All She Wants is Love | JANE EYRE (1943) | Movie Reaction

[@robertjewell9727]

My favorite version of the novel for sure. Phenomenal cinematography while Joan Fontaine is perfect as Jane. In her early career she playedl vulnerable roles in such a real way within the atmosphere of the film. Then Bernard Herrmann's score is so rich with gothic nuance and power yet retains such a compassionate heart within the shadows. And then Peggy Ann Garner as the young Jane really leads off the story ideally. Great reaction.

[@kevind4850]

Yes, Joan Fontaine was great in this role. She always delivered more-grounded performances than her slightly more famous sister Olivia de Havilland, at least in my opinion (as well as taking on roles Olivia would never touch).

[@robertjewell9727]

@@kevind4850 honestly I have no wager in their feud. Both were exceedingly excellent and perfectly cast in the roles they played.

[@TTM9691]

I absolutely LOVE that you included this movie in your Orson Welles retrospective! Orson got hired to act in many, many movies, and most have nothing to do with his directing career. But somehow this is a sort of honorary one, like The Third Man. People just assumed he directed them, even though he didn't. So excellent choice to include this! Anyways, I'm watching now! Thanks Henry!

[@rg3388]

I enjoy comparing the various versions of this story, and often cite it as an example of a romance formula that succeeded in the 19th century after having failed in the 12th. This story is the ancestor of REBECCA and, by extension, PHANTOM THREAD. I used to think that Joan Fontaine was too pretty for this role, but I changed my mind. Whatever her actual appearance, Jane’s self-esteem would have been beaten out of her at Lowood. Henry Daniell portrays Brocklehurst from Jane’s POV, such that he would be considered scary even by Count Dracula. The uncredited Elizabeth Taylor is a welcome addition to the cast. Jane’s arrival at Thornfield is echoed in THE QUEEN'S GAMBIT when Beth arrives at her new home after being adopted.

[@HuntingViolets]

Interesting that Elizabeth Taylor and Margaret O'Brien play sisters in _Little Women._

[@rg3388]

@@HuntingViolets Yes indeed!

[@BigGator5]

"Are you always drawn to the loveless and unfriended?" "When it's deserved." Fun Fact: Theatrical movie debut of Adele Jergens (Uncredited). Voice Play Fact: In addition to playing Mr. Rochester in this film, Orson Welles also played him in two different radio adaptations of the novel. The Fall Guy Fact: According to his daughter Beatrice Welles, Orson Welles did not ride horses. That is why it is fairly obvious that any scene with a moving horse is a long shot, with a double riding in place of Welles. Lost In Adaptation Fact: The film begins with a copy of the novel being opened in close-up and Joan Fontaine's voice reading the opening paragraph. However, although what she reads is what can be seen on the page, these words bear no resemblance to the actual opening paragraph of the book written by Charlotte Brontë. The Brontë Society Fact: Writer and director Robert Stevenson was a member of the Brontë Society. The Brontë Society is a group devoted to collecting and preserving relics, letters, and documents relating to the Brontë Family for posterity. By 1895 it was large enough to be displayed in a museum above the Yorkshire Penny Bank in Haworth. It got its own building in 1923 and has been there ever since. The society has about 2,000 members today.

[@jtt6650]

Who the F is Adele Jergens?? Elizabeth Taylor is uncredited in this movie and everyone knows her

[@henryellow]

Thanks for sharing the fun facts as always! 😊👍🏻

[@SloanePaoPow]

Rochester not putting Bertha in an institution was a mercy on his part. At the time, mental institutions were horribly inhumane places of abuse and neglect.

[@TTM9691]

Fantastic commentary! I got goosebumps watching you get goosebumps! Excellent edit, excellent analysis, beautiful reaction to a beautiful story. Thanks, Henry!!!!

[@henryellow]

I'm glad you enjoyed it 😊

[@SloanePaoPow]

Rebecca was heavily inspired by Jane Eyre, while Jane Eyre was heavily inspired by Beauty and the Beast. Except the beast isn't so much Rochester but more his secret.

[@francoisevassy6614]

This movie is truly a caricature of the novel. The printed paragraphs are not genuine: you ought to read the book which is a gem. Greetings from France 🇫🇷

[@CarolMcCluskey]

Almost all the Hollywood versions o "Great Literature" at that time were loaded up with with so much "corn" you would hardly recognize the story without the title. But they did entice people to read the books.

[@francoisevassy6614]

@@CarolMcCluskey Hope they did !

