Jane Eyre (1996)

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Movie
German title Jane Eyre
Original title Jane Eyre
Country of production France
Great Britain
Italy
original language English
Publishing year 1996
length 112 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Franco Zeffirelli
script Hugh Whitemore
Franco Zeffirelli
production Dyson Lovell
music Claudio Capponi
Alessio Vlad
camera David Watkin
cut Richard Marden
occupation

Jane Eyre is a 1996 love story by Italian director Franco Zeffirelli based on the novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë .

action

The narrator and main character, Jane Eyre, is a destitute orphan. She lived with an aunt by marriage, Mrs. Reed, and her three children in Gateshead until she was ten. Instead of affection and love, Jane only experienced coldness and incomprehension. The film begins with Mr. Brocklehurst, the head of the Lowood Girls' Monastery, picking up Jane from the Reed family and taking her to Lowood at the request of her aunt.

Jane quickly realizes that her situation has barely improved. In Lowood, austerity, bad, nutrition and cold are the order of the day. The head of the monastery treats the girls strictly, as does the cruel teacher Miss Scatcherd, who punishes her students with the rod.

Jane is branded a liar by Mr. Brocklehurst, but finds a friend in her classmate, Helen Burns. Helen Burns is educated, intelligent, and very religious. She endures the difficult conditions in the boarding school almost stoically, while Jane has difficulty in stopping her anger. When Mr. Brocklehurst orders the removal of Helen's beautiful red locks to prevent vanity, Jane also sacrifices her head of hair in protest.

Of the teachers, only Miss Temple is kind to the students. She becomes the girls' confidante, but cannot prevent many of the girls at the boarding school from developing typhus through malnutrition and the cold . For Helen Burns, who suffers from tuberculosis , no doctor may be called by order of the school administration, she dies in Jane's arms.

At the grave of Helen Burns there is a time jump of eight years in the film plot. Jane is now an adult. After finishing her own school days, she spent two years teaching in Lowood. Now she is leaving the institute and saying goodbye to Miss Temple to take up a position as governess for a French girl in the Thornfield manor.

In Thornfield, Jane meets the elderly housekeeper, Mrs. Fairfax, and some servants. She learns that the landlord, Mr. Rochester, rarely appears on his property without prior notice. Jane spends her time teaching little Adele Varens, a ward of Mr. Rochester. Life in the spacious house is calm. Jane notices, however, that strange laughter escapes from a secluded section of the building and that a servant named Grace Pool is acting very strangely.

When Mr. Rochester unexpectedly appears at his property, he meets Jane on the way. The horse falls on the slippery path and Jane helps the rugged stranger who turns out to be her employer a little later. Jane and Mr. Rochester met more often over the next few days. He learns of her history in Lowood and looks with interest at a portfolio of unusual drawings that Jane has made. Jane learns little about himself, Mrs. Fairfax implies on several occasions that a lot of injustice has been done to him by his family, and he himself is cynical and disappointed with life. Jane learns that Adele's mother was an opera dancer and his lover. She cheated on him with other men, but left him the daughter because he was supposedly the biological father. Edward Rochester doubts this, but has taken Adele into his care out of a sense of duty.

One night Jane hears strange laughter outside her door. She steps out of the room and sees smoke coming from Mr. Rochester's bedroom. The bed curtains are on fire, only with their courageous intervention can the sleeping man be awakened in time and the fire extinguished. Rochester explains that Grace Poole caused the fire, but orders Jane not to say a word about it. The next morning, Mr. Rochester has left and Jane is surprised that Grace Pool and another servant are cleaning the master’s bedroom as if nothing had happened. Grace Pool explains that Mr. Rochester fell asleep reading and that he himself caused the fire with his candle.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Fairfax orders the whole house to be cleaned, as Mr. Rochester is bringing a number of people from the neighborhood, including servants and maids, on an extended visit. Among the guests is the beautiful Miss Blanche Ingram with her mother and sister. It is rumored among the servants that Rochester will marry Blanche Ingram. The ladies are condescending to Jane and disparagingly about governesses in her presence. Even so, Mr. Rochester insists that Jane be present at the social evenings in the drawing room.

Another guest arrives, a certain Mr. Richard Mason, who introduces himself as an old friend of Rochester. The following night Rochester asks Jane for help. Mr. Mason is injured and has a badly bleeding wound on his neck. Jane watches over him until Rochester has fetched a doctor and put the sick man in a carriage with him.

The following day, Jane has to leave Thornfield at short notice. Through a letter she learned that her aunt, Mrs. Reed, is terminally ill and wants to see her. Arriving in Gateshead, she meets St. John Rivers, the parish priest, and his sister. St. John Rivers informs her of the death of her cousin John Reed. Jane learns from her dying aunt that a wealthy uncle (a brother of Jane's father) wrote to her several years ago and asked about Jane Eyre. Since he was childless, he wanted to bring her to his property in Madeira and adopt her. Mrs. Reed had replied that she knew nothing of Jane's whereabouts.

