简爱1943

Chiefly remembered as a solid hired hand for Disney, and their collaboration’s unequivocal apex arrives with MARRY POPPINS (1964), but two decades before that, UK director Robert Stevenson has made a splash with the adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s timeless JANE EYRE, starring Joan Fontaine as our titular heroine and Orson Welles as Edward Rochester, both in their prime of youth.

However it takes a good half an hour before our top-billing stars show up, first, we are treated with a compendious overview of young Jane Eyre (an impressively emotive Garner)’s ordeal at the hands of her guardian, the unloving aunt Ms. Reed (Moorehead), and then a sadistic martinet, Reverend Henry Brocklehurst (Daniell, pompous to a fault), the head of a charity boarding school for young girls, and the only ray of sunshine coruscates in the form of an ephemeral friendship with another girl Helen (an uncredited Liz Taylor appearing as a truly angelic apparition).

When an adult Jane finally arrives at Thornfield as the new governess for the French girl Adèle (O’Brien, another sterling child performer lading out cuteness/cutesiness to excess), audience are piqued to see what kind of a personhood she possesses after such misfortune, and this time, she has to face a saturnine master Edward, Adèle’s guardian and a hidden secret manifested by nocturnal spookiness.

Magnificently and sometimes startlingly shrouded in its expressionistic atmospherics, that Gothic edifice and its sinister, lowering settings, attendant by Bernard Herrmann’s sonorous score, JANE EYRE shoulders on as an old castle mystery, until Edward slowly dismantles his callous, cynical carapace, and reveals a scintilla of tendresse, Jane finds solace and affection gushing outward, but still puts a strong footing in upholding her self-regard when Edward past (Jane can also viscerally share the experience of detrimental religious clout) stymies their union, Brontë’s Victorian spirit of a self-loving woman takes its full shape in Fontaine’s flinty farewell, her tremulous figure athwart a towering Welles, begging her to stay.

While, one might quibble that Fontaine’s comeliness doesn’t wholly befit Jane’s self-claimed plainness, her performance speaks for itself, case-hardened by the school of hard knocks, her Jane purveys a profuse air of integrity, composure and self-knowledge on top of all the primping celluloid glamor of Hollywood’s usual M.O. and her trademark image of daintiness and timidity; for Welles, still in upstanding physique which can justly pass as a matinee idol at the age of 28 (is he wearing a prosthetic nose or is that make-up artists’ flight of craftsmanship?), his rendering of Edward holds well enough against Fontaine’s strenuous restraint, sometimes his delivery might edge towards operatics, but at large, it doesn’t tarnish this highly watchable work of one of the most famous female creation from British literature.

referential entries: William Wyler’s WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1939, 7.9/10); Cary Joji Fukunaga’s JANE EYRE (2011, 7.8/10); Robert Stevenson’s MARRY POPPINS (1964. 7.4/10).

勇敢的忠诚于自己的内心，无论遇到任何困难都勇敢克服并以诚相待身边每一位友善的人，对于爱情也一样不卑不亢，终于内心。

在简的身上看到一个女性独立的光辉点，尽然自己出身贫穷也不自卑自怜，勇敢表达自己所爱也勇敢承担自己应尽的责任。

男主角爱德华粗犷、善良，不为世俗条框爱上善良勇敢的简，故事一步三折最后两人还是走在一起，收货纯真的爱情。

小时候看过，看到简爱和小伙伴在椅子上罚站感觉害怕，有好一阵子有心理阴影。看到罗切斯特和他疯癫的妻子，感觉像看恐怖片。没有看完就不敢再看。长大后看完小说再去看，体会到了经典的魅力，美丽的琼芳登就是简爱，相信爱情！，简爱从不因为自己是一个地位低贱的家庭教师而感到自卑。她认为他们是平等的，不应该因为她是仆人而不能受到别人的尊重。也正因为她的正直、高尚、纯洁，心灵没有受到世俗社会的污染，使得罗切斯特感到自惭性秽，同时对她肃然起敬，并深深地爱上了她。他的真心让她感动，她接受了他。后来，简·爱发现罗切斯特已有了妻子，她的自尊自重再次占据上风，便毫不犹豫地离开了他。她对爱情的专一让我敬佩。

这是一个女性心中理想化故事结局。女主始于贫困，自强不息，最终也因获得遗产也成为贵族，完成地位转换；男主尽管地位优厚，但前期放浪，留下不堪的情史，古堡内一疯妻一孤女，最终付出代价，得以自由。

两人都在挣脱自己的过去，一个是贫困和被歧视的工作（当时），一个是挣脱自己的年少轻狂留下的烂摊子，心理上可以依靠的只有新萌芽的彼此的爱情。

最终两人有情人终成眷属。