Aldous Huxley wrote the 1940 version of Pride and Prejudice, starring Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier? No really. I should focus on the Pride and Prejudice or Jane Austen, but I'm sincerely amazed at this fun imdb fact that The Brave New World author wrote the snappy condensed version with scenes such as...
Maybe it's just those pesky nightmares I had in 12th grade where images from Brave New World plagued me, which usually included me in a controlled society that I tried to escape but always ended up right at the beginning of my dream. But I really can't let go of this fact: one of the author's of the scariest books wrote one of my favorite film versions of one of my favorite books. Granted, the Garson and Olivier glosses over important characters and moments, gives everyone a happy ending, and ties everything really tightly with a shiny red bow; but I still love it because of some of the lines, which are so quintessentially old movie.
One of my favorite scenes include this archery sequence, not from the book at all, pure invention on Huxley's part, but with one of my favorite lines.
Oh, if you want to be really refined, you have to be dead. There's no one as dignified as a mummy - ElizabethOkay, so I started this post to talk about how amazing Austen is, and how singularly Pride and Prejudice really captures some of her best writing. Instead, I end up talking about a film version, specifically a scene that never takes place in her novel. Great job George. Just great.
It just goes to show the continual love this novel continues to receive, and how these several versions just shows how adaptable Pride and Prejudice is with the changing times. There's Darcy's wet shirt scene from Andrew Davies' television serial, showing us the need for sexuality in period pieces; Darcy's walk through the mist from Joe Wright's adaptation that just screams a throwback to romantics; and Darcy's zombie killing in the Quirk Classics retake, which can either be read as repercussions from that awful Twilight franchise* or repercussions from that general fear that the world might be ending, either through zombies or aliens.
On a less frightening note: happy anniversary to those other P&P fans out there. Here's a more informative video.
*once at a Barnes and Noble, I saw Pride and Prejudice on the shelf near Twilight, and I made Judy stand watch as I took all of the Pride and Prejudice copies and put them into literature away from Stephanie Meyer. They were back the next day.