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A Masterpiece!

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Mr Rochester is the Ur Gothic hero.MIss Eyre the mousy,rabbit - in - the - headlights timid naïve young woman just put on earth for him to ravage.They should never have been allowed within 20 miles of each other yet somehow this unlikely pairing has captured the imagination of readers since the 19thcentury.It is not the least bit believable and Mr Welles and Miss Fontaine have zero chemistry together and a marriage would be disastrous,but she's a sticker and eventually sees off opposition from mad wives and heiresses and gets her man. That's it in a nutshell but the joy is in the dramatic settings,the crashing thunder, burning rooms, the mist that makes one think of Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce following the footprints of a gigantic hound and the absolute villainy of the villains. Many of the supporting cast are English exiles and acquit themselves as to the manner born. Silent stars Mr B.Bevan and Miss M.Marsh are welcome extras. Archetypal Hollywood melodrama now 75 years old and of it's type never bettered.

Jane Eyre is one of my mom's favorite stories, second only to Great Expectations. Consequently, I've watched all the film versions. By far, the best adaptation is the 2007 version with Ruth Wilson and Toby Stephens. If you love this story as much as my mom does, watch that version.If you're not particularly attached to Charlotte Bronte's words, and you like black-and-white romances, you could do much worse than watch the 1943 version of Jane Eyre. Joan Fontaine plays the title character, and while she's not particularly likable or compelling, she does know how to give a powerful speech. The famously unloved orphan takes a job as governess to Adele, played by young Margaret O'Brien, answering to the little girl's guardian, the brooding and mysterious Edward Rochester, played by Orson Welles. Orson Welles wore many hats in Hollywood, and while he created many film noirs during his time, I never really thought of his face as being particularly mysterious.All in all, it's not a bad movie, if you like similar old flicks like Rebecca or Laura. The famous love scene in which lightning strikes the tree is very fun to watch in this version. Also, the beginning of the film, during Jane's childhood, has some interesting scenes portraying the horrors of growing up in a girls' orphanage. A young Elizabeth Taylor plays Jane Eyre's friend Helen, and she definitely competes with Margaret O'Brien as the cutest kid in the film. This version is my second favorite adaptation, but again, I'd recommend the 2007 adaptation as the best.

Not bad, definitely a step up from 1934 but that's not saying much. I've heard good reviews for this one, so much so that for some this is the best version. I can see how they could see that and for the time period, absolutely. However, years later Jane Eyre has been adapted in ways that succeed this one for a number of reasons.Story wise, the first half was really well done. Elizabeth Taylor was a surprise, she played Helen. The second half took a good chunk of film time before Rochester even proposed so I kept wondering how it was going to fit everything left in. The answer was to keep all the scenes short and deviate the story when Jane leaves. Instead of going to the moors she goes to Gateshead, for the first time in years. I was told Mr. Rochester would come in and rescue her in the 1944 adaptation but was glad to see that wasn't true, she came back to him as written. Performances were both well done. Orson Welles isn't my favorite Rochester but did a decent job. For me, he was just too shadowy without being light-hearted enough. Joan was very good, even with the 1944 constraints she pulled it off to fit the best of both worlds, staying true to Jane's character with Hollywood acting thrown in.

According to IMDb, there are at least a dozen versions of "Jane Eyre", an obvious testament to the durable appeal of Charlotte Brontë's Gothic novel, but the 1944 version is the one to which I always seem to return again and again. Having played a similar "ugly duckling" role in Alfred Hitchcock's "Rebecca" four years earlier, Joan Fontaine is in her element in the title role and performs with her impeccable restraint intact. However, it's Orson Welles who generates all the fascination about this particular adaptation. Coming off of his twin masterpieces, "Citizen Kane" and "The Magnificent Ambersons", he is officially just the leading man here, and he almost overwhelms the film with his outsized performance as Edward Rochester, generating a brooding sensuality with his surly charisma and stentorian baritone voice. Even though he is not credited as the director (that was Robert Stevenson who later made "Mary Poppins"), Welles' distinctive filmmaking style is prevalent everywhere.From the gloomy ambiance that seems to whisper "Rosebud" to the heavy use of shadow, the distorted camera angles, the moody black-and-white cinematography from George Barnes who lensed "Rebecca", and the evocative score by Bernard Herrmann - this feels like an uncredited Orson Welles production. Adapted by an impressive group of writers - John Houseman, Aldous Huxley, Henry Koster and Stevenson - the story follows Jane from her desolate childhood as an orphan raised by an insensitive aunt, Mrs. Reed, through her lonely years at the Lowood Institution, a charitable school where she was a headstrong pupil whom the school offers to hire as a teacher when she comes of age since she would be a cheap hire. However, she can't wait to escape and leaves to become the governess to an excitable French child named Adele Varens, the ward of Rochester, a tortured, imperious man who lives as a near- recluse at his estate, Thornfield Manor. Jane immediately falls in love with the sullen Rochester, but to the manner born, she cannot admit this to him. He dallies with an avaricious socialite but eventually finds himself reciprocating Jane's feelings for him and proposes to her.In the middle of their wedding ceremony, it comes to light that Edward is already married to a violently insane woman locked in the tower of his estate. The rest of the Victorian-era story deals with how Jane responds to this most unfortunate situation which of course, means a lot of sturm und drang. During the prime phase of her lengthy career, Fontaine was at her most effective in conveying a coiled passion under a becalming veneer, and that's what makes her an ideal Jane. There are excellent supporting turns from Henry Daniell as Mr. Brocklehurst, the cruel headmaster of Jane's school; Agnes Moorehead, one of Welles' most valued Mercury Players, as Mrs. Reed; Margaret O'Brien sprightly as Adele just before her more memorable turn as Tootie in "Meet Me in St. Louis"; and Peggy Ann Garner genuinely spirited as the younger Jane. It's also hard to miss an unbilled Elizabeth Taylor, striking as ever at ten, as the doomed orphan Jane befriends as a child. The one flaw with the 97-minute film is the truncated ending which resolves everything far too quickly. But watch this classic for Welles' mesmerizing performance. It's a knockout.The 2007 DVD has a superb restoration and contains some solid extras such as two audio commentary tracks. The first is with Welles biographer Joseph McBride lending insight and O'Brien (she must have been around 70) providing personal recollections of the production. It's more interesting that than the second commentary track which has film historians Nick Redman, Steven Smith, and Julie Kirgo trading trivia about the source novel and the film. Also included are a musical-score- only track; an eighteen-minute, behind-the-scenes featurette, "Locked in the Tower: The Men Behind Jane Eyre", which has film historians and others discussing the production from various angles; a 42-minute U.S. War Film Department propaganda piece directed by Stevenson called "Know Your Ally Britain"; an interesting restoration comparison; and galleries of production stills, storyboards, and film posters. It's an excellent package for collectors of classic films.