[@DelGuy03]

@@CarolMcCluskey I hope they did too; that's what's usually said. But I wonder, did people just think seeing the movies counted as knowing the books? I keep finding that there are many people who "love" Wuthering Heights based on the 1939 movie, and then are stunned to discover that there's a whole second half of the story dealing with the younger generation, about which they had no knowledge.

[@Nancy-nb1ze]

Hi Henry...You just popped up in my feed. After watching you react to and review Rosemary's Baby I have subscribed. You are so thoughtful and smart and I'm now watching many of your other posts. Keep up the good work !!

[@henryellow]

Thank you! I hope you enjoy my videos! 😊

[@melenatorr]

At 16:48: In the novel, Jane explains to us that she has (as I recall) three dresses: two black and one gray, which is for special occasions. In real life, the sisters all learned how to make over their dresses, and in one of her few diary papers that has survived, Anne muses about how well she will or won't do at turning one of her dresses.

[@CarolMcCluskey]

P.S. Carol here again. Please read post below first. To avoid misunderstandings, I just want to say that I consider myself a Christian. I was raised as a Prostestant, but not in a Calvinist denomination. I was taught that if we were kind to our fellow human beings and to animals, took good care of the Lord's creation, if we were truthful and honest in our dealings with others and helped others in whatever way we could, we didn't have to worry about the afterlife - it would be okay. To try to coerce "good" (unquestioning) behavior out of little children for their lifetimes, is cruel and self-serving. I consider this "Fear of God" teaching the least Christian thing in the world. I respect all religions if practiced sincerely, and not just as a means of feeling superior to others. I even respect atheists, if their belief is sincere and arriived at with thought, and not from anger or disappointment. We are all God's children, even if some of us aren't very nice. (Someone once said that God created families to teach us how to get along with people we don't really like. )

[@henryellow]

Thank you for sharing your thoughts 😊

[@HuntingViolets]

Yeah, this is a good movie.

[@CarolMcCluskey]

Jane left Rochester when she found they couldn't marry because in those days a man and woman couldn't live together as husband and wife if they were not married. Society woud have ostracized them as "misertable sinners." The first Mrs. Rochesater was kept in the attic, like most "lunatics" because there were no mental hospitals, just prisons of unbelieveable squalor and cruelty. The most famous of these was "Bedlam", heance the term for a place of insanity. Lowood Schoold was typical of orphanage schools run by the religious groups of those times, teaching the same "hellfire and damnation" warnings to little children - a particularly cruel form of sadism. Society did nothing for the poor and unfortunate in that culture beacuse of their Calvinistic belief in "Predestination". "Christian" society believed that everyone was born either "saved" or "damned" and it didn't matter what you did in life. If you were poor, disabled, suffered a misfortune, it meant that God had damned you before birth, and you didn't deserve any help. If you were wealthy and healthy, you had been saved. You could do whatever you wanted and would still go to heaven. (Self-serving a little?) Life was cruel in those days. BTW, Jane's friend at Lowood, Helen, was played by very young Elizabeth Taylor. I don't know why she didn't get credit in the film, but she's listed in the IMBD entry for this film.

[@PolferiferusII]

I thought I recognized Elizabeth Taylor! Thank you for confirming it!

[@henryellow]

Rochester really was trapped in a complicated situation. It's no wonder he became harsh and bitter, hiding his heart. It sounds like life was indeed crueler in those days.

[@melenatorr]

Oh! I forgot! Mrs. Reed is none other than the great Agnes Moorhead, whom you have recently seen in "The Magnificent Ambersons" (which I haven't seen you react to yet) and as Charles Kane's mom in "Citizen Kane". She's best known as the literal witch of a mothr-in-law in the tv series "Bewitched", and she could do just about anything! Hope you can catch her someday in "Our Vines Have Tender Grapes".

[@melenatorr]

An absolutely beautiful summation, Henry!

[@BigGator5]

Henry, will you please discourage people making multiple comments like this. It drowns out other commentators and is essentially spam. Thank you, Henry. Go in Peace and Walk with God. 😎 👍

[@melenatorr]

@@BigGator5 You must know, Gator, that has never been my intention. Certainly not to spam. I'm sorry if I offended, and I will be more careful in how and when I share what I like to share.

[@henryellow]

I know that @melenatorr does not have that intention. It's alright 👍🏻😊. I always check comments through my notifications. Unless my notifications have a problem, I don't think I'll miss any comments. I HAVE seen spam comments made by bots though, and I always remove them when I see it.

