FILM REVIEW - 'JANE EYRE'

Now vs. Then--This Time a Strong-Minded Jane...and Sex

By: Clare Elfman

March 15, 2011

(Focus Features) I saw Jane Eyre for the first time in 1943--a true Victorian “romance” that became, for me, the classic film version of the Bronte novel: Orson Welles as the mysterious, tormented Mr. Rochester, and Joan Fontaine as the poor, plain, put-upon girl who meets the handsome master of Thornfield--she only a shy and lowly governess…yet, through challenging circumstances in which she shows her courage and her constant heart, she ends in Mr. Rochester’s arms.

That Jane Eyre was pure gothic romance. From the opening scene: Jane walking a deserted path in dense fog when suddenly the distant sound of ghostly hooves, and then, rearing up out of the thick whiteness, a great horse and the rider is thrown! He’s hurt his leg. He remounts and angrily rides off.  Oh tremulous heart. She returns fearfully to Thornfield, to the ominous shadowy fireplace-lit room to present her meek self to the employer she has never met before--the brooding man who wants to meet this timid creature who frightened his horse, and she, eyes downcast, submits to his probing gaze. He glowers at her, his low voice growling like some feral thing.

How I loved that film.  I identified with it. I was poor--well, relatively poor--no family estate and relatively plain, and I certainly felt put-upon. How I wished that a Mr. Rochester would find me and recognize, through the ordinariness of my façade, my pure and courageous heart.  

Yet I have to say that I have shifted my affection to the new Jane and the very new Mr. Rochester. In the first one, I was teary anxious when Jane learns, on her wedding day, of the mad wife in the tower, and runs!  In the new one, with Michael Fassbender’s Rochester (and don’t say that Mia Wasikowska’s Jane hasn’t been warned by the prophetic housekeeper, Judi Dench), if I had found out, on my wedding day, that my fiancé had a mad wife hidden in the tower,  I would have cried, "Who cares?!" and taken him on the spot, loopy wife or not. Which is to say that the new Cary Fukunaga film made it with me.

There is a strong difference between that first film and today’s version. Mia does not ever cast her eyes down and submit. And in the entire film, there is a feeling of “reality,” not only in the filming of landscape, great shots of local vista, beautiful stone bridges, running water, a sense of “there.” But this version gives a reasonable explanation for the wife in the tower.  Foolish Rochester was so young and so innocent when he met her in Jamaica, and she was a gorgeous, wild creature. When she turned out to be a homicidal maniac and he could not divorce her, to his credit, he couldn’t bring himself to put her in a madhouse. In those days, they might have caged her or chained her to a wall. Locking her in the tower was an act of human kindness. And why, in the first version,  was Jane walking down that deserted fog-shrouded road in the first place?  In this one, the housekeeper had suggested that she get out of the house and take a walk and, by the way, post my letter.  Where the letterbox should have been, who knows (or cares)? But this guy who fell off the horse wasn’t the brooding, self-centered “thespian”-voiced character but a damned good-looking, highly romantic figure. And therein is a major difference.  Welles was merely brooding, mysterious, and rich. This guy was sexual.

And the implication of sex was introduced in a decidedly modern way. Middle of the night, there is a screaming incident.  Mad wife has assaulted her visiting brother. All houseguests come to see what’s going on. Jane, in her plain but concealing nightdress, runs to her master’s room. He is also in a long nightshirt, but he wants her to go to the wounded man upstairs.  (This plot-point is not a spoiler. If you don’t know the classic tale of Jane Eyre, shame on you.) Without asking her to turn around, he grabs his trousers and proceeds to put them on! Uh oh! In the same room with a man, and a man about to expose his naked… Well, she does respectfully turn away. But it’s out there on the table.  Not in 1943. You daren’t even consider a naked Orson Welles. Gad, who would have wanted to?

This time, I was greatly impressed with the sense of what it must have been like to live before electricity. Dark rooms barely lit by candlelight.    

And the storyline is done out of sequence. Flashbacks tell of her cruel childhood under the whip of a Dickensian schoolteacher who will beat the arrogance out of her. But this version keeps the cruel childhood scenes to a minimum--just enough for you to see Jane challenging authority with her proud, direct gaze. She is a woman who states that yes, she may be poor, and yes she may be of lowly station, but she considers herself fully equal to this great man. 'You can subdue her body but not her spirit' kind of thing.

Also, when you meet Jane, it’s out of sequence. She’s running from something, stumbling across wet, muddy ground, collapsing with fatigue or despair, escaping from what we will find out when the whole story reconnects.

Then also, the housekeeper, Mrs. Fairfax, becomes an important part of the action.  Judi Dench can never be a minor character. She greets Jane with hospitality, but always she has the sense of what is propriety. And her expressive eyes show us as much as her voice tells us. She’s major to the film.

And very elemental to this version is Jane’s sense of right and wrong. The aunt, her wretch of a cousin, the schoolmaster, the teacher: despite their torment, her sense of what is right and appropriate never wavers. This Jane knows exactly who she is and what rightly needs to be done.

And when her benefactor--the minister who will marry her and take her abroad--proposes marriage, her definitive "no" comes from the heart. Not only a sense of a loveless marriage but, as she says earlier, she’s known no men in a social way, but Rochester had already kissed her. It is a sexual kiss, and once she’s had one of those, she’s not settling with second best.

As far as the gothic elements, they were far greater in the Orson Welles version. The screaming in the attic. The mad wife who escapes to set fires. Watching the “trailer,” you’d think that this element was the film. Not so. The film is three people: a rather plain and decidedly poor girl who has to take a nothing job to survive yet senses her own worth; a ruggedly handsome but rather weak guy who gets tricked into an impossible marriage and then meets a compatible soul and wants a little happiness. She’s stronger than he is, no question about that. And a housekeeper, not as central to the story as the terrible Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca (the beautiful Joan Fontaine as another plain poor girl and handsome rich man with a secret), but a strong figure.

In the end, as you never found in 1943 Victorian romance, a decidedly sexual kiss. She’s going to marry and bed this poor creature with his burned-out house and unseeing eyes…she’s going to be the strong wife. I really like this Jane.

And as much as I’m attracted to this Rochester, I find him the weaker of the two. He’s been foolish, but I hope, for their sake, he has enough money to rebuild the house or to take a really good flat in London. But that’s for the sequel.

This one I will see a second time.