After her aunt dies, Jane Eyre returns to Thornfield. Mr. Rochester explains to her that he wants to get married and send Adele to school. His chosen one is not Blanche Ingram, but Jane. He asks her to become his wife and finally manages to convince her that he is serious. Jane hesitates at first, but happily agrees. The next day, Mrs. Fairfax found out about the engagement. She reacts cautiously, but without giving reasons for her concerns.

The wedding is being prepared in a great hurry, but when they are both standing in front of the altar, there is a dramatic interruption. A lawyer emerges who reveals that Mr. Rochester is already married. Now it turns out that, at the instigation of his family, he married a rich Creole named Bertha Mason a few years ago. Edward barely saw her before the wedding, so he didn't know she was insane . In order not to have to put her in an institution, he hid Bertha on Thornfield, and Grace Pool acted as guardian and servant. The insane and violent Bertha was responsible for the fire in Rochester's room and the attack on Richard Mason - her brother.

After this opening, Jane quickly leaves the house and gets into a carriage. Rochester tries to stop them, but is overtaken by a servant who informs him that Thornfield is on fire. Bertha started a fire, killed Grace Pool and then threw herself to her death in the burning stairwell.

Meanwhile, Jane has fled to Gateshead to the rectory of St. John Rivers and his sister Mary. She stays with them for about a month to relax, until St. John Rivers informs her that the uncle from Madeira has died and left her all his fortune. Jane is now a wealthy woman and does not need to find new employment.

She returns to Thornfield, of which only a ruin remains. Edward Rochester lives in an outbuilding under the care of Mrs. Fairfax. He lost an eye in the fire, but recognizes Jane immediately. Jane explains to him that she will stay with him.

At the end there is a summary of the following ten years after the wedding through Jane's story. She and Edward have since had a son, and Edward has regained some of his eyesight. They are happy together and have also taken Adele, whom they love like their own daughter.

Differences to the literary original

The film plot deviates significantly from the literary original in many places, or the plot has been shortened dramatically.

In the novel, for example, Jane Lowood leaves after Miss Temple has given up her job as a teacher and married a pastor. In the film, Miss Temple remains alone in Lowood with the declaration that this is God's will.

In the novel, it is not Helen Burns, whose red locks arouse Mr. Brocklehurst's anger, but a classmate named Julia Severn, and on the orders of the director of the institute, the buns of all the students have to be cut off.

In the novel, Jane met St. John Rivers and his sisters by chance when she sought refuge in their home after fleeing Lowood. In the film, she meets him at her aunt's house, Mrs. Reed, just before she dies.

In the film, Mrs. Reed writes to the uncle from Madeira that she knows nothing about Jane Eyre's whereabouts. In the novel, she tells her uncle that Jane died in Lowood during the typhoid epidemic.

In the film, Jane travels to the rectory in Gateshead immediately after the unsuccessful wedding ceremony. In the book, she only escapes in the middle of the night a few days later. Rochester previously pleaded with him to stay with him and live with him abroad. Jane is not ready to live as his lover, to sacrifice her moral beliefs and her self-esteem. After wandering around for a long time without knowing where to turn, she finds refuge under an assumed name with St. John Rivers (whom she did not know until then) and his two sisters. She begins to work as a village school teacher and leads a modest life in a small house until she learns of her inheritance. St. John wants to go to India as a missionary and asks Jane to marry him and accompany him there. It was only then that she heard Mr. Rochester calling her on the wind and felt that she had to answer that call.

criticism

“Remake of Charlotte Brontë's novel, which is outwardly more conventional and dispassionate than its famous predecessor. However, she has the advantage of coming closer to the novel in the design of the main role, and finds space for the description of awakening female self-confidence in a socially obstructive milieu. ""

- Lexicon of international film

“A dignified film adaptation of the famous horror and love novel by Charlotte Brontë. Thanks to brilliant actors like Charlotte Gainsbourg and William Hurt not too druggable. Since the cinema needs strong emotions, Zeffirelli's decision to film the Charlotte Bronte novel was not so wrong - especially since the Italian, who is prone to kitsch excesses, relies on quiet tones this time and thus stays close to the original. "

- cinema.de

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Charlotte Brontë: Jane Eyre . Translation, notes and epilogue by Ingrid Rein. Philipp Reclam jun., Stuttgart 1990.
  2. ↑ Jane Eyre. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  3. ↑ Jane Eyre. In: cinema.de. Cinema , accessed September 4, 2016 .