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Posted by Another Anne on November 09, 1996 at 01:19:27:
: : I just reread my post and I hope that I didn't come off as world-weary or disappointed with life.
: ______________
: No, but the first part did give the bittersweet feeling that you have lived a while and see a few things. Maybe we are all somewhat deeper than we appear at first blush, kind of like an Austen novel.
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Yes. I don't know whether age has anything to do with it, but I am forty, and watching P&P2 made the world we live in seem brash and insensitive.
Anne
Follow Ups:
Posted by DonnaT on November 09, 1996 at 01:21:10:
: : Remember the Netherfield Ball? Silly question. Darcy wore knee-legnth pants and white stockings. Who prefers this get-up to the long black trousers he wore in other scenes? Please e-mail me at <RYoudelman@aol.com> I wil post the results of this survey.
:
: ___________________
: I don't recall if any other characters wore long pants. I kind of assumed that Darcy was on fashion's cutting edge.
: Ann
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I vote for long pants, Dare I say daggier? ! ! DonnaT
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Posted by DonnaT on November 09, 1996 at 01:32:48:
: Not yet six and forty (next March). As you get older you appreciate the finer things in life more.
: Anne
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I just turned six and forty, and you're right, we're getting better ..DonnaT
Posted by Ian on November 09, 1996 at 02:17:24:
: : : I'd love to come, but the air-fare is excessive. Now if anyone would like to meet for a Cappuccino in Taormina...
: : : Eric
: :
: : ___________________
: : Sundowners in Johannesburg?
: : Anne
:
: ___________________
: Hey we have our own Austin world conference here.
: Mich
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G'day,
Now if there are any Aussie Austenites who'd like to see "Emma" shortly, perhaps we could arrange to meet in Sydney or somewhere more central.
Perhaps then onto a Internet Cafe for coffee or tea to send a group response to the P&P2BB.
Posted by Eric on November 09, 1996 at 03:44:50:
: I don't intend to slander our joint addiction, as on the whole I agree with Eric about imperfections adding to beauty - P&P2 in faultless, despite it's faults. However, besides the minor things I noticed on the 10th + viewing, there are a few things that grated on the first viewing, and which I could see no technical or dramatic reason. I'm bringing them up mainly because I'm hoping that someone can point out something I've missed and show me that they're actually essential to the production.
: The first I've already discussed - the pointless rearrangement of favorite rooms and miniature portrais at Pemberley. In episode 5 we have another - In Longbourne, whilst the Gardiners and those birds that remain in the nest are having dinner, Kitty says "And I don't see that Lydia has done anything so very bad, either". By this stage we have been shown that by the standards of 1812 it was *bad*, adn I find it hard to believe that even Kitty would not realise that running away with a man and not marrying him would lead to serious probems. any opinions?
: To descend to the absolutely trivial - did anyone else feel sorry for Darcy's horse on the ride to Lambton? I can't see any reason for him to hit it - it was cantering along happily and didn't seem to go any faster afterwards. If I owned and could use a video editor I would cut that second - it really irks me!
: Anna
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I thought Kitty's comment brought out even more painfully her foolish naivete, and her assumption that Lydia probably has married Wickham (she still believes in his appearance of goodness, no doubt).
As for flicking the horse, it shows Darcy's urgency and, though I have to watch that scene again, in my recollection the horse did begin to move faster. It is possible that when they switch back to the full view, they use a different cut and the horse is not moving any more quickly there. That falls in the same category as Darcy's arms being in different positions when they switch between front and back views at the inn. Do not think less of Mr. Darcy (or Mr. Firth) on this account.
Eric
Posted by Eric on November 09, 1996 at 04:00:57:
: : : :
: : : "If you're looking for sex appeal, then make Colin Firth Prime Minister. Now there's a thought!! Just how many votes do you think he would get from this BB? :-)
: : : : : Bernie
: : : : ___________________
: : : :
: : : : I'd like to see him play a politician. Well, there's Nostromo, but I mean a Jeffrey Archer type British politician -- or a spy!
