Pride and Prejudice (1995) Book to Screen Comparison

Not very long ago, I had a bit of a Pride and Prejudice marathon. I re-read the book, re-watched the 2005 version, then the 1995 version, then read the book out loud to some of my family. I therefore found myself thinking about the story quite a lot, as you can imagine. I already wrote a post about my thoughts as I watched the 2005 P&P, but I found myself with quite a lot more to discuss as I watched the ’95 P&P, especially with my re-read of the book fresh on my mind. So I shall now take some time to talk about my thoughts on the ’95 P&P, the book, and the differences between the two. This won’t be an organized analysis in any sense of the word, just me rambling about various things that jumped out at me.

~ Book-Lizzy was much more light and bubbly and dare I say, immature than I remembered. I had always thought of Jennifer Ehle in the ’95 as being a very book-accurate portrayal, but I actually don’t think so anymore. While she definitely has a subtle/twinkly/ironical sense of humor, Jennifer’s Lizzy is proper and restrained and dignified, and just plain feels too mature from the outset. Book-Lizzy has a spontaneity and a wildness to her; while she certainly is not on the same level as Lydia or Mrs. Bennet, her manners are not those of conventional society. Some of her zingers to Mr. Darcy are most definitely not something a polite Regency lady would say, and the book specifically states, as Mr. Darcy is becoming more interested in Lizzy, that “in spite of his asserting that her manners were not those of the fashionable world, he was caught by their easy playfulness.” I’ve been mulling over in my mind which actress I think WOULD make a good Lizzy, and I honestly don’t know. The closest I could think of was Jane Powell, but I’m not certain she’d be quite exactly right.

~ Lydia was very well-done; you got just the right sense of her combined good-nature and complete immaturity. (I always feel rather sorry for Lydia. Her behavior was more due to immaturity than any deliberate desire to act badly, and with the upbringing she had, how much can we blame her for being immature and ignorant? Maybe if Mr. Bennet had exerted himself just a little bit and tried to make up for the deficiencies of his wife, things could have been different.)

~ Jane was good, and Kitty was also fine, though if I may be allowed one nit-pick for each of them:

1) Why do moviemakers always insist on making Lizzy prettier than Jane when in the book it’s stated over and over that it’s supposed to be the opposite? (I mean, I know the reason – Hollywood being Hollywood, it would be absolutely disastrous if a secondary character were prettier than the heroine. But it irks me a bit notwithstanding.)

2) I didn’t like the quip they gave Kitty after Lydia runs away, to the effect that she doesn’t see that Lydia behaved so very badly anyway. Kitty never said that in the book; she claimed that she wouldn’t have behaved badly had she been allowed to go to Brighton, but she never implied that she thought Lydia hadn’t behaved badly.

~ Mary was much too over-done…she felt like a caricature of book-Mary. (Not to mention that Mary IS in fact supposed to be good at piano-playing (if not a strong singer), she’s just not good enough to atone for her self-importance about it.) And as for Mrs. Bennet…all I can say is wowzers. Her portrayal is a possible interpretation of book-Mrs. Bennet (though book-Mrs. Bennet strikes me as more just fretful and silly rather than so loud and over-the-top and just plain weird) but to be completely frank, she just annoyed me so much that I didn’t really care how book-accurate she was. (Does she have this effect on anyone else, or is it just my immediate family? We all just sat there cringing every time she came on screen.)

But that is enough negativity for one sitting, so let me talk about some portrayals that I had remembered not liking but was pleasantly surprised at.

~ Mr. Collins was much better than I remembered. I had thought of him as being too over-the-top, but having just re-read the book, I think it’s not at all a bad portrayal of the book-character. I certainly don’t think that this is the only possible way to play the character, but I do think it worked well. I felt the same about Miss Bingley – while she’s a little too un-subtle and directly nasty at times, on the whole I think that she’s a good portrayal. The 2005 Miss Bingley almost has too much gravitas; the character in the book is nasty and manipulative, but also petty and honestly rather silly at times, which comes across well in this version. And Bingley was quite good. I really like him in the book, and they do a really good job with him in this one – so much better than the 2005 version.

~ Wickham was better than I remembered as well. I have yet to see a Wickham who is really as charming as he is described in the book, but I think it’s at least plausible that you might trust and like this Wickham if you didn’t already know his character. (And you should see some red flags from the beginning, too – part of the whole point is that there were warning signs all along which Elizabeth didn’t even notice.)

But now I must move onto a reasonably important character, who so far has been rather inconspicuous by his absence…Fitzwilliam Darcy by name. (WHY is his name Fitzwilliam, while we’re on the topic?? What were his parents thinking?)

