The script adds and subtracts, seldom adding to any advantage and often subtracting to great disadvantage. It loses the point that Catherine Morland (Schlesinger, all googly-eyed as though her eyelids were permanently stuck wide-open) is so enamoured of the Gothic romance novels of the period that she views everything about her as though it was coloured in the same way. Instead, we have crazy inserts of the Gothic stuff she sees as though it was some kind of reality, and these are never really explained. She never actually grows from being obsessed with the romances to seeing real life.
Firth isn't too bad as Henry Tilney, one of Jane Austen's regular older and wiser men whose role it is to bring a young woman into a place where she's not so self-obsessed and flighty. He's charming, though not particularly handsome. Why Catherine would fall in love with him at first sight is a bit difficult to understand (or he with her, if it comes to that). His worst moment however is when he's required to sing some Italian duet with a woman who's role in the film is never clarified. Firth isn't dubbed by someone who can sing; instead we have to endure a couple of minutes of him singing with a voice that has little vocal quality whatsoever. Its main blessing is that it's in tune.

And then there's the music: for a start there's too much of it, blowing its way into scenes where it isn't needed, and at other times so anachronistic that it breaks any mood it's trying to convey. The user reviews on IMDb.com, which seldom agree with each other, here universally decry the music, especially the use of a saxophone and some wailing woman that occurs on more than one occasion. The reviewers in this instance dislike the play almost entirely, in fact, which again must be unusual both for IMDb and for the BBC.
For some reason this particular film doesn't show up in IMDb's search engine. You can find it via Google, where the additional tag, 'Screen Two' is added; this appears to have been some series that the BBC produced around that time that were intended both for TV broadcast and theatrical release.
No comments:
Post a Comment