: : : : Amy
: : :
: : : ___________________
: : : How about something in the range of Hidden Agenda. I would certainly vote for him. A unanimous vote I'm sure from all.
: : : Johanne
: :
: : ___________________
: : All the decent British political leaders over the last several centuries have been females - Thatcher, Queen Elizabeth II, Queen Victoria, Queen Elizabeth I, etc. Winston was probably the only significant exception. So my own thoughts are that we should put Jennifer Ehle in as PM. Give Mr. Firth the Exchequer.
: : Eric
:
: ___________________
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: : Will the King-ship be opening up anytime soon? I hear the costumes are very nice. Grace
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I don't know, but I understand the part requires very large ears and scrawny knees which may be regularly displayed under ill-fitting kilts. Mr. Firth, unfortunately, does not physically cut the mustard for that part.
Eric
Posted by Eric on November 09, 1996 at 04:21:38:
: I recently picked up a very cheap version of P&P. It is a paperback Everyman, 1996. As an introduction it has an article by Peter Conrad, which is very thought provoking. I'm wondering if anyone else has read it.
: It is quite long, so I can't do it justice here. But some of the points it makes are:
: * 'The ironist's peculiar occupational hazard is to be taken at his word, and JA has suffered the same trap: critics have taken her at her word.'
:
: * 'P&P is not so artlessly effervescent as JA pretends. Its light, bright and sparkling high spirits are either, as in Lydia's case, a reckless volatility indifferent to the consequences of its actions, or, as in the different cases of Elizabeth and her father, an ironic discipline, forcing oneself to laugh at a fate which if taken seriously would be ruinously depressing.'
: * 'P&P is not only ironic in its procedures and assumptions: it is also about irony, the instrument by which Elizabeth separates herself from a shaming family, asserts her own claims against an overbearing society, and tests emotion without betraying herself into commitment to them. Irony is Elizabeth's stratagem for survival. This is the secret of the perfect self-sufficiency of P&P: irony is both form and content, and each is an image of the other'.
: * 'Irony is the incognito of the moralist' ('The diplomatic efficacy of irony is that it judges deftly and discreetly, without needing to disrupt the external exchange of insincere compliments. It kills cleanly, leaving no messy trace' - hence all that stuff about non-confrontation last week) and also the amoralist. It is also politically 'the covertly insolent language of the underdog' (like E with Lady C) ....'Emotionally, irony saves E from her own dangerously vulnerable and errant feelings: a means of assault against others, it is a means of control in her case.'
: * 'Irony, however, has its frustrations and liabilities' and 'the ironist often irritates and disconcerts himself rather than his victim' (Miss Bingley is a great example). Conrad then goes on to talk at length about JA also falling into this trap, and being unable to control her characters. 'JA's creativity is a reflex not of generosity but of baffled, impotent ill-will'...'she must write about characters she dispises but cannot dispose of. Irony is her mode of surrender, the language of her aquiescence...it is the dialect of defeat.'...'JA is a novelist who loves to hate the characters and the form she employs. Her creative urge is malicious, not sentimentaly forbearing'.. 'her attitude to the navel is similar. It is a vengeful retreat from the distress and contagion of society'
: * 'The novel's most startling paradox is its final justification of the pride and prejudice it offers initially to chasten. These strategic faults of character come to seem the necessary weapons of intellegence in a vacuus, undiscriminating world.'..' D and Enjoy a special exemption, not because they are morally superior to their relatives but because they are more intelligently devious'...'They discover that they love one another because they so relish hating one another. The novelty of rejection (both) startles them into intimacy ...once they have resigned themselves to loving they continue to enjoy the appearance of hating.... Irony is the incognito of affection which ,lacking the confidence for open avowal, camouflages itself as a doting malice. This is the method Darcy and E devise for loving one another, and it is also the way JA creates her fictional world.'
: My first impulse was to reject all this, (especially I can't take such a bleak view of D and E's relationship) but it's not as easy to do as I thought. There seems to be a lot of truth in it. What do you think?