[@DelGuy03]

There was at the time of the story a well-publicized move toward more humane asylums, with the inmates treated as ill rather than degenerate, and allowed what freedom they could handle. Mrs. Rochester would surely have been better off in one of those than locked in a tower room with gruel and an alcoholic local woman to watch her. But if Rochester had chosen such a place, he would run the risk of having it widely known that he was married (especially as we're told she had lucid spells), which would prevent him from a bigamous second marriage. In fact, the more one thinks about his behavior, the less creditable it seems. He's all ready to marry the wealthy and beautiful Blanche, until his brother-in-law Mr. Mason shows up, presumably threatening to expose his situation if the marriage takes place. So Rochester calls it off and instead (for lack of anyone better, it seems) plans to "marry" Jane quietly, hoping that word won't reach Mason. But no such luck. He's not really a very nice person. But this book is the ancestor of all the "poor young woman goes to work in a remote country estate and falls in love with the sinister but intriguing man in charge" stories that became so popular. Its pattern has been copied often by other authors.

[@henryellow]

Mr. Rochester was looking for someone to marry, but I don't think he intended to marry Blanche. He exposed her by calling her "impoverished". He knew Blanche was only after his money. She is not the type of woman he wants. I don't blame him for trying to hide the marriage from Mr. Mason though. Thanks for sharing 😊

[@DelGuy03]

@@henryellow That's a point on which those who read the book have honestly differed. There's a famous essay called "Can Jane Eyre Be Happy?" (published in a book of the same name) which sets out the facts we're told, and draws some very negative conclusions. I don't agree with that writer 100%, but there are a number of things to be said against Mr. Rochester. The movie softens some of those, as well as making some interesting plot changes (e.g., when Jane runs away, she eventually takes shelter with a minister and his sisters, and has adventures there including a teaching job; that whole stretch of the book is a problem for dramatization as it introduces a whole new set of characters late in the story).

[@henryellow]

I see. It's something the book elaborates on and the movie doesn't. If I get to read the book in the future, perhaps I'll understand more 😉👍🏻

[@melenatorr]

I'm looking forward to this one! If you ever get the chance, read the novel, by Charlotte Bronte. It, as well as the novels of Charlotte's sisters, Emily and Anne (Anne is "my" Bronte), were all revolutionary for their time, considered outrageous, and "crude". There was a time when I could almost quote the entire novel to you, whether you liked it or not. One of the interesting little things that Bronte does happens to be with her names: Jane is Eyre ("air"), Her aunt is Aunt Reed. Mr. Rochester, as well as recalling the name of a notoriously scandalous man from actual history, has a name that invokes hard, substantial, well, rock. In the novel, a character gets far more time, and a different role, is St. John Rivers. So, Charlotte is being rather evocative with her surnames. Young Jane is played by the lovely Peggy Ann Garner, who was a gifted child actor. If you get a chance to see her in "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn", she will make you cry. Helen Burns, played by a very young Elizabeth Taylor, is a character inspired by Charlotte's two eldest sisters, specifically Maria, who attended a very similar school this one, along with Charlotte and Emily. Both older girls contracted TB and died. Mr. Bronte, who had hoped that this school would provide education for his children at an affordable rate, speedily withdrew Charlotte and Emily, and neither of them received outside education until Charlotte attended Roe Head, and made two lifelong friends, Ellen Nussey and Mary Taylor (I'll stop now; I can blather about the Brontes till you don't want to hear from me anymore about anything!)

[@AceMoonshot]

I always felt sorry for the Bronte family. And for everyone deprived of their future works because they all died so young.

[@melenatorr]

@@AceMoonshot So totally agreed!!! But at least they did leave us some great work to enrich us, even poor Branwell left us some fascinating poetry. And they all left us some artwork too.

[@HuntingViolets]

Anne is my Bronte too. I agree he should check out _A Tree Grows in Brooklyn._ The book is also good.

[@henryellow]

That's an interesting observation. Air, Reed, Rock, River. Oh no, a Lowood institution in real life that killed Charlotte's sisters?! 😢 So glad Charlotte and Emily escaped on time. Yup, I've got "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" on my list 👍 Thanks for sharing 😊

[@jesusfernandezgarcia9449]

This is the movie. The rest are attempts.

[@HuntingViolets]

An asylum would be a pretty horrible place, like Bedlam where they had paid tours and people could throw things at the patients. And you couldn't divorce someone who was mentally incompetent. Why wouldn't Rochester give Jane a reference?

[@henryellow]

"Bethlem Royal Hospital"? That's crazy and inhumane. First time I've heard of that. That's not treatment, that's torture. I think Jane didn't want to ask for a reference from Rochester, considering what happened.