the leading man of this film, and he's played by Sir Lawrence Olivier. Elizabeth is immediately repulsed by his proud, arrogant, and downright rude behavior. Understandably so. Yes, but the charming Mr. Bingley quickly catches the attention of Jane, and vice versa. However, his sister is even more aloof and proud than Mr. Darcy. She seems to be trying very hard to capture Mr. Darcy for herself, and she doesn't want him to be interested in any of the local girls. She considers them quite rustic. Yes, they refer to all the people as the peasants, the rustics, because they're not from London, and they're not as wealthy. But Mrs. Bennet is quickly contriving many ways to get Jane to snare Mr. Bingley. She doesn't have to, though, because they are quite truly in love. Yes, that's true. Meanwhile, Elizabeth meets a very handsome officer, George Wickham, who tells her that he was robbed of his fortune and his attempted prosperity by Mr. Darcy, because Darcy's father intended for him to have a good amount of money if he were to follow the path he intended to go into religious life. That's another reason why Elizabeth greatly resents Mr. Darcy. But as she gets to know him better, she realizes that first impressions might be misleading, and perhaps she's misjudging both Mr. Darcy and Mr. Wickham. Just jumping right into it, I would say, what is the biggest difference from the book? I know there are a lot of differences from the book. What would you say is the biggest one? I'd say the biggest is that it focuses more on Elizabeth and less on Jane. But another noteworthy change is that Mr. Collins was a member of the clergy himself in the original book. That's right. But he's a rather comical, even foolish character. And at the time, Hollywood was very influenced by the Motion Picture Production Code, which said that members of the clergy must not be comical characters. Or villainous. Is that one of those two categories? I don't think that Miss Austin intended disrespect to the clergy, but just to be safe, they changed him to a librarian. And I would also say they made him more comical than he is in the book. Yes. I would say he's a bit boring and dull, but they made him a straight comical character. You can tell even from the actor that was casted. He was one of the comic relief actors around. He very rarely played a serious character. And it's often noted in reviews of this film that the biting satire was lessened and softened, partly because Jane Austen's satire was largely commentary on her own time. A hundred years in the future, and more so, more than a hundred years, what was clever in 1813 wasn't that clever in 1940, so they made it more relevant and universal. I would say it's more of a straight love story, if you will. Many events that happen by letter or by people talking about it happen right there. That's natural for a film. Of course. It's much more interesting to read about somebody reading a letter in a book than to watch somebody reading a letter in a movie. If used tastefully, it is effective, but yes, there's a lot more. The character of Lady Catherine de Bourgh, who is the patroness of Mr. Collins and the aunt of Mr. Darcy, was made into more of the lovably disagreeable old lady character, instead of the truly disagreeable lady as she is in the book. And her prejudice, if you will, against Elizabeth is a ruse in the movie, but she genuinely does not want her to have anything to do with her nephew in the book, because she wants her nephew to marry her own daughter. That's right. What I think is so interesting in this film is actually the characterization of Mr. Darcy, to the point that it kind of made me not like the movie when I first saw it. I'm pretty sure when I first saw it, I hadn't read the book. Yes. And then I read the book, and I watched it again, and I was like, they changed it quite a bit. And I'm not always dead set against it. It's not exactly like the book, so I don't like it. That's not always how I feel about things. But I just felt he never quite softened enough for my liking. When I read the book, he did start out being... You know, the dialogue is taken straight from the book. He's just being horrible when she first meets him, but you really... I think you start to see his softer side sooner. And Sir Lawrence Olivier is very... I want to say he's very inhibited in this film. Yeah. He himself was not happy with the characterization. He said he felt he looked like an unattractive prig the whole time. But interestingly, neither you nor he holds the popular opinion. All the reviewers at the time said, this is his best interpretation. He's perfect as Darcy. He brought him to life. This is very faithful. And I have to note that in many ways, this is more faithful to the book than a lot of classic works are. You're right. It is. A lot of times I'd say it's just the look on his face. It's like it's Lawrence Olivier himself. Yes. It's not necessarily something the filmmakers did. It's purely his spirit. I mean... And in a book, you have the right to picture what you want. So I think you must picture something a little different. And I agree with you to a large degree. Yeah. When I read the book, I was thinking, I'm just really not picturing Lawrence Olivier somehow. The way it was written. I guess I just read it a bit softer somehow. And I think it's really interesting you noted that it seems like the character of Mr. Darcy in this film was sort of a Byronic hero. Yes. If you want to talk about what that is. The Byronic hero really is based on Lord Byron himself. And he created that literary device in many of his works. And you see it in works by the Bronte sisters. And it's this tortured, almost predecessor to the anti-hero, of a character who's moody and brooding. Perhaps has some hidden secret in his past. Edward Rochester and Jane Eyre. A character that Lawrence Olivier played the year before in Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff, I would say, is definitely a Byronic hero. This one is not. But he sort of made it that, or the filmmakers made it that in the film. And I think that's really interesting. Many people said he was having that same feeling as Heathcliff, but more confined in that. And I think he brought a lot of Heathcliff into this character. Yeah. Maybe too much. People seem to like it. I just think it's interesting just