02.05.07
Sense and Sensibility (1981)
I (Mary-Carolyn) recently created an ELS web-blog for my Film, Text and Culture class, and enjoyed it so much that I thought it was a necessity for my small-group independent study on Jane Austen in film. Leah agreed with me, thinking this would be a great place to share ideas, post article summaries, and talk about film clips or stills since all of these things are pretty easy to post using WordPress. We’ve been talking this week about Sense and Sensibility, and Leah and I recently watched the opening scene of the 1981 BBC mini-series. Because this is really our first foray into film studies and criticism, we watched this scene with no sound and tried to focus on what the camera was doing rather than on the dialogue and plot. We noticed a few things we thought were particularly interesting, especially the fact that we were able to identify characters without hearing their names. Mrs. Dashwood is, obviously, older than the other two girls, but we thought the pairing of Marianne and Mrs. Dashwood alluded the character’s shared personalities. We also were able to see Marianne’s passionate character based on her body movement (and kudos to the girl who plays Marianne, best acting in the whole movie). Elinor’s composed features and the fact that the light coming into the carriage framed her, clued us in. We also especially appreciated Marianne and Elinor balancing on a sea-saw during the opening credits, showing the attentive movie-goer what the novel cleverly hints at, that the girls, together, have a balanced character, but separately, they are two extremes.