Ease and Fluency with Austenian English Greatly Compromised

Rating: 5/10 (6 April 2007)

I did not see the 1995 miniseries, so I cannot compare Wright's version to it. It does, however, compare unfavorably with Robert Z. Leonard's 1940 "Pride and Prejudice." The problem is increasing unfamiliarity, even among British actors, with classic English prose. Throughout, Miss Knightley gives every unpleasant indication that she is struggling to enunciate properly. Given that she has eye-catching lips to begin with, the exaggerations of her mouth as she speaks, especially in the scene with D'Arcy in the rain, were quite alarming and kept distracting me with the image of an animated chimp mimicking a person talking. Knightley and occasionally Macfayden seem to be talking solely with the mouth and not first with heart and head. Compare this scene, which I believe is wholly invented as to setting, with the delightful and comfortable and elegant back and forth between Olivier and Garson in the parallel scene from 1940. The character in this movie who delivers her lines with fluency and confidence is Judi Dench, an actress of an older, pre"Four Weddings and a Funeral" generation of British actressesa watershed work in British cinema, in my opinion. Even so, her performance is far too menacing. I much prefer Edna May Oliver's Lady Catherine (and she was an American!).
Which brings me to a related irritation. The satirical element, always the heart and soul of Austen's best work, is very nearly absent here (sarcasm and bitterness are not satire). This movie is an onerously serious love story; and that is not at all how I remember the novel. In the 1940 version, Mary Boland as Mrs. Bennett, Frieda Insescourt as Caroline Bingley, Ann Rutherford (a Canadian) as Lydia, Bruce Lester as Charles Bingley, and especially Melville Cooper as Mr. Collins each rendered his character more felicitously than their counterparts hereand in half the time too.