As I come to the end of this year of movies I am taking the opportunity to look back at five films that I distinctly remember watching as a kid.
I love going to the movies, but my love of movies started in my living room. Watching the event movies on network TV or the classics on Million Dollar Movie, I really enjoyed sitting with my family and watching a film and these are some of my fondest memories.
I mention this because the film I chose today was Jane Eyre. I have very distinct memories about this film and the odd way my father liked to watch movies. I would be in the living room with my mom and sister, and maybe my older brothers and sister, and we would be watching a movie on television. My dad would be in some other part of the house doing something and occasionally he would wander into the living room, and invariably he would make a comment, or ask what was happening. He would stay for a few minutes and watch, and then wander off again, or my mother would "shhshh" him, and he would leave the room, only to return a little while later and once more ask what was happening.
I will always remember watching Jane Eyre on TV and my dad wandering in and pointing out the little girl with the cough was Elizabeth Taylor. He would leave, and then come back in a bit and ask "is she dead yet?". My mother shhshhd him out of the room, only for him to return later and ask "does she know who's in the attic?". It was a very odd way of watching movies and I often thought my dad didn't like going to the movies because you couldn't wander in and out and kibitz with people.
When I was young I thought Jane Eyre was as scary as any horror movie. Especially the scenes of Jane as a young girl at the Lowood School for Girls. The film had a dark, forbidding mood and I didn't realize it was a romance at all.
As an adult I appreciate the amazing cinematography, art direction and set design that perfectly captured the mood of the Gothic novel it is based on. The 1944 film starred Joan Fontaine, straight from her Oscar win for Hitchcock's Suspicion and Orson Welles. Much of the films mood and atmosphere are attributed to Orson Welles, but he refused a producer's credit on the film.
The movie is based on the classic novel by Charlotte Bronte and directed by Robert Stevenson who would later become synonymous with the best of Walt Disney's live action films including Mary Poppins.
I have not seen Jane Eyre in at least 39 years and I was astounded at how vividly the look of the film had stayed in my memory. I distinctly remember the scenes in the orphanage and the loathsome Mr. Brocklehurst (Henry Daniell).
Jane Eyre has all the mood and atmosphere of the best adaptations of other great literary works, such as David Lean's Oliver Twist or Great Expectations.
The film received an extensive restoration by 20th Century Fox and is definitely worth revisiting.
At The Movie House rating ***1/2 stars
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