Arianna Moses
Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.
katveze1
I like all the movies that have been made for Jane Austin's "Pride and Prejudice." This one is my favorite. The humor that Greer Garson brings to it is delightful and the chemistry between her and Laurence Olivier is very evident and captivating. The mother and father roles "Mr. and Mrs. Bennet" played by Mary Boland and Edmund Gwenn are precious and very funny. Of course, the way the movie explores the depth and sometimes the shallowness of relationships and life are memorable and full of Truth. Love it!!!!
Em
While the film does not remain completely faithful to Jane Austen's novel, it captures the essence of the novel perfectly. It deviates by manner of fashion and plot, but I personally welcomed the changes. The actors (notably, Greer Garson) imbue more charisma into the characters than any other adaption I have seen. Garson's Elizabeth Bennett deserves praise for her expertly-crafted charm, mixing low-key sass and grace — a perfect compliment to this version's Mr. Darcy, who retains his dignified aloofness yet manages to appear more good-humored than you might expect.Overall, a refreshing take on a beloved classic.
Alexandra-Gabriela
A sublime black and white film. A film about a beautiful time in which kindness and nobility were mandatory. Purity and arranged marriages and also less hurried were part of the painting that period of time. This movie is great for lovers of classic films. I do not want to reveal the action yet but I can say that it is a movie with a happy ending. I'm excited fashion of the time , attention and habits that everyone must follow. And yet there is something that makes ordinance established to give everything up, love. Is a perfect film for a relaxing evening in the family. I encourage you to watch and I wish you " Enjoy ". Worth seeing.
keith-moyes-656-481491
The 1940 version of Pride and Prejudice is what I think of as a typical MGM movie of the Golden Age. Of course, MGM made many other types of picture, but they were particularly associated with this kind of 'prestige' movie. It is a big, expensive production, based on a world famous book, written by an eminent literary figure (Aldous Huxley), with lavish sets and sumptuous costumes, starring their most prestigious English actors. In other words: portentous, showy and completely empty.This movie is all packaging and no content.It goes without saying that it is a travesty of the book, but it is hopeless even as a simple exercise in story-telling. It would be easy to deplore it for its technical incompetence, its wild historical inaccuracy and its somewhat trashy notion of elegance and sophistication, but I suspect that would be missing the point.In 1939, when this movie was being planned, America was still mired in the Great Depression and there were millions of women who had been struggling to make ends meet for the best part of a decade. What they wanted from MGM was to be transported out of the grim reality of their own lives into a fantasy world of opulence and ease; of glamour, luxury and elegance. That is what movies like Pride and Prejudice were designed to do. I can complain that the plot is, at best, perfunctory, but who cared? The story was almost incidental to its core audience. It was the over-the-top costumes, the soaring sets, the glittering chandeliers and the gleaming carriages that the audience really wanted to see.The packaging was the point!For example, the costumes are absurd – they are not only wrong for that period, they are probably wrong for any period. However, I am sure the MGM costume department could have designed gowns that were authentic down to the last button, if that was what MGM had wanted – but they didn't. And who am I to say that they were wrong? MGM was the only Hollywood studio that went right through the Great Depression without ever making a loss. They must have been doing something right.When I view this movie today, I know I must try to understand why it was made the way it was. This vision of Regency England may have been very naïve and very fanciful, but there is no reason to suppose that the people that made the movie were naïve: or even that the people in the audience were. I know I have to put myself into the position of that audience if I am to enjoy it in the way that was originally intended, but I cannot do that. I have to judge the movie on the basis of how it looks today, in the context of other movies of the era, not how it might have looked then.From that perspective, it has not lasted well. Nor, I suspect, have MGM movies as a whole. From the very beginning of the Thirties, Hollywood churned out scores and scores and scores of movies that are still highly watchable today. You don't have to be a movie buff or film historian to enjoy Universal horror films, Warner Brothers gangster movies, RKO musicals, Disney animations or the Westerns, 'screwball' comedies, romances, melodramas, thrillers, historical pictures and other movies that flooded out of Hollywood at that time. Until the last twenty years or so they were part of everyone's film education.MGM was the biggest and most successful studio of the Thirties, but my gut feel is that fewer of their movies have stood the test of time than those of most of their competitors. Too many look like Pride and Prejudice: frothy, over-stuffed, over-egged but ultimately unsatisfying: timely but not timeless.This movie is of undoubted historical interest as a representative artifact of Hollywood at a particular time in its history, but from any other perspective it is utterly negligible.
