Jane Eyre

A cheerful Rochester? A beautiful Jane Eyre? A slapstick Adelle? Oy, what's the point of adapting a classic novel if you're gonna change every character!

I suppose the film has a certain appeal anyway; it's pleasantly ancient and strange, and it's nice to see Colin "Dr. Frankenstein" Clive in another role. But, to true devotees of the original novel, this is a real butcher job.

I totally agree with reviewer of May 2003. This film is a travesty of a wonderful classic novel.

The entire film is made up..there are characters that do not even exist in the book and ones that are pivotal to the story were left out.

But the best mess was "Rochester's wife". Where did they dig her up? She was suppose to be insane not ugly and look like a witch.

Don't even bother to waste your time watching this turkey.Another case of "Did anybody bother to read the book"..

The Timothy Dalton version for the BBC is best and I also liked the Welles/Fontaine version in 1944 as well as the one with George C. Scott in 1970....all the newer ones are mediocre, at best.

... that's not at all faithful to that tale. Virginia Bruce stars in the title role, a young woman raised in an orphanage who hires on as a governess of the niece of the cranky Mr. Rochester (Colin Clive). As Jane tries to find her way within the household, she starts to fall in love with her boss while also wondering about the strange screams coming from the room into which she's forbidden to look.

Some sources have called this the best movie ever made by a Poverty Row studio. There are plenty that I liked more than this, but I'm not really the audience for this type of story. The acting is decent, and the costumes and sets are nicer than in most Monogram efforts, but it still seems clunky, sometimes amateurish, and with very uninspired direction. Running at just over an hour, it's not a major investment in time.

For the most part this is a fairly weak Monogram (read budget with a capital B) adaptation of the Bronte classic. Colin Clive is woefully miscast as Edward Rochester, a character so complex and filled with such passionate brooding that it takes the likes of an Orson Welles or a George C.Scott to really pull it off. Instead Clive plays the master of Thornfield like he is just some normal single dad on the make who just happens to have his unbalanced first wife locked up in the attic.Maybe director Cabanne thought that this interpretation would make the character seem more suspicious to the audiences of 1934. Unfortunately this reviewer writing in 2002 finds Clive's Rochester about as suspicious as a stained glass window. In a Lutheran church.Virginia Bruce is adequate as the title character but unfortunately her best lines are undermined by unnecessary stock music pulled from Monogram's Oliver Twist (released the previous year). However horror fans especially those who feel at home with the jump-out-of-your-skin style of Sam Raimi of Evil Dead fame should see this film for the well-timed SHREIKS emanating from that attic. Claire DuBrey's banshee routine is enough to make your heart jump out of your mouth and do the macarena on top of the TV. So see this Eyre for the Screamer not for Ward Cleaver.

Adapting a classic novel faithfully and accurately is a good thing, and most IMDB reviewers have condemned this version for its fast-and-loose adaption of the Charlotte Bronte novel. However, faithfulness to the source material isn't the only standard by which to judge a movie. This version of Jane Eyre is only an hour long, so all except a few of the main plot points are sacrificed or, as others have noted, altered. But if you don't intend to pass a school exam on the novel by watching the movie, and if you judge the movie on its own merits, it does have merits. Virginia Bruce and Colin Clive are attractive and appealing leads. Several of the character actors are given moments in which to shine, and make the most of them. And the settings and photography are suitably moodily atmospheric. On its own, without reference to the book, it's not half bad, and worth the hour.