~ I must confess that I just plain don’t like Colin Firth’s Mr. Darcy. He did not feel like the same character as book-Darcy to me. Book-Darcy is naturally rather grave and is definitely over-prideful, but he’s also fully capable of conversing pleasantly when he wishes to, and he’s not sullen all the time – just when he’s in company with people he finds beneath him (like Mrs. Bennet, for instance). Colin Firth’s Darcy just felt like – well, a grump, to be perfectly honest. I cannot count the number of times I was frustratedly yelling “SMILE!” at the screen. There are so many of his and Elizabeth’s conversations that are supposed to be playful banter – on his part, anyway – and it wasn’t played like that at all. Let me quote a couple passages from the book so you can see what I mean:

“… My temper would perhaps be called resentful. My good opinion, once lost, is lost for ever.”
“That is a failing indeed!” cried Elizabeth. “Implacable resentment is a shade in character. But you have chosen your fault well. I really cannot laugh at it. You are safe from me.”
“There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome.”
“And your defect is a propensity to hate every body.”
“And yours,” he replied with a smile, “is wilfully to misunderstand them.”
“Do let us have a little music,” cried Miss Bingley, tired of a conversation in which she had no share.

(That last line has absolutely no bearing on the point I’m making, but I had to include it’s so good. Jane Austen’s tongue-in-cheek narration gives me so much joy.)

But you see how that one smile completely changes the tone of the conversation? It shows us that Darcy isn’t really angry at Lizzy, and that he’s taking this whole conversation in a semi-joking light. And there is not a hint of a smile on his face in this scene in the mini-series, so both the scene and his characterization come across completely differently.

…his eyes were directed with a very serious expression towards Bingley and Jane, who were dancing together. Recovering himself, however, shortly, he turned to his partner, and said,
“Sir William’s interruption has made me forget what we were talking of.”
“I do not think we were speaking at all. Sir William could not have interrupted any two people in the room who had less to say for themselves. We have tried two or three subjects already without success, and what we are to talk of next I cannot imagine.”
“What think you of books?” said he, smiling.
“Books – Oh! no. – I am sure we never read the same, or not with the same feelings.”
“I am sorry you think so; but if that be the case, there can at least be no want of subject. – We may compare our different opinions.”

Again, his tone is very much one of gently raillery, even as Lizzy is really being rather rude to him. I could go on, but you get my point – in a nutshell, while Colin Firth’s Darcy has a lot of the same lines as book-Darcy, his portrayal of those lines makes the character feel completely different to me.

~ I think it’s partly because of this problem with Darcy that I don’t like the dynamic between Lizzy and Darcy at the ending of the mini-series. In the book, I absolutely love the easy camaraderie that they have at the ending. The best way I can find to describe it is that they just feel comfortable together. Lizzy is able to be her true high-humored self, teasing him affectionately but mercilessly, and Darcy is able to be open with Lizzy and explain all he’s thinking and feeling as we have never seen him do at any other point in the novel. They just feel perfect together, and it warms the cockles of my heart.

And I sadly didn’t really feel that in the mini-series. The proposal itself feels awkward, which makes sense…but then the awkwardness never goes away. We never get to see them feeling happy and comfortable together and enjoying each other’s company. (AND HE STILL BARELY LOOKS HAPPY EVEN AS SHE’S TELLING HIM SHE LOVES HIM. WHY.) It feels like there’s a restraint between them that never fully goes away.

Lizzy’s slow change of heart didn’t come across that well either. To be fair, I think that it’s a very hard thing to get across on-screen; we spend a lot of time in the book just sitting with Lizzy and processing with her, and while this time is essential for the story, it’s all very internal. I think that the to-the-letter kind of feel that this mini-series is going for (which has both its pluses and its minuses) actually doesn’t serve the story in this particular case. Lizzy’s change of mindset can’t be gotten across just by showing us her actions, so I think you’d need to use some kind of creative filming techniques to subtly get inside her head…I can’t think exactly how you’d do that, not being a filmmaker, but I’m sure there must be a way. (I think the 2005 version was better in this respect at least, because it did really give us a sense of all the time Lizzy was spending ruminating, and let us see how deeply that ruminating was effecting her.)

And for one final complaint (which if anything annoys my brothers Noddy and Herbert more than it annoys me), I didn’t at all like how we saw what Darcy was up to when he was discovering Wickham and Lydia. The effect of that reveal is SO much greater when we’re shocked and surprised along with Lizzy.

That brings me to the end of the keyword outline I wrote down to help me remember all I wanted to say, so I guess that’s about everything. I realize that I did a lot more complaining than praising, but please don’t think that means I didn’t enjoy this – I did! In fact, watching this one right after the ’05 made me like this one better in relation to the ’05 than I’d thought. I very well might prefer it (though I constantly waffle on that). Compared to many screen adaptations of classic literature, it stays very close to the book indeed – but it’s such an iconic story that I guess I’m just inclined to be extremely critical. Most of the things I complained about aren’t really that important – but I do really wish they had done Mr. Darcy differently, and honestly Lizzy as well. (In fact, I have never seen a Darcy or a Lizzy portrayed on screen which really felt like their book-counterparts to me…which is very sad, because re-reading the book reminded me of how fantabulous their story and their relationship is. I would love to see it play out on-screen the same way that it plays out on the page.)

What are your thoughts on the 1995 Pride and Prejudice? Do you agree with any of my opinions? Any ideas on what actors would do a good job playing Darcy and Lizzy?