Adaptations of three Victorian novels

[Lokke Heiss]

A student at my school is doing a paper on the adaptation of three Victorian novels to silent film.

Can anyone tell me anything about these versions that I find in the IMDB-- more importantly, if the film is extant (and possibly viewable)?

The novels and adaptations are:

1) Jane Eyre

Die Waise von Lowood (1926) (novel "Jane Eyre")
... aka Orphan of Lowood (International: English title)
Shirley (1922) (novel)
Jane Eyre (1921) (novel)
Woman and Wife (1918) (novel "Jane Eyre")
... aka The Lifted Cross
Memorie di una istitutrice, Le (1917) (novel)
Castello di Thornfield, Il (1915) (novel "Jane Eyre")
Jane Eyre (1915) (novel)
Jane Eyre (1914/II) (novel)
Jane Eyre (1914/I) (story)
Jane Eyre (1910) (novel)

2) The Woman in White

The Woman in White (1917) (novel)
... aka The Unfortunate Marriage (USA: reissue title)
Tangled Lives (1917) (novel "The Woman in White")
The Moonstone (1915) (novel) (play)
The Quest of the Sacred Jewel (1914) (novel "The Moonstone") (uncredited)
... aka The Quest of the Sacred Gem
The New Magdalen (1914) (novel)
The Dream Woman (1914) (novel "The Dream-Woman")
The New Magdalen (1912) (novel)
The Woman in White (1912/I) (novel)
The Woman in White (1912/II) (novel)

3) David Copperfield

David Copperfield (1922) (novel)

David Copperfield (1913) (novel)

David Copperfield (1911) (novel)
... aka Little Em'ly and David Copperfield (USA: second part title)
... aka The Early Life of David Copperfield (USA: first part title)
... aka The Loves of David Copperfield (USA: third part title)


Extra credit if you watch all these films and write her paper

[boblipton]

Well, the 1913 DAVID COPPERFIELD is on the BFI SILENT DICKENS set.

Bob

[Penfold]

Well, the 1913 DAVID COPPERFIELD is on the BFI SILENT DICKENS set.

Bob

Not in its entirety - it's an 8-minute clip.....but it may survive in its entirety at the BFI/NFTVA - a Viewing Copy is listed in their British Cinema Source Book.

David Parker wrote this about the film in the Screenonline article, Dickens on Film.

By 1913, with Cecil Hepworth and Thomas Bentley's production of David Copperfield, we begin to see a much more sophisticated attempt at dealing with the complexity of a Dickens text. Hepworth and Bentley take 108 minutes to relate the narrative visually. To a modern audience, the speed of the telling seems at times to undermine all coherence. As film historian Brian MacFarlane notes: "[The film's] speed is not due to fluent camera work or editing but to its dispensing with character elaboration and its reducing of narrative to a skeleton framework, sometimes at the expense of motivation and logical development." But such criticisms are essentially borne of historical disjunction and if we bear in mind that many magic lantern shows would have narrated a Dickens tale in 12 or at most 24 separate slides - not dissimilar in essence to the 1901 Scrooge - we can begin to see how David Copperfield might have appeared a spectacular and more meaningful affair to an Edwardian audience.

Hope this helps...

[Frederica]

1) Jane Eyre

Shirley (1922) (novel)

Shirley is a different Charlotte Bronte novel, or is this movie version entitled "Shirley" actually derived from Jane Eyre? Shirley Eyre, perhaps?

Fred

[gwenlorraine]

Shirley is a different Charlotte Bronte novel, or is this movie version entitled "Shirley" actually derived from Jane Eyre? Shirley Eyre, perhaps?

Shirley is a completely different novel than Jane Eyre. Charlotte Bronte wrote Shirley as a consciously unromantic social novel, in contrast to Jane Eyre's gothic romance.

I think you can probably scratch Shirley (1922) off the list, although in the freewheeling world of film adaptation, anything is possible.

[Jay Salsberg]

THE MOONSTONE is also a completely different novel than THE WOMAN IN WHITE; but if you're going to include it, there was a very good 1934 version from Monogram with David Manners.

[KellyBrown]

Flora Foster was in the 1913 Thanhouser David Copperfield, possibly the last role before her early death in 1914.

[Henry Nicolella]

The 1915 MOONSTONE is extant; Eastman House in Rochester has a copy.
The Thanhouser 1917 WOMAN IN WHITE is available on one of their dvd sets.
QUEST OF THE SACRED JEWEL and THE DREAM WOMAN are lost.
Henry Nicolella

[Christopher Jacobs]

The 1915 MOONSTONE is extant; Eastman House in Rochester has a copy.
The Thanhouser 1917 WOMAN IN WHITE is available on one of their dvd sets.

The 1915 MOONSTONE was shown at, I think, a Cinesation, and is rather interesting if very slowly paced.

WOMAN IN WHITE under its reissue title of THE UNFORTUNATE MARRIAGE is on the third Thanhouser set (vol. 7-8-9) in a lovely transfer from the Library of Congress (which I bought at the Niles/Essanay Museum table at the Cinecon last week and just watched last night). It drags in spots but is quite a complexly plotted little melodrama that's a lot of fun, and gorgeously photographed. How can you not like a film that starts with a beautiful young madwoman escaping from an asylum and ending with a climactic fire sequence? If there's a 35mm viewing print, this deserves to make the rounds of the major classic film conventions.

--Christopher Jacobs
http://hpr1.com/film
http://www.und.edu/instruct/cjacobs

[rogerskarsten]

By the way, Lokke, did your student ever write that paper?

~Roger