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List Price: $14.98 | | Label: BBC Warner
Salesrank: 25485
Released: August 24, 2004 |
| Our Price: $7.46 |
| Used Price: $4.89 |
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
This bbc production set in the small town of highbury depicts the often hilarious attempts of miss emma woodhouse to make proper marital matches for all of her friends. Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 02/22/2005 Starring: Doran Godwin Ellen Dryden Run time: 240 minutes Rating: Nr Director: John Glenister
Description of Emma (BBC, 1972):
The key to any Jane Austen adaptation is finding the perfect balance of romantic yearning and savage, satirical wit. Austen's Emma has these two qualities at their most exquisite and tantalizing, and this BBC adaptation from 1972 serves the novel with complete satisfaction. Delightful Doran Godwin captures not only the title character's good nature and resilient will, but also her exasperating self-satisfaction and ungovernable manipulative impulses. Believing herself to be acting in everyone's best interests, Emma takes the lower-class Harriet Smith (Debbie Bowen) under her wing and sets out to find the girl a suitable husband, disregarding what havoc she wreaks along the way. Her foolish father (Donald Eccles) cannot temper Emma's fancies; only the stern Mr. Knightly (John Carson) offers any reason or restraint. This sprightly adaptation is far superior to the mediocre 1996 film (starring Gwyneth Paltrow) and on par with the ingenious Clueless, which cunningly translates the story to a Beverly Hills high school. The luxurious span of a six-part miniseries gives this version the opportunity to revel in Emma's every deliciously misguided moment. --Bret Fetzer
Emma (BBC, 1972) Reviews:
Surprisingly Great Movie 
2008-10-08 - I purchased this movie because of my favorite British actor, John Carson. I was actually pretty pleased with this movie. It is a "video" movie, shot on a sound stage using video rather than film and rather bland and washed out with minimal sets and furniture -- no shadows, no "realism," but still a great movie. I didn't think I would outlast it, but I found I couldn't shut it off -- I found it rather good. It's a bit long, drawn out and at times tedious, you really have to pay attention to who's who and who's doing what, but, again, it's pretty good. Makes me think about what living in that period of time would have been like and how classified people were.
Poor casting ruins a decent screenplay
2008-02-28 - This Emma follows the book faithfully, which means that there is plenty that could be cut. The main problem is the lead actors. They are much too old to be 21 year old Emma and 36 year old Mr. Knightley. If you want to see an Emma that is light and funny and sweet, like the spirit of the novel, get the 1996 A&E/BBC production starring Kate Beckinsale.
Emma 
2008-01-28 - One of Jane Austen's really enjoyable classics. Great for a cozy evenilng in front of fire.
It's engaging 
2007-07-06 - Quite good. Godwin portrayed Emma in a style I thought more in keeping with Austen's character; not beautiful, and very human. Knightley wasn't too old or wooden; his hesitancy in the film conveyed the hesitancy that a man in that type of relationship in that period would feel towards a woman of Emma's age (a hesitancy, perhaps even of today). I thought the costumes and interiors were of the period. The absence of servants was too evident, but that's the way Austen writes -- her characters just glide above the surface of work, not doing it themselves, or hardly supervising it, whether in the fields, the kitchen, or the house -- it's all an abstract domestic sphere. But that the novelist's choice -- to write about what she knows -- and that what this film conveys.
Very Good
2007-01-29 - Great Adaptation. I think that in some ways I liked the way Jane Fairfax was played better in this version than the one Gwyneth Paltrow was in. I think that the interfering Mrs Elton was also played very well.
