Death By Adaptation: Jane Eyre (1943)
20th Century FoxThe term “classic” is often misused and overused, especially for modern pieces of art: as much as the general public might adore the latest Marvel extravaganza or cutesy Sundance drama, there is no certainty that they are going to stand the test of time and be talked about ten, twenty, or fifty years after their initial release. A true classic is both timeless and timely, able to move different demographics regardless of age and history. Jane Eyre is one such classic. Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel took the world by storm, as the tale of an orphaned girl becoming a governess was one of the first to employ first-person narration to delve into the psychology of its protagonist, spending more time on her thoughts and decision-making rather than on simple actions and reactions.
Jane Eyre was such an influential book that, as well as affecting future writers like James Joyce, it would inevitably be translated into other art forms: from operas to television series. While there are almost a dozen adaptations from the silent era of cinema, the first most popular version is from 1943, directed by Robert Stevenson, starring Joan Fontaine as the eponymous character and Orson Welles as Edward Rochester.
The director is one of the most important to later work with Walt Disney, creating true classics like Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks – both adaptations as well. However, his version of Jane Eyre is a less epic and big film, resorting to more typical direction of the time: it is shot almost entirely in sound stages, with elaborate sets and lavish costumes that still tend to lower the scope of the narrative. The halls of Thornfield should feel intricate, complex, disorienting, but the way the sets are put together adds very little variety to the visuals. That location feels like a cheaper version of the castle from 1931’s Dracula more than the decadent household of an aristocrat.
Outside of the technical restraints that are a given for the time the film was made, Jane Eyre also suffers from being too short an adaptation: the novel is well over 500 pages long, while the film runs a little over 90 minutes. The three-handed screenplay by Stevenson, John Houseman, and Aldous Huxley is nothing more than an abridged, rushed version of the immaculately detailed story by Brontë.
The most compelling aspect of the book is how complex a character Jane Eyre really is: she is constantly looking for love and acceptance, to belong to something and someone, while also not being able to let go of her own personal freedom and strong personality to appease others. She is religious without acting like a bigot, finding comfort in God’s silent presence while also refusing to suffer the strict traditional values of characters like Mr. Brocklehurst. She is one of literature’s finest feminist characters, well rounded and fully fledged.
In the 1943 version, she becomes a more stereotypical female lead, with Fontaine’s performance bearing close resemblance to what she did three years prior in Rebecca. The actress playing the young version of Eyre, Peggy Ann Garner, is more of a petulant child than the biting kid-adult in the novel. The central relationship between Eyre and Rochester, which is the heart of Brontë’s writing, has many of the key scenes that give plenty of space to Welles to act like a snarky, brooding, and controlling man. Unfortunately, their relationship feels rushed, once again proving that the key issue in this adaptation is one of time more than anything else.
A massive casualty of the script was the entire third part of the book, where Eyre escapes Thornfield and starts living with St. John Rivers and his sisters Diana and Mary: they are completely absent from the film, with only a Doctor Rivers being used as a banal narrative device. The absence of these characters removes the entire religious angle of the novel, where Jane struggles with her faith and with what she really wants in life. The gothic atmosphere and the creepy character of the deranged Bertha Mason feel like nothing more than footnotes here, and the last 15 minutes of the picture are, regrettably, a rushed attempt at tying up all the loose ends without making a longer, more expensive film.
What Robert Stevenson made with his version of Jane Eyre is nothing more than a passable way for audiences to appreciate Brontë’s work in heavily truncated form. Both Fontaine and Welles have more than enough natural charisma to overcome the hurried pace of the picture, and the scene where Rochester professes his love to Eyre is as moving as it is in the novel, but everything else does not hold a candle to the brilliant novel from 100 years before. For a stronger, more consistent, and generally much more accurate adaptation, 2011’s Jane Eyre by Cary Joji Fukunaga succeeds where this one failed.