: Hilary
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I believe that Mr. Conrad underestimates Jane Austen's ability to control her plot and her characters. Most of what he says about irony is very true, but to read into it a spiteful, hateful attitude on the part of JA is excessive and ignores the larger body of her work. To be sure, she does notice, point out, and at times mock the injustices of the day, but that is not hate. It is morals.
Mr. Conrad also assumes JA intends to chastise ALL pride and prejudice and ends up justifying it. From the beginning, JA asserts (via Mr. Darcy) that pride has a proper place and that judgements are not all pre-judges (prejudice). As Elizabeth comes to note at the end, "he has no improper pride. JA intends only to place pride in its proper place. The same is true of judgement and discrimination. They should be tentative, open to evidence to the contrary, and not locked in on little data. E is forced to revise her judgement of both Wickham and Darcy, and, in the book, openly chastises herself for her vain confidence in an ability to judge character. Darcy is forced also to revise his judgement of Jane and Elizabeth and reject the notion that, because one member of a family is an ass, they are a family of asses.
Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth Darcy enjoy laughing at one another, but that is not to be confused with hating one another. Rather it serves to place their pride in its proper place and open them more genuinely to those left gifted in wealth, talent, and appearance. Their affection is, in the end, openly avowed and once they have so done, they never retreat from it.
In short, Mr. Conrad judges irony aright, but fails miserably to understand Jane Austen's use of it or its place within the lives of the main characters of this nove.
Eric
Follow Ups:
Posted by Joan, too on November 09, 1996 at 05:36:36:
: : The latest I read in the "trades" (Electronic Media magazine) is that the BBC has signed a development deal with the Discovery Channel. Apparently it caught A&E off guard, in light of the success of P&P2.
:
: ___________________
: The Discovery Channel doesn't do drama though, just documentaries, so the door is still open to A&E/BBC dramatic productions.
: Ann
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However, the Discovery Channel which the Canadians get is quite different from what the US gets - they have
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Posted by Joan, too on November 09, 1996 at 05:45:10:
: How I got the tapes? I live in Israel, and they putted it on channel 1, where there are no commercials, but I'm afraid they still have left those minutes cut off.
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If you have no commercials on that channel, you probably have no missing minutes. Nobody here (including others from Israel) have reported any missing minutes except for those who received it from A&E. [Which certainly appears to portray U.S. cable channels in a deplorably mercenary light :-( ]
Joan, too
Posted by Joan, too on November 09, 1996 at 06:02:15:
: Lizzie is always modest about her piano playing; however, Darcy thinks she plays and sings like an angel & apparently haas shared this view with Georgiana & others. Did Darcy "grossly exaggerate" her talent (since he was under her spell)? I don't have a trained ear, so I can't tell if her playing is that good. I know some of you are musical, what do you think?
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I believe that Darcy's "willingness to be pleased" played a significant role in his evaluation of Lizzie's musical performance.
While her vocal rendition was certainly not embarrassing (as was Mary's), neither was it inspiring, as Darcy's evaluation would lead one to suppose. She would be ill advised to give up her day job in hopes of pursuing a carreer in opera on the strength of Darcy's recommendation alone.
And by her own admission to "fudging and slurring her way through the more difficult passages" on the keyboard the same would apply to any hopes of success as a concert pianist unless she were willing to devote significantly more time to practice.
JA does lead us to believe, though, that her performnce was "pleasing, though by no means capital" and was "listened to with much more pleasure, though not playing half so well" as Mary's.
Joan, too
Posted by Joan, too on November 09, 1996 at 06:15:52:
: : Lizzy was imagining this as she read the letter. Bingley was actually staying at Darcy's house in London (Bingley doesn't have a house in London). Miss Bingley was staying at the Hurst's house - which is where Jane called.
: : Anne
:
: ___________________
: Where did his other family members live.
: Donna
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Darcy's? His sister had been given her own "establishment" in London when she left school. No specifics are given regarding the Colonel's residence that I can recall.
The Bingleys had come from "the north of England" and Bingley had rented Netherfield because he had no establishment of his own. He was, however, keeping his eye out for a suitable one available to purchase.
