1981 Sense and Sensibility - miniseries
This miniseries version of Sense and Sensibility is the longest one out there - which would make you think that they could include the most plot of all the series. Quite the opposite. They completely chop out the youngest sister, Margaret, for example! We're just left with two sisters - Elinor and Marianne.The story is of course that the two sisters and their mom are cast away when the father dies, left to fend on their own. However, unlike the other versions, they don't go to a rustic cottage by the sea, off in the wilderness. Instead their house is quite sedate and fairly large, on apparently a main street in town. Marianne is hardly a wild child. She trips while out on a fairly sedate walk with her older sister and they go back together to the house. She barely runs after Willoughby later on, or he after her. There doesn't seem to be much fire in their attachment.
I'm not sure if it's the casting, or the dialogue, or the belief of the director that people in Jane Austen's time had no feelings. I realize that the English were supposed to keep a stiff upper lip, and you can see that in the portrayal of the older sister Elinor, but the whole point of Marianne is that she cared little for those "silly rules". Instead, in this version, she seems just as constricted as her sibling.
I did like that they introduced some sibling rivalry, the sense that Marianne felt unappreciated by her sister and Willoughby was the only person who really listened to her. So they did give that sense of why Marianne connected to him so strongly.
I really don't like that Elinor seems to sensitive to Willoughby later on, feeling HE is the poor put-apon one because he impregnated and abandoned another woman and - poor him - therefore had to marry for money to settle his debts.
All in all, my least favorite one of the bunch.
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