Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Pride and Prejudice 1940, 19 Feb 2009
The 1940 Pride and Prejudice with Greer Garson is one of the most warming and uplifting films of the period. Garson is absolutely terrific - beyond comparison - and the main and supporting cast are quite stunning. The final scenes are fantastic and the finale is very touching in its own way. The film's pace is quite furious after the first few scenes, but the film is much more affectionately scripted than the BBC version - great though that it. The 1940 film nicely complements the 1995 version and they are never in competition.
If I could only take a few films to a desert island, this would be one of them. Buy it for anyone over thirty: and sit back and watch the warm glow of appreciation. Not to be missed.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
CLASSIC !!!, 28 Jan 2008
Plot Synopsis
Long before 19th-century novelist Jane Austen became a hot property in Hollywood, MGM produced this opulent and entertaining adaptation of one of Austen's best-known novels. The elegant and slyly satirical comedy of manners gets under way when socially conscious Mrs. Bennet (Mary Boland), with the begrudging assistance of her husband (Edmund Gwenn), begins seeking out suitable (and suitably wealthy) husbands for her five daughters: Elizabeth (Greer Garson), Jane (Maureen O'Sullivan), Lydia (Ann Rutherford), Kitty (Heather Angel), and Mary (Marsha Hunt). One of the least likely matrimonial prospects is Mr. Darcy (Laurence Olivier), a rich, handsome, but cynical and boorish young man. Naturally, Elizabeth Bennet, the strongest-willed of the Bennet girls, is immediately fascinated by him, and she sets out to land him -- but only on her own terms, and only after she has exacted a bit of genteel revenge for his calculated indifference to her. Though Austen's novel was set in 1813, the year of its publication, the film version takes place in 1835, reportedly so as to take advantage of the more attractive costume designs of that period. Not surprisingly, a few changes had to be made to mollify the Hollywood censors (eager to find offense in the most innocent of material): the most notable is the character of Mr. Collins (Melville Cooper), transformed from the book's hypocritical clergyman to the film's standard-issue opportunist.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Often copied, never beaten, 22 April 2009
This is the original version of the book, in my mind. Made in 1940 and starring the handsome Laurence Olivier as Mr Darcy, you couldn't get a better casting. Greer Garson as Elizabeth Bennett is exactly as you would imagine her in the book - feisty, opinionated, and quirkily beautiful.
The subsequent BBC series is based heavily on this film - a lot of the dialogue appears to be copied. The scenery and sets are stunning - the costumes ornate, the characters utterly believable. With it being in black and white, it also adds an air of authenticity that a colour film would not manage.
Lose yourself in this classical period drama. I've watched it so many times I know it verbatim - and yet it never fails to draw me in.
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