Joan, too
Posted by Joan, too on November 09, 1996 at 06:19:05:
: ___________________
: :
: : Anne and Amy, I feel EXACTLY as you do. CF as Darcy is a beautifully-captured moment in time. It is also art, and not reality. It's Darcy we like and not Firth, though we appreciate his portrayal.
: : - K
: One of the reasons that books made into films so often fail, for me, is because I had put a face, and voice and personality to the character, and if they are different in the film, something is wrong. If one sees a film first, and then reads the book, you are more or less forced to 'see' the characters from the film. In P&P2, Lizzie and Darcy are even better that I imagined them. They have not destroyed anything, rather, they have brought the book to life.
: Anne
: ___________________
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Well spoken, K & A - I agree 100%
Joan, too
Posted by Joan, too on November 09, 1996 at 06:26:18:
: Unfortunately you lucky folk in the Northern Hemisphere seem to get most films and TV series at least six months in advance of us "down here"
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But we in North AMerica are still lagging behind those in Europe (or at least England) where they had their first viewing in October ('95) while we had to wait till January.
Joan, too
Posted by Joan, too on November 09, 1996 at 06:32:14:
: Yes. I don't know whether age has anything to do with it, but I am forty, and watching P&P2 made the world we live in seem brash and insensitive.
: Anne
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Well, the excellent Jane Austen not withstanding, in many respects our world today is brash and insensitve - but then so was Austen's, when one left the insulated cocoon of the world of the landed gentleman.
Joan, too
Follow Ups:
Posted by Ian on November 09, 1996 at 06:59:46:
: The threading has been messing up a little. Henry reported one too. Sorry to have to do this, but I am going to take out yesterday's posts already in hopes that it might help. This happens when many of us are on and posting at the same time. The worst time was when I had to shut down for a day three weeks ago or so? I'm not up for that again. We'll see if this works. Tell me if it keeps happening, but I am out of touch for an hour.
: Amy
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G'day Amy,
Well you need to sleep sometimes.
Being about 17 hours ahead of the west coast of USA here in Australia, I find that I'm usually posting at what may seem like odd hours for you up there. I have found that my responses and others of us this side of the world tend to be paltry compared to the numbers of responses I see when I log back on to the P&P2BB about 20 or so hours later. *Sigh*, us Colonials seem so Provincial - no wonder we miss out on the action for half the year!
Posted by Joan, too on November 09, 1996 at 07:12:10:
: Anna:
: there are a few things that grated on the first viewing, and which I could see no technical or dramatic reason. I'm bringing them up mainly because I'm hoping that someone can point out something I've missed and show me that they're actually essential to the production.
: In Longbourne, whilst the Gardiners and those birds that remain in the nest are having dinner, Kitty says "And I don't see that Lydia has done anything so very bad, either". By this stage we have been shown that by the standards of 1812 it was *bad*, adn I find it hard to believe that even Kitty would not realise that running away with a man and not marrying him would lead to serious probems. any opinions?
I think that the point here was to illustrate once again how silly and ignorant - and neglected in terms of being taught self discipline and the rules of propriety in society - both Kitty and Lydia were. Actually, it did not occur even to Jane that Lydia's escapade would reflect negatively on all of the sisters until Lizzie pointed it out to her. Among the Bennet sisters only Mary - who made a pedantic study of such things - and Lizzie had the perception to realize the wider implications of what Lydia had done.
: To descend to the absolutely trivial - did anyone else feel sorry for Darcy's horse on the ride to Lambton? I can't see any reason for him to hit it - it was cantering along happily and didn't seem to go any faster afterwards. If I owned and could use a video editor I would cut that second - it really irks me!
In my recollection the horse did appear to move along a bit more smartly - especially considering that it was going uphill at the time, however, a single tap with the crop does not really constitute abuse of the horse, and though the camera angle does not show the actual blow, from the sound of it, he may actually have tapped the side of his own boot with to "remind" the horse to keep its mind on business.