even to look at him. You know, Wuthering Heights was only a year before. And he looks so much older in this movie to me. And I don't know if it's the makeup. I think it's largely the styling. The styling, yeah. He has longer, more tussled hair as Heathcliff. And his hair is very styled in this. And they did different things with makeup because that character is supposed to be a gypsy. So they were making him look a bit more exotic. I think that really does something for him. Yeah. But it's interesting to discuss casting and production of this film. Yes. It is not taken directly from the book. It is taken from the 1935 stage adaptation by Helen Jerome. Oh, okay. That makes sense. Which was very popular. It ran for 219 performances between 1935 and 1936. Very good. By that point, Pride and Prejudice was in the public domain. Oh. And Irving Thalberg, the boy wonder of MGM, bought the rights because that was the only one that wasn't in the public domain. That was copyrighted, so he bought it. And this was the first theatrical released film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Really? Which is surprising because you think 1940 is old. But not really when you consider they were making silent films at the end of the 19th century. I think it's remarkable there isn't a silent film of it. Yeah. No silent film. No early talking. The only other time it had been made was in 1938. There was a British TV adaptation. I know. TV in 1938. Wow. It was very early television and very few people saw it because it was basically experimental at this point. Was it associated with the BBC? I don't think they were doing TV yet. Okay. It was just a small broadcast. That's fascinating. And it really wasn't seen by anybody. Do you know if that still exists? It does, yes. No noteworthy actors that I recognized. But this was the first time they made a movie, everybody saw it, everybody loved it, and it was very successful. It seems like they were more careful than they often are in this film to try and at least predominantly cast British actors. Yes. A lot of times in very British stories they would just put in American actors. Sometimes they try to do accents, sometimes they wouldn't. And when you look at the original cast of this film, it was a very different story. When Thalberg bought it, the casting was Norma Shearer and Clark Gable. Clark Gable. How? Quickly. Elizabeth? I know. It's kind of a funny picture. Clark Gable in this part. I can imagine it. Can't say if it would be good or not. I can definitely imagine Norma Shearer. She played a lot of very refined characters. And she was Canadian, so she had a bit of a different British. Not British, but a little different than straight American. George Cukor was originally going to direct it. And then because of the war, they had to cancel their plans to film it in England. And the thing that really stopped it was Irving Thalberg's death. So, like many productions. And then later they were considering, Robert Taylor was considered. Robert Donat was one of the main forerunners when they were considering filming it in England. Because he really couldn't leave England due to his bad health. The thing is, I know I've said I didn't imagine Laurence Olivier. I don't know if I can really name another actor from the area that I'd say, Oh, he would be better in this part. And they considered a lot of fellas. And for other actresses, they also considered Vivian Leigh. They almost ended up with the same couple as Gone With The Wind. And of course, Laurence Olivier wanted Vivian Leigh because she was his mistress at the time. He always wanted her and he was always unhappy when she wasn't in the movie, right? Yes. And he said, Dear Greer was not quite right as Elizabeth. But again, the critics disagreed. People thought that she was perfect as Elizabeth. She is fabulous in this movie. I love her. She's a wonderful actress. She definitely is a bit old for the part because she's supposed to be 20 and she was 37. But she's great. She looks lovely. The thing is, because of the era, everyone was so refined and mature then. You don't really think about how old is each character. They're all such ladies and gentlemen. You don't really think about their age. The two younger ones, Heather Angel, Lydia and Kitty characters. They definitely seem younger. Anne Rutherford was Polly Benedict in the Annie Hardy series and she was young. She was very young. Not quite 15, but she was still probably a teenager when this movie came out. 19? I just get the impression that all the characters are actually supposed to be older. Particularly the sisters. That's just my feeling. The mother does say that Lydia is 15. Oh, she does? I don't know what I'm talking about then. But they don't make a big point. They don't mention how old the older sisters are. That's the only time they mention age. I definitely want to make special mention of Maureen O'Sullivan as Jane. Because she is lovely and so refined. Most famous for playing Jane in the Tarzan movies. She's always playing somebody named Jane. She is quite charming in this movie and really beautiful. Yes, she's beautifully refined. I like how much sensitivity she brings to the character as well. And it's interesting to see how successful this film was. Very well regarded by critics. It made a lot of money, but it took a loss of around $200,000. Which led to Louis B. Mayer saying period pieces tend to lose money. Why do you suppose that is? Just because they're so expensive to make with the costuming? Yes, and it's interesting. They wanted this to be a colour film because of the costumes. But when they went into production in 1939, David Selznick had bought every square foot of Technicolour film in existence at the time for Gone with the Wind. That's really interesting. Because it's so long and Technicolour was still coming in. This film did end up winning one Academy Award. It won Best Art Direction, Black and White. And it has very nice art direction. So it's kind of a funny category. I know, what exactly does that mean? It refers to the sets, the backgrounds, the overall look. It has a really memorable theme song. I think about it a lot. It's a cute, playful theme song. It's a charmingly succinct film for how in-depth any novel is. We talked about earlier how in the classic era they didn't really like the Regency look. This