Sense and Sensibility (1971) Movie Review

Read my reviews of the 1981, 1995, and 2008 Sense and Sensibilitys here, here, and here respectively.

As I may have mentioned before, I very much enjoy comparing different movie versions of a story I like. Sense and Sensibility is no exception; I’ve seen four versions of it, and I have Opinions about all of them. Therefore, I’ve decided to review each of them, and discuss what I liked and didn’t like about each. I shall start with the oldest and possibly the most obscure of the four, the 1971 BBC version.

Truth be told, I only finished watching this version last Friday. I had watched about the first half of it some time ago with my mom, but we…didn’t enjoy it that much. So we never bothered finishing it. I watched it all through last week, however, since I wanted to do things right and give it a fair chance before I reviewed it.

For starters, I can tell you that you will enjoy this much more if you don’t think of it as a movie. Think of it more as a filmed version of a stage play. I believe the ’70s and ’80s BBC mini-serieses (that can’t be right, but what is the correct plural of mini-series?) are rather well-known for being dry and staged-looking and not filmed very professionally, and I can’t say this was any exception. I enjoyed it significantly more the second time watching it, though, since I already knew just what I was in for.

So, let’s start with Elinor.

Elinor was fairly good; her performance grew on me. (And although it’s not really related to her performance, it is cool that she was played by a much younger Mrs. Gardiner.) I did think, though, that she wasn’t quite emotional enough. I know Elinor is supposed to hide her emotions most of the time, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have them. It’s stated in the book, for instance, that Elinor bursts into tears when she hears of Edward’s being free from his engagement…which Joanna David’s Elinor did not. Nor did she even look close to doing so. Even in the parts where she did show emotion (i.e. crying on a baffled-looking Colonel Brandon’s shoulder after Marianne began recovering), it didn’t feel that real to me.

As for Ciaran Madden as Marianne…erm. Well. I didn’t like her. She was so very over-the-top, and so very rude to people, that I found it hard to believe that anyone would fall for her, let alone a sensible bloke like Colonel Brandon. Marianne is supposed to be over-the-top and rude to a degree, of course, but this Marianne was just too much. I couldn’t like her at all. She felt like a caricature, not a real person. (Though I think her acting may have improved towards the end of the series…unless I was just more used to it then. I don’t know.)

Mrs. Dashwood was pretty good. She was a good bit younger than sometimes portrayed, which I appreciated (she is supposed to be only forty, after all), and she is portrayed as having less sense than Elinor, which is book-accurate. I don’t think she quite comes across as an older version of Marianne, either (which is pretty much what she’s supposed to be), but still. She was good.

And I cannot tell you how Margaret was portrayed, since SHE WAS NOT PORTRAYED AT ALL. How much effort would it be to hire one child actor and give her a line every once in a while to prove she was alive? Really.

Edward was a little – meh – as well. It didn’t feel like he totally got into the part to me. And while I get that the random pauses in between words was supposed to show his awkwardness and lack of skill in speaking, it really just came across as forced and unnatural.

Also, can I rant a bit about how all the movie versions portray Edward and Elinor’s first meeting? It’s nearly always portrayed like they’re both interested from the very beginning. Not only is this not accurate – it’s very clearly stated, in fact, that Edward’s manners, personality, looks, etc. weren’t that appealing on first glance, and you needed time to come to really like him – but in this version it doesn’t even make sense. Edward comes into the room, says a word or two, trips over stuff, sits down, then does his best impression of someone who isn’t there. That’s all well and good and book-accurate-ish, but it doesn’t make much sense for that to make Elinor immediately fall for him.

Colonel Brandon…also, all right. I have no huge complaints, but, again, it felt like he was acting a part the whole time.

 Willoughby…okay. First of all, he did not come across at all as the handsome, dashing, intelligent Willoughby of the book. He seemed more like Robert Martin than Willoughby to me. His whole relationship with Marianne was just wrong – in the book, they both have similar interests, similar taste in poetry (or at least, Willoughby is smart enough to pretend they do), similar high spirits, etc., and they sort of both egged each other in their impropriety. In this version, neither of them seemed very high-spirited or improprietous (is that a word? Well, it is now) when together…they seemed more toned-down, if anything. (Although he did make his interest in Marianne obvious because he kept quietly saying creepy things like “Oh, don’t worry, I’ll be back…a lot…never fear.”)

We also just plain did not see enough of Marianne and Willoughby together. I believe we see him visit the Dashwoods’ house a total of twice after carrying Marianne there. Also. ALSO. Poetry is supposed to be one of the big things they bond over, right? Well, the only mention we actually hear of poetry between them is Willoughby confessing he’s never read Cowper and Marianne saying what are you talking about, every educated person reads Cowper, you need to be educated, you ignoramus you. Totally not at ALL the right dynamic. (It also makes Marianne seem shallower – if they don’t even have similar interests and tastes, are we to suppose she just fell for his looks?)

The Steeles were not horrible, but not my favorites. Lucy was too obviously obnoxious, I thought. It should at least be conceivable that a young and naïve Edward would fall for her, which it wasn’t really here. I’m not sure that they portrayed Lucy’s whole flattery shtick that well, either. Take, for instance, the dinner where we meet Mrs. Ferrars – in this version, Mrs. Ferrars sees Lucy across the room and rather randomly decides to favor her with her attention. This doesn’t make very much sense. Mrs. Ferrars isn’t supposed to like Lucy just because Why Not. She’s supposed to like her because Lucy flatters the living daylights out of her, as she does everyone else. Flattering the living daylights out of people is Lucy’s tried-and-true method for success.

