The
scene of this film is well and
truly set with the title at the beginning stating:
"
It happened in Old England, in the village of Merton"
No American movie would be
complete without a car chase! Since this is a period drama however, we
are unable to see revving engines, and have to settle for a coach race
instead. From then on the production really goes down hill.
The publicity at the time declared
that they had moved the period of the setting forwards 50 years to make
the "clothing more interesting". What you can infer from this is the
that Hollywood couldn't get any 1700s clothing off the peg from their
wardrobe.
It seems that the script writer
was taking the plot at a leisurely pace until about 20 minutes from the
end when he discovered that he was less than halfway through the story.
When the scriptwriter realised that he was running out of time the
story suddenly starts to telescope and compress into something that
would make Jane Austen rotate in her grave.
As if that wasn't enough, the
scriptwriter makes Lady Katharine into a nice person! I still haven't
worked out why the script writer turned Mr Collins from a vicar into a
librarian, presimably because the American audience couldn't understand
the idea of patronage.
Lawrence Olivier is truly terrible
as Mr Darcy, and Greer Garson turns Miss Elizabeth Bennet into a
self-centred opinionated prig.
It is quite comical also to see
American traditional stereotypes appearing in little old England. Look
for the epitome of an American bell hop pretending to be a paper boy at
the beginning.
Since this was filmed in 1940
things were sure only to get better. An immensely missable experience
