Rent Pride and Prejudice (1940)

Literary Comedy. - Pride and Prejudice review by Steve

This MGM version of Jane Austen's comedy of manners isn't much admired by hardline Janeites because it messes with the tone of her satirical masterpiece. And the plot, dialogue, characters. And period costumes, etc. It was actually based on a stage adaptation (by Helen Jerome). Still, this is a fabulous entertainment on its own terms.

Greer Garson is too old to play Elizabeth, though she is polished and flirts deliciously. Laurence Olivier's Darcy is too arrogant, yet it works for this Hollywood story arc. The clothes are not contemporary, but they add to the comedy and spectacle. If not every line is from the novel, Aldous Huxley's epigrams are witty anyway.

The Hollywood studio version of an English provincial town in the Georgian era is quaint, but it won the Oscar for art direction. The iniquities of the period are present in the subtext, as they are in the novel. The large ensemble of mostly British expats play caricatures, but they are well cast, with Mary Boland hilarious as Mrs. Bennet.

Director Robert Leonard imparts an unstoppable momentum without it all seeming inconsequential. It's really very funny and it gets everything right for the stirring romantic resolution. So well done MGM. With Britain struggling in the war this must have seemed like a gift to the old country. It is such a happy film.