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MovieMail's Review
Intelligence, style and a masterful sense of composition characterise this brooding adaptation from Charlotte Brontë's novel.
The history books will tell you Orson Welles received no directing credits in the four years between The Magnificent Ambersons – the 1942 masterpiece RKO so unwisely took its scissors to – and The Stranger, his only box-office success. But Welles’ prints are all over a pair of fascinating films made in the interim: the disorientating Journey Into Fear, and this richly atmospheric take on Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre.
It was during the shooting of Jane Eyre that Welles reportedly took to barging director Robert Stevenson away from the camera, helming the movie in all but name. The finished product, with its outlandish camera angles, chiaroscuro lighting and masterful sense of visual composition, would seem to bear this out.
The young Jane (Peggy Ann Garner) isn’t dealt much of a hand in life, having to contend with not one but two formidable golden age villains – Agnes Moorehead, the aunt who despises her, and Henry Daniell, playing the last word in fundamentalist bullies as the head of Jane’s school. But drawing on an inner steeliness, she wins through and, eight years on, leaves to find her own way in the world.
What the adult Jane (Joan Fontaine) finds is a position in a country manor owned by Edward Rochester (Orson Welles), a brooding, temperamental soul with a dark past. She’s instantly smitten, but what’s the banging and screaming going on behind those locked doors?
This flavourful adaptation focuses on the book's central romance, whilst retaining a dash of mystery and gothic intrigue that’s tastefully handled. Welles is moodily magnificent, while Fontaine has just the right mixture of innocence and resolve as our heroine. And was there anyone who could deliver a self-hating bon mot better than Welles? “Are you never serious?” his fiancée asks. “Never more than at this moment, except perhaps when I’m eating my dinner,” he booms back.
Other contributors to the film also form an impressive list. Aldous Huxley worked on the screenplay, Bernard Herrmann did the music, and the supporting cast includes not only Margaret O’Brien – an Oscar winner as the year’s best juvenile performer for Meet Me in St Louis – but the young Elizabeth Taylor, as Jane’s ethereal, doomed school friend.
For fans of classic melodrama put together with intelligence and style, this takes some beating.
A quivering candle is carried down a long dark corridor and we are treated to the Gothic desires and excesses of perhaps the best ever adaptation of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. Joan Fontaine plays Bronte's eponymous heroine - the orphan girl who becomes a governess in a mysterious Yorkshire household. Orson Welles plays Mr Rochester, the brooding, enigmatic master of the manor with whom Jane falls in love.
With superb performances (Welles sets the screen alight, as he had in Citizen Kane), atmospheric visuals and a wonderful score from Bernard Herrmann, Jane Eyre is one of the unforgettable classics of Hollywood's golden age.