I’ll be less verbose for the rest of the characters – John and Fanny Dashwood were actually pretty good. I didn’t quite like Sir John and Lady Middleton, but they weren’t horrid. I didn’t like Mrs. Palmer that much, and we didn’t get to see any of the nuance of Mr. Palmer’s character…though I know, there’s only so much you can fit in with time constraints and whatnot, and the nuances of Mr. Palmer’s character are not the most important things to cover. We didn’t see much of Robert, but what we did see was fine.

Patricia Routledge as Mrs. Jennings stole the show rather, in my opinion. She was a bit young to realistically be Lady Middleton and Mrs. Palmer’s mother, but that wasn’t a big deal, and I think she probably did the best acting job of anyone in this version. I also liked the way they characterized Mrs. Jennings; they definitely made her goofy and annoying, but made sure to show that she really does have a good heart underneath it all. (Which she does. So it’s good they showed it.)

This bit where Elinor thanks her for helping so much with Marianne actually made me tear up a bit – I hadn’t been expecting this rather dry (pun not intended) mini-series to make me cry. (I began tearing up at one point in Willoughby’s confession scene, too – though NOT the end of it, which was exceedingly flawed and which I’ll go into shortly.)

Right-ho. That’s enough about the characters. Now on to the scripting and plot.

You would think that an adaptation like this, where they’re not spending much time on special effects and cinematography and such, would at least stick really close to the original plot. Although it is close in many ways, there also are definitely things they change. Now, I have nothing against changing some things in an adaptation – I think an adaptation that tried to keep every single word from the book would not end up making a very good movie – but I do think that when you change something, there should be a good reason for it. And a lot of the changes here did not make sense to me. I already mentioned how they messed with Marianne and Willoughby’s relationship, but there was plenty more.

For instance, they made random changes to Colonel Brandon’s backstory – they left out the fact that he had been in love with Eliza’s mother, and they also made Eliza’s own story rather…darker. Why? What purpose did these changes serve, BBC?

Also, this part. This part where Elinor tells Edward about Colonel Brandon’s giving him the vicarage. This did NOT meet with my approval. They have Edward go after Elinor trying to tell her how he’s always loved her, she must have known, blah blah blah, and Elinor has to pretty much say, “Edward, you bozo, hush up. Bye.” It ruins the whole point of Edward’s being so honorable and having nothing to reproach himself with to have him do that. Even if all he was planning on saying was, “I’m still planning on sticking to my engagement, but I just want you to know how much I love you,” that wasn’t the right thing to do while on the verge of marrying someone else.

 Also, the Willoughby confession scene. For one thing, they made Willoughby come out as too sympathetic. They made it seem like he completely realized how bad all his actions were and was really sorry for them, which he wasn’t, exactly. He was certainly sorry that the consequences of his actions weren’t to his liking, and I think he probably did feel some shame, but I don’t know that he really felt true remorse about everything he’d done. Worst of all, right before he leaves he says that he still loves Marianne, and asks Elinor to tell her so…and ELINOR AGREES. Elinor would never do that. It was practically encouraging him in his love for Marianne – or at the very least, not giving him the slightest hint that it was wrong (since he was, in point of fact, married. To someone else). Badly done, BBC!

Another thing that annoyed me – though it was a little thing – was an interchange after they find out Lucy has married Robert; Marianne makes a comment to the effect of how well-suited they are for each other (happy couple – how well they suit each other!), and Mrs. Dashwood says something like, “That’s the unkindest thing you’ve said in weeks. You must be feeling better.” I know, I know it’s supposed to be funny. BUT THIS IS SO WRONG. Marianne has a character arc. Her illness is supposed to be this huge learning experience for her in which she realizes the error of her thoughtless, selfish ways. We get almost no sense of that in this version. We get that she gets over Willoughby (and apparently falls for Colonel Brandon verrry fast), but we really don’t see much change in her beside that.

Oh, and another thing – they didn’t really tie up all the loose ends. They had the incident where Marianne notices Edward’s ring and asks if the hair is Fanny’s and Edward fibs about it, but I don’t recall them ever revealing whose hair it actually is. They have the bit where Mrs. Jennings thinks Colonel Brandon wants to marry Elinor, but we never see her become disillusioned about it. Also (most importantly), they don’t give us any of the reasons as to why Lucy married Robert. It seems like a total deus ex machina this way (which it’s not supposed to be, since it really does make perfect sense given Robert and Lucy’s characters). Why couldn’t they have just stuck in a line or two of explanation? The line in the 2008 version, “When the inheritance was made over to Robert, Lucy made over her affections” (quoting from memory, so apologies if that’s not the exact quote) fit the bill pretty well.

So, in a nutshell: not great for pure entertainment value; if you are a die-hard Janeite, you may enjoy it. Good Mrs. Jennings. Young Mrs. Gardiner as Elinor, which is fun. Rather bad Marianne.

Check back next Tuesday for a review of the 1981 BBC mini-series!

Have you seen this version of Sense and Sensibility? What did you think of it? Which version is your favorite?