Lights, Camera, Austen

Newsweek, January, 2008 by Cathleen McGuigan

Haven’t seen enough Jane Austen movies lately? Good, because PBS now has all six novels on film.

Jane Austen movie mania is so pervasive you can’t be blamed for picturing your favorite Austen heroine not from the page but from the screen. But how do you like your Emma—fair as Gwyneth Paltrow or dark, like Kate Beckinsale? Do you prefer your Elizabeth Bennet as Keira Knightley or Jennifer Ehle? When it comes to dreamy Mr. Darcy, no actor can match Colin Firth, except perhaps Mr. Firth himself, who later reprised the role—sort of—when he played the aloof barrister Mark Darcy in “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” the modern-day romp based on “Pride and Prejudice.” Why viewers are drawn to films and TV movies about plucky young women in Regency England isn’t hard to understand:...

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