Two films in a day! This evening I watched Pride and Prejudice in DVD. I did not think that the Colin Firth BBC version could have been bettered, but the recent Keira Knightley version equals it. It is much faster paced and it does suffer from the modern blight of music that is too loud for the voice track, but the design was excellent and there were many strong performances.
I preferred Barbara Leigh-Hunt's Lady Catherine to Judy Dench's and Bernard Hepton's Mr Bennett to Donald Sutherland's, but Keira Knightley and Rosamund Pike were quite stunning as the older Bennett girls. I was surprised how well Matthew MacFadyen did as D'arcy; quite as good as Colin Firth.
When I saw that Knightley had been nominated for an Oscar, I was sceptical. She was dreadful as Lara in the TV version of Dr Zhivago, and simply eye candy in Bend it like Beckham, Pirates of the Caribbean and King Arthur, but in this she shows that she can really act.
The BBC 'long' version of Pride and Predjudice has been considered the definitive version of Austen's most popular work.
ReplyDeleteI'll have to rent the DVD to see if I agree. Donald Sutherland in P&P? Doesn't sound right. He's usually great as homocidal maniacs, though he was very good in 'Six degrees of Separation' and excellent in the stunning in 'Day of the Locust'.