Northanger Abbey (BBC)
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Actor: Googie Withers, Katherine Schlesinger, Peter Firth, Robert HardyBrand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Stereo; English (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Stereo
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 90 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-04-19
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Model: E2273
Studio: BBC Warner
DVD Reviews of Northanger Abbey (BBC)
DVD Review: An unfortunately anachronistic assumption
Summary: 4 Stars
The saddest part about this story, and even this video version, is that most modern people don't get the references. It's not a true gothic but only satire, although surrounded by a truly good coming-of-age story of lost innocence, more comparable to (the truly good) 'Ten Things I Hate About You' than to anything purporting to be any edgier.
Jane Austen begins her deliberately sardonic 1797 novel with a full paragraph of what Catherine Morland is NOT, to insinuate is that Cathy is merely ordinary, not as intelligent as Lizzie, sappier than Marianne, a clueless precursor to the later Emma. Wide-eyed Katherine Schlesinger depicts poor little Cathy as an eager ingenue, easily amazed and impressed by what any seasoned urbanite would find trivial and suspect. In her facial expressions alone she gives us a bona-fide picture of a young girl's discovery that what she thought was duplicitous and what she thought was genuine are in reality the reverse.
Peter Firth plays the modestly mysterious Henry Tilney with a sly, benign teasing. He reveres Cathy's innocence even as he is irresistibly drawn to her for it. Cassie Stuart (typically known in other films for taking off her top) plays the ridiculous Isabella Thorpe like an exaggerated Britney Spears, neither pretty nor seductive enough to be taken seriously, but still she tries. Robert Hardy plays the willfully ignorant General Tilney as aloof, brusque, and secretive, a proud man with much less to hide than he thinks he has. Jonathan Coy is sarcastic and oppressive as the egotistical John Thorpe, the very date we all want our daughters NOT to see. Above all Googie Withers is delightfully bombastic, a kind of more urbane and even less clued-in Mrs Jennings from 'Sense and Sensibility', someone too naïve and yet too controlling to be a successful fairy godmother.
Some of the best lines in the movie are unfortunately not in the book, including Henry's comparisons of readers to fish and Cathy's unwittingly witty reply about woman's power of refusal. Likewise the closing scene includes more dialogue than in the novel, but for most viewers who go right to the book for more of the same, Austen film adaptations prove a little less than accurate.
It is true the 1980s music is often a distraction; it is more telling of the time of filmmaking than of the time of setting and especially transparent as a faint effort at making Jane's parody into a viable late-20th-C gothic. But the exquisite Bath settings were not to be rivalled till 1995's 'Persuasion'-- the 'gig' scene and the umbrellas scene could only have been done on location. And the odd scene filmed in the actual Roman baths had actually been done before, in the appropriately bawdy 1977 'Joseph Andrews', and here, as in that one, the ingenue's quiet awe and amazement perfectly represents the viewer's unfamiliarity with the place was well.
For British castle fans the use of the 13th-C moated Bodiam for Northanger is disappointing, because we all know it is an uninhabitable ruin now, but it is a spooky fortress from which one cannot easily escape, and the dramatically sinister picture of 18th-C armed guards lurking above the medieval portcullis validates the anachronistic reality.
The 2007 rendition of this story makes several unnecessary substitutions, most vitally by referring to Matthew Lewis' suspense novel 'The Monk' rather than Ann Radcliffe's 1794 'The Mysteries of Udolpho'. Mrs Radcliffe was a favorite author of many 1790s teenagers, Jane Austen among them; though with 'Northanger Abbey' the cynical student deliberately poked fun at her hugely-popular mentor's style of gothic romance. It is significant that Jane chose 'Udolpho', as it is the quintessential gothic romance full of forced marriage contracts, shrouded inheritances, evil Papists, amoral country banditti and a half-ruined castle. 'Udolpho' is especially paid homage via a dream sequence in 'Northanger' the movie, the climactic rescue of the threatened heroine in a filmy evening gown as she is whisked away on horseback into the night by a dashing young brigand. It's all the stuff little Cathy Morland dreams of. For JA the full effect of 'Northanger' was nothing without 'Udolpho', a book she assumed everyone had read first (witness the authentic 1790s scene in this version of the two girls reading it to each other in bed). But it is unfortunately not as safe a premise 200 years on, and so modern people may tend to find the references confusing and the comparison's context irrelevant.
Do yourself a favor and see the 1986 one before the 2007... or instead of it.
...
Description of Northanger Abbey (BBC)
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