Jane Eyre (1944) - film review

Weary of the ill-treatment she has received at the hands of her bullying Aunt Sarah, 10-year-old Jane Eyre is grateful when she learns she is to be sent to Lowood Institution, a charity school for poor orphaned girls such as she.  Her illusions are dispelled shortly after arriving at the school, which is run with an iron hand by the callously pious Mr Brocklehurst.  Jane’s only friend Helen dies from the abuse that Brocklehurst routinely metes out to his young charges, but Jane survives and becomes a proud, strong-willed young woman.  Leaving the school, she soon finds work as a governess to the young Adele Varens at Thornfield Hall.  Jane’s employer is Edward Rochester, a cold and remote man who is strangely secretive about his past.  Over time, Jane finds herself drawn to Mr Rochester and is dismayed when she learns that he intends to marry another woman.  When Rochester reveals that it is Jane he loves, the young governess can hardly believe her good fortune.  But then she hasn’t yet learned about the dark secret that her beloved keeps locked away at the top of a tower in his ancient mansion...

The most memorable screen adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s haunting Gothic romance Jane Eyre bears the distinctive stylistic imprint of Orson Welles’s previous cinematic offerings Citizen Kane (1941 and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942).  Whilst Welles is not credited with directing this film (Robert Stevenson alone received that honour) it is more than evident that he had a hand in crafting its striking Gothic atmosphere, which perfectly evokes the mood of the classic Brontë novel.  Some stunning set design and starkly expressionistic cinematography vividly convey the bleakness and austerity of Jane Eyre’s world, adding substance to the sinister plot elements that give the story its tragic poignancy.

Whist visually the film is a tour de force, its impact is somewhat diminished by the lacklustre performances from its lead performers and an overly literary screenplay.  The latter originated from a script for a radio adaptation by Welles’s Mercury Theatre on the Air and was refined by the great English writer Aldous Huxley, but doesn’t seem to work well for a film version.  At the time, Welles was a much bigger star than Fontaine, so not only was he given top-billing in the film but the story was altered to give his character, Mr Rochester, a more pivotal role in the drama.  The difference in acting styles of the two leads is painfully jarring at times and the romantic liaison between their two characters fails to ring true.

If the latter half of the film feels dry, plodding and lacking in emotional realism, the same cannot be said for the early sequences depicting the harrowing life of the young Jane Eyre.  Peggy Ann Garner is captivating as the rejected orphan girl who struggles to survive the brutal regime of a self-righteous school proprietor (played to villainous perfection by the great character actor Henry Daniell).   The film’s most poignant scenes are those in which Garner appears with an unknown child actress named Elizabeth Taylor who, even at this early stage in her career, has an unerring knack of stealing the show and making grown men weep.

© James Travers 2010

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