Entertainment :: Television
The Bronte Collection by Kyle Thomas Smith
EDGE ContributorWednesday Oct 28, 2009 Back in 2005, the BBC may have set too high a standard for its period pieces with its five-star production of Charles Dickens’ Bleak House, starring the magnificent Gillian Anderson. Even masterpieces like I, Claudius (1976) look a little shabby in comparison. Today’s audiences expect dramas to be gripping from start to finish and, before Bleak House, the BBC didn’t always deliver. So why is it putting The Brontë Collection in its follow-up queue?
Now out on DVD are three BBC adaptations of three novels from Victorian England’s preeminent literary family-Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, and Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
Even as a period drama, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (2008) is remarkably current in flavor à la Bleak House. Yet the film anthologists curiously culled the 1967 television serial of Wuthering Heights and the 1983 serial of Jane Eyre to stand beside it. Ultimately, "anachronistic" is the only word to describe this newly released collection.
The BBC’s 1967 production of Wuthering Heights is an intriguing film study in that it aligns with the stark, dark realism of the then-current New Wave movement in British cinema, but it also demands more patience than today’s ADD audience may be able to muster. Moreover, it seems to have been filmed live from a rogue hot-air balloon with camera angles sweeping from ground to aerial without warning. On the upside, a young Ian McShane with his perennially brooding charm puts Laurence Olivier’s overly mannered Heathcliff to shame. Likewise, Drew Henley plays the drunkard Hinley to the hilt, mirroring the last days of the Angry Young Men era in British theater.
This BBC collection then makes a quantum leap-sixteen years and several pop-cultural eras forward-to its 1983 production of Jane Eyre. Alexander Morton seems to have devised his pedestrian script with an audience of homebound, crocheting spinsters and widows in mind. All the characters and the heroine herself constantly accuse Jane Eyre of being "passionate," but Zelah Clarke is nothing but dowdy in the role. Also, if they wanted to portray Rochester as a sexy-ugly villain, they shouldn’t have cast an all-out hottie like Timothy Dalton who barely approaches "hideous" even after he winds up a blind burn victim. Meanwhile, the story of the decorous but cruel society drags like an overstuffed laundry bag in the rain.
When we fast-forward to 2008, however, we find The Tenant of Wildfell Hall storming in as the collection’s dark-horse winner. Tara Fitzgerald is grand and alluring as Helen Graham, a reclusive painter who has moved into the derelict Wildfell Hall mansion with her young son. Fiercely possessive of her son and decked out in widow’s weeds, Helen arouses the suspicions of the townspeople who hear on good account that she’s a fallen woman. As they attempt to ostracize her from her new village, Gilbert Markham (Toby Stephens) pursues Helen as his destined mate and comes to discover that she has fled an abusive husband who can’t seem to lay off the sauce or the sluts. While it seems a bit contrived that Gilbert would pine for Helen, who is downright rude to him, the drama’s intrigue and pathos make it a strong successor to 2005’s Bleak House.
If you must watch adaptations of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, there are many worthier candidates for viewing than those represented in The Bronte Collection. Better to save a few bucks and, if at all possible, buy The Tenant of Wildfell Hall separately
Kyle Thomas Smith is a writer in Brooklyn, NY. He is Editor-in-Chief of SENTIENT CITY: THE ART OF URBAN DHARMA and a contributing writer for EDGE, THE BROOKLYN RAIL, WHITE HOT MAGAZINE, and THE VISION AND ART OF SHINJO ITO. He also writes under the pseudonyms Colin MacGowan and Ethel Moneymaker. He is currently preparing for the release of his new novel, 85A.
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