film is no exception. They're wearing the big skirts. Definitely 1830s. 1830s is the era you would say? It's funny because it was a very successful adaptation of this book. It's one of the only Jane Austen classic films. But it doesn't have what is considered the famous Jane Austen look now. In the research I've done, I've only been able to find one old movie that actually has authentic Regency era costumes. Quality Street from 1936. With Catherine Hepburn in French attire. Now there are two suggestions of why they made the change of the time period. The first is the one we already said. It's more flattering, it's more opulent. People at the time wouldn't have been impressed by the nightgown-like Regency era look. But the other suggestion was that Civil War films were really popular. Victorian films were really popular. And they had a lot of background people to costume. Particularly in the dance scenes. So they could reuse costumes from Gone with the Wind and other successful films. Which is quite plausible. Honestly, I think it was both. I think it was both. I think it's good that they decided to do that and be accurate. As opposed to, sometimes you'll see films, they're going along pretty well. And all of a sudden they have a big party scene. It's like every woman in this room is from a different time period. Not very often. They were very careful then. They just sent them to the costume room. So I think it's good that they decided to just go all the way with it. Let's just set it in this era when we know we have plenty of costumes. And they're all gorgeous. And it's really lovely to look at. With the bonnets that they wear. And speaking of, we mentioned Bridgerton. I know Bridgerton made people love that style. But if you know anything about historical costumes, Bridgerton is notoriously inaccurate with his costumes. I'm sure. I think this film is a little more accurate in many ways. Historical accuracy is not Hollywood's number one focus these days. I would say it's pretty far back on the list. Yeah, there are a lot of other things. And it's so charming because this film really shows the pride, the prejudice, the sense, the sensibility, the propriety. The things that were so important to society at this time. And Bridgerton basically is all about throwing all those things out the window. It's about... I remember reading a description of it a few years ago. It's like pride and prejudice, but the dirty side. What happens on the back stairs. Oh yes, absolutely. Because it's really, really risque. That's what I've heard, definitely. So this is a nice alternative. If you are interested in the historical nature, and especially I think what people love about it is the opulent costumes and all the gossip. And this movie has plenty of that. And even a little scandal in a restrained way. That's a very important thing to note. Scandal, then you tried your very best to keep the details quiet. And any film from the code era that was made under those guidelines reflects that. Speaking of costumes, my outfit reflects the 1830s style of big sleeves. That was very popular. Interestingly, not just in the 1830s, it seems every time that the 30s roll around, big sleeves come in. That includes the 1930s. If you look back at the 15, 1630s, they had that too. So this is a modern blouse, but it reflects that style. And the full black taffeta skirt. I'm wearing cameo jewelry because there is a notable scene in which Lady Catherine de Bourgh is simply dripping with beautiful black cameo jewelry. My outfit also represents the classic Victorian style with a white shirt waist with somewhat full sleeves, a full floor-length skirt and a bonnet-like hat with similar cameo style jewelry and more heavier shoes. Do we have hope that the 2030s will bring back the big sleeves? They may indeed. We see a little hope here from both of ours. Perhaps they'll come back in a big way. One of my favorite things about adaptations of classic novels made during the golden era of Hollywood is that it offers insight into how people viewed these historical subjects in earlier times. That's a really interesting point. They were much closer to it than we are. Many people who were involved with this filmmaking process had been alive in the 19th century, even if it was the late 19th century. They had parents or grandparents who were alive in the 1830s or 1813. It wasn't as much of a distant memory as we're now over 200 years away from that. You're right. It's like a fantasy era almost. It's not a real time period. They were much closer to it then, so they were more in touch with certain aspects of it. It was interesting to see that historic look on a historic time. Society was still more similar. There were still guidelines of society. The idea of how you have to dress was very important in 1940, just as it was in 1813 or 1836. That's such an interesting study when you're looking at clothes throughout history. Our era now is the first time, I think, in human history that there has not been a way that you dress. It's the come as you are game now. You can wear whatever you want. There are several different styles, but there isn't as much to be worn. That's what's trending. You'll see in movies when a woman is out of fashion, it's like, oh my goodness, you're wearing a skirt the wrong length. It's very specific. That's really not the world now. There are references to that in the film. At the opening, they're looking at dress patterns and saying, oh, yes, this is so chic this year. The other thing is that you can kill two birds with one stone by watching a movie like this. It can introduce you both to classic films and to classic literature. If you've never read Pride and Prejudice, this could get you interested in it. Absolutely. I would recommend if you are interested in period pieces, costume dramas, or anything with opulent, beautiful style, I would highly recommend Pride and Prejudice as a first classic film to watch. Often we don't talk about some of Hollywood's most famous films, but every once in a while we make an exception. And when delving into old Hollywood, what better way to get into it than by a movie that is all about Hollywood and the behind-the-scenes drama? So join us next week as we talk about one of the most famous classic films, which gives us that behind-the-screen look. Thank you for watching. Goodbye.