Jane Austen pretty much invented the romantic comedy, although her novels are more commonly thought of as comedies of manners. Love and romance are, however, central to her major works — and they are tied to a thoroughgoing sense of how love and marriage interact with class and financial issues.
Pride and Prejudice is her most famous novel, and the concern with a good marriage is paramount — the Bennet family could find itself penni-less and homeless if one of its five daughters doesn’t “marry up”, which is to say finds a rich husband. This is complicated by the fact that tradition demands the eldest daughter be married first, and the others have to wait in line.
The template of romantic comedy is set here, though it’s not really the plot of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, and so on. Austen, like successive generations of her chick-lit disciples, takes the woman’s perspective. So it’s a matter of girl meets boy, various obstacles intrude, girl loses boy, and so on, until the final resolution — demanded of all romantic comedies — when girl refinds boy and their love triumphs after all. It is not giving away any plot secret to say that this is the invariable trajectory of the genre.
The makers of the new Pride and Prejudice are proud to say it is the first big-screen version for 65 years, which is true if they are thinking of the 1940 version with Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier (the same year Olivier made Rebecca for Alfred Hitchcock, an altogether darker prospect). What they are delicately not mentioning is the famous 1995 BBC mini-series of Pride and Prejudice, which made a huge star of Colin Firth and is universally acknowledged as one of the finest Austen adaptations, alongside Emma Thompson and Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility. There have been several other TV versions, and a recent Bollywood take on the story (Bride and Prejudice), as well as a modern-day update, but they are not mentioned.
The idea driving this new Pride and Prejudice, it seems, is that it be young and busy — all the late-1700s pomp and etiquette are in place, but there’s a lot of bustle, too. The movie begins very noisily and busily, as if determined not to be staid in any way. The cacophonous chatter of the Bennet girls gives way to a loud ball, at which they meet their new neighbours, the very rich Mr Bingley (Simon Woods) and Mr Darcy (Matthew Macfadyen). The first, naturally, represents Mrs Bennet’s high hopes for a good marriage for her eldest girl, but it is Mr Darcy’s encounter with Elizabeth Bennet (Keira Knightley), daughter number two, that is the heart of Pride and Prejudice.
Knightley and Macfadyen certainly make attractive young leads, especially Knightley. She carries off the role with style and conviction, her Audrey Hepburn neck reminding us of the stars of another era without making her seem old-fashioned. (And she got an Oscar nomination.) In the original novel, Elizabeth is not meant to be so good-looking — her strengths are those of character. But in movie terms we can accept that she’s a stunner, and her feisty character is, paradoxically, one of the obstacles to her finding true love; her pride and preju-dice may get in the way.
For me, the one drawback of Knightley’s performance (or perhaps I should say her manner) is her cutesy little smile, produced in what seems an oddly constrained manner. It looks a bit false to me, as if she had practised it specially to make a dimple on either side. By contrast, Macfadyen has a great deal of trouble smiling at all. In fact, his mouth may be too small for a leading man.
Yes, Mr Darcy is supposed to be dour and taciturn until true love wins out, but even then he can barely eke out a grin. By my count, Macfadyen delivers a grand total of one and a half smiles in the entire movie, and I was rather left wondering what Elizabeth sees in Mr Darcy at all. Character and moral probity are all very well, but surely she needs a touch of charm from her man too?
Still, this is not a thesis on the importance of actors’ facial characteristics in the contemporary romantic comedy. Pride and Prejudice is scripted (by novelist Deborah Moggach) and directed (by Joe Wright, on his first feature) with great skill; it also has lovely cinematography. Besides the pretty landscapes, note the way the camera, when inside the Bennets’ bustling home, moves busily around from room to room, animating the small space. By contrast, when we’re at a stately home, the frame is all static symmetry.
Brenda Blethyn and Donald Sutherland both give excellent support as the Bennet parents, and Pride and Prejudice surely makes a great heterosexual date movie: the girls can get involved in Elizabeth’s romantic dilemmas and the guys can just gaze at Keira.