12 thoughts on “TBT: Sense & Sensibility (1995): Elinor

  1. Ruskin later tried to marry another teenager suggesting he may have been an ephebephile, attracted to pubescents. The parents wrote to Effie and on her advice broke off the engagement.
    At least poor Effie got a happy ending with Millais.

  2. “…pretty much everyone is well cast.”

    Really? I get that these are mostly well-liked actors, but their ages are all over the place. Elinor and Marianne are supposed to be only a couple of years apart, not 16. Brandon is supposed to be around 18 years older than Marianne, not 30. In this movie, the actor playing Mr. Henry Dashwood (the dying man) is not much older than the actor playing John Dashwood.

    The costuming is not terrible, and is much better than we see in a lot of Austen adaptations, but there are plenty of problems: the bust silouettes of Thompson and Winslet are off, Thompson’s hair twists and bangs are off, Rickman’s hairdo and dye job are wrong, the colors are off (in the early Regency, there were a LOT more white gowns than we see here), Thompson is wearing obvious eyeshadow, etc.

  3. Kendra, I absolutely love your commentary about this version of “Sense and Sensibility.” I think this might have been the film that ignited my love for all things Austen. I, too, watched before reading the book. I had tried to get through “Pride and Prejudice” in high school, and got bogged down in the idiocy of Elizabeth taking a turn around the drawing room with one of the awful sisters. I didn’t understand that Elizabeth also thought that was a pretty idiotic activity too. I had read “Persuasion” in college as part of a grad-level history class where we explored whether the new concepts of womanhood (just before the Victorian era) were something that women embraced or whether that was thrust upon women. But “Sense and Sensibility” stirred my heart. My favorite Alan Rickman role. I once had a potential romantic interest (didn’t pan out) who flirted with me by calling me “Elinor Dashwood.” I mean, be still my heart!

  4. Ditto to Kendra and Kady. This movie was one of my early entrees into Austen from the (mostly) halcyon days of 90s adaptations. Like both of you, I saw the movie before reading the book and thus retroactively forgave any tweaks to the story. (In fact my first set of Austen books was a Sense and Sensibility movie tie-in 4-pack of S and S, P and P, Emma, and Persuasion. I still have those yellowing and falling apart books on shelf, and they are greatly cherished.) In my view the movie gets top marks all around, especially the cast–which was phenomenal! Can’t wait until I can become a Patreon supporter and get access to even more amazing content!

  5. “Give me an occupation, Miss Dashwood, or I shall run mad.” Swoon. Still missing Alan Rickman.

  6. While Emma Thompson was too old for the role, you can easily knock a decade off her character age easily. People aged hard in the era before vaccines and antibiotics (and good nutrition, too, let’s not forget that.) These days, if you’re performing Pirates of Penzance, set decades later, you can’t cast Ruth—a very aged 47—with anyone under 60, it seems like. And my Nana was old in her 60s a way that my mom isn’t in her late 70s. That’s not just childhood memory, that’s from looking at pictures at comparable ages.

    So perhaps 26, like Anne Eliot. Still very much on the shelf, but not as much as her true age would have made her.

  7. I’m so fond of this movie, and I enjoyed Emma Thompson’s screenplay and shooting diaries too–though I find it intriguing that she scarcely mentions Greg Wise, even though they must have been falling in love during the shooting. I also remember that there was a scene in the screenplay of the servants plunging clothes into black dye when the house went into mourning. I suspect the producers decided they’d rather not go in such a somber direction for the costumes.

  8. I love this film, and I love the work you all do at FrockFlicks! I’m only commenting because it made me spend several minutes looking at the drawings and wondering what was going on (“in what universe/browser settings is that gown ‘flesh-colored’?”), but I think the legends for the two “April 1801” fashion drawings have been switched around. Doesn’t detract a whit from the wonderful article that helped me relive an old favorite.

  9. Is that very long gold chain draped almost flapper style historically accurate? It seems an odd choice to me.

Comments are closed.