Jane Austen: Wit and Realism

To accompany the exhibition Lord Dalhousie: Patron and Collector, the Gallery is featuring one of the most popular film sources of the 1990's, Jane Austen, who was a contemporary of Lord Dalhousie's.

Film versions of Austen's six major novels -- chosen to fit into feature length slots -- reveal a stratified English Society seen uniquely from a woman's point of view, with humour, wit and compassion, where manners count as much as character. 

SCREENINGS TUESDAYS AT 8PM

MacAloney Room, 4th floor, Dalhousie Arts Centre

January 19- Sense and Sensibility

Dir: Ang Lee, USA/UK, 1995, 135 minutes. With and Oscar-winning script by and starring Emma Thompson, this mid-90s costume drama by Brokeback Mountain director Ang Lee set off a vogue for Jane Austen that has yet to abate. The story concerns a worthy but impoverished family who must marry off their daughters into financial stability, possibly at the cost of true love. 

January 26- Mansfield Park

Dir: Patricia Rozema, UK/USA, 1999, 110 minutes. One of the few Jane Austen adaptations to be directed by a woman -- Toronto's Patricia (I've Heard the Mermaids Singing) Rozema -- Mansfield Park concerns itself with the life of a girl named Fanny, her family and her potential suitors from an upscale household headed by Sir Thomas, played by Nobel Prize winning playwright Harold Pinter.

February 2 - Pride and Prejudice

Dir: Robert Z. Leonard, USA, 1940, 114 minutes. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's opulence marks this sly take on Austen's story of a family that must marry off five daughters. Greer Garson and a dashingly young Laurence Olivier head up an all-star Hollywood cast.

February 9 - Emma

Dir: Douglas McGrath, UK/USA, 1996, 111 minutes. Gwyneth Paltrow stars as a self-appointed matchmaking expert unaware of the state of her own heart in this brisk tale of early 19th century romance. Toni Collette, Alan Cumming also star, with Jeremy Northam as Mr. Knightly.

February 16- Persuasion

Dir: Roger Michell, UK, 1995, 102 minutes. The return of a paramour from the Napoleonic Wars renews the possibility of love for Anne (Amanda Root) who at 27 is in danger of reaching an age out of the range for marriage. Considered Austen's most subtle and nuanced story, Persuasion restrains its two lead characters, preferring to let their surroundings and families speak for them.

February 23- Northanger Abbey

Dir: Jon Jones, UK, 2007, 86 minutes. Hopeless romantic Catherine (Felicity Jones) gets to indulge her fascination with gothic mysteries when she is invited by an admirer to the lavish medieval estate of the title in this gently satiric romantic drama made recently for British Television.