As a kid I had the requisite obsession with horses and was fortunate enough to have taken riding lessons when my Girl Scout troop did the horsemanship badge. The stable where we rode had one horse appropriately named "Cheeky" who was of a stubborn and independent character, and whoever rode her was given a crop to carry, and occasionaly to flick lightly on her boot or her own leg, just to remind Cheeky of who was in charge. Even though I never saw anyone (including the stable staff) actually hit her with it, the sight of it in her peripheral vision was enough to keep Cheeky on the straight and narrow. (Cheeky was also sneaky and if one did not keep the right hand rein firmly in hand while preparing to mount, she enjoyed turning around and nipping one in the derriere. I no longer remember the names of any of the other horses, but none of us ever forgot Cheeky!)
Joan, too
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Posted by Joan, too on November 09, 1996 at 07:38:11:
: : : The latest I read in the "trades" (Electronic Media magazine) is that the BBC has signed a development deal with the Discovery Channel. Apparently it caught A&E off guard, in light of the success of P&P2.
: :
: : ___________________
: : The Discovery Channel doesn't do drama though, just documentaries, so the door is still open to A&E/BBC dramatic productions.
: : Ann
:
: ___________________
:
: However, the Discovery Channel which the Canadians get is quite different from what the US gets - they have [WHERE IS THE REST OF THIS POST?]
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Dang! It did it to me again! (Seems to do this only when I am actually typing directly into the window and not in my WP.) One more try:
Which branch of the Discovery Channel was involved in this deal? The programming on the Canadian Discovery Channel is quite different from what the US gets - they even have a different web site (http://www.discovery.ca/). On the occasions in which I have compared them, there has been less than a 50% overlap in programming, and the "featured" specials were not the same at all. They may well get more BBC co-produced programming that the US Discovery Channel gets.
Also, in the US, "The Learning Channel" is a subsidiary of Discovery, and I believe that there have already been some co-productions with BBC shown there. In any event, it would not appear that anyone has an "exclusive" contract with BBC. Several months ago I saw an article somewhere on the net describing the great windfall in income that the BBC derived from "flogging" (licensing) the rights to P&P2 to various other broadcast networks all over the world.
Joan, too
Posted by Anne on November 09, 1996 at 09:25:44:
: : I don't have a trained ear either but I thought Lizzy in P&P1 had a better voice. Anyone else with a thought?
: : Anne
:
: ___________________
: She didn't play she just sang.
: Lizzie was singing opera but the way she sang it sounded more like a little ditty. She also sang it in English which makes a big difference.
: I can't remember if it was Greer Garson voice.
: Donna
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P&P1 (the 198x BBC version) did have Lizzy singing. It wasn't opera but was very pleasant.
Anne
Posted by France on November 09, 1996 at 09:25:50:
: : : : CF reminds me of a chap I knew whose mere entrance into a room electrified the atmosphere. A visceral thing, that. And obviously helpful in a film career.
: ___________________
: 
: He has kind of a young Orson Welles look about him in this picture.
: Amy
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Welles? Indeed, many parallels- jawline, dark eyes, a bemused look alternating with a soulsearching one- (for the above phooto link, as JA would note, "His complexion became pale..the disturbance of his mind visible in every feature..")
I would add that CF, while not a baritone like Welles or Burton or Jose Ferrar (as of CYRANO fame), has also vocal magnetic quality, which is why some of our crew here employ movie-audiotapes on car rides, no doubt;) JA again: "He spoke well, but there were were feelings besides those of the heart to be detailed."
Interesting that CF was "discovered" when playing Hamlet; hints at depths beyond what current roles display. I'd see him in that if he ever reprised that role, just to compare his version to all the "heavyweights" I've seen do it (Olivier, Burton, Plummer, Gibson-tho' not a heavyweight-, Jacobi, Schell, and ACT actors in SF).
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Posted by Anne on November 09, 1996 at 09:37:33:
: : : Hi!
: : : Oh, where do you get those cassets? where?
: :
:
: ___________________
: How I got the tapes? I live in Israel, and they putted it on channel 1, where there are no commercials, but I'm afraid they still have left those minutes cut off.
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Most of the locations that we have discussed for the tapes are US locations. The only place that I can think of that might handle overseas orders would be the A&E site on the net. (http://www.aetv.com)
Anne
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