Mansfield Park

Since secondary school I have loved Jane Austen's work. I love the language, the stories, the settings, the characters and their attitudes and the detail. There have been many great versions of Jane Austen's books, such as the 1995 Pride and Prejudice, the 1995 Sense and Sensibility and the 1995 Persuasion, but there are also some disappointing ones such as 1987's Northanger Abbey and 2007's Mansfield Park. This 1983 Mansfield Park is neither one of the greats or the disappointments regarding Jane Austen adaptations. It's not perfect, with a slow start and some stiff camera work, but it's still leagues ahead of the other two adaptations of the book, the 1999 version I disliked but had one or two decent things and the 2007 version I hated with a miscast Fanny Price and no actual sense of the era. This Mansfield Park has beautiful scenery and interiors as well as some handsome costumes, not only did I get a sense what era it was supposed to be set but also Mansfield Park itself didn't actually look like a fortress. The series is lengthy and the pacing leisurely, but considering the length of the book both were necessary and apart from at the start the adaptation benefits from these. The music is simple in composition, but not so much to be repetitive or over-bearing. The dialogue isn't too stilted and is in Austen's spirit, and once it gets going the storytelling with its detail to the time and characters is very believable and again pretty faithful. The acting was generally fine, Sylvestra Le Touzel's Fanny is not my definition of a great performance, but in the most challenging Austen heroine role she does do a good job being pretty and austere and is miles ahead of Frances O'Connor and Billie Piper. Nicholas Farrell is excellent though as Edmund and Bernard Hepton is a joy as Sir Thomas, but the best performances came from Jackie Smith-Wood in the complex but thankfully more subtle than before role of Mary Crawford, and Anna Massey who is as always great as Mrs Norris. So overall, has its foibles, but it is the best version and actually the only one I'd give as close as a recommendation to. 8/10 Bethany Cox

After watching the more recent movie version of this movie, I must admit I put off watching this one for fear they would be similar. I'd read the book years ago and enjoyed it, although not as much as Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. I finally got around to viewing this about a month after I'd purchased the box set and was VERY pleasantly surprised. It stayed very faithful to the book and unlike a few of the other reviews I read here, I did not find it at all dull nor did i find the acting lacking in any fashion.

I especially liked the development of the relationships between Fanny, Tom and Edmund. It was neat seeing them grow and mature over the course of the mini-series.

I was also impressed with the interactions between the Crawfords. The characters had always irked me a bit in the story but in this version they came across as more subtle.

The actors weren't perfect, but they were mostly believable. Sylesta seemed to talk continually in a high tone, and didn't seem to fit comfortably into her role. But she was submissive yet resolute, as Fanny is supposed to be. I didn't feel Edmond was totally right for his role either. He didn't seem smooth enough or something. I liked Henry Crawford mostly, except he didn't make me fall in love with him when he addressed himself to Fanny. He wasn't convincing when he tried to woo Fanny- if he was i'd have fallen in love with him. He also had a curl of the lip that made him ugly- he would have been handsome without it. His sister totally hit the nail on the head though. And Lady Bertram was HILARIOUS! I loved her performance! Anna Massey as Aunt Norris was great too!

Low budget films and television productions have to be accepted for what they are. That being said, the 1983 Mansfield Park still has a distinctive on-location look and the cast is uniformly strong - Sylvestra Le Touzel has just the right mix of prettiness and austerity and Nicholas Farrell is excellent as Edmund.

Where the 1999 film sacrificed the book's moral subtlety for pretty obvious ends (Fanny becomes a sort of pseudo-feminist icon, but of course back in the eighteenth century, before it was cool) the 1983 film contains all the troubled morality of the book - its characters, many of whom are failures in way or another, are presented with sympathy and irony, and the faithfulness of the screenplay is infinitely to be preferred to the 1999 film's racy, but ultimately pedestrian value system.

This is unquestionably the best ever adaptation of this book, faithful to the text and faithful to the feeling of the book. Sylvestra le Touzel is appropriately mouse-like and really embodies the real Fanny Price, (one of my favourite Austen heroines). She displays that transcendence of flesh that Austen uses as a metaphor for stability in an increasingly precarious situation, both for the estate and for the individuals associated with it. More recent adaptations have tried to make Fanny more capricious and human... but that is not what she is about. She represents the rise of the diligent lower classes to dominate the corrupt aristocracy, of merit over money, and morality over license. She and Edmund are the eventual winners, custodians of their inheritance, when all the favoured children have fallen into sin and temptation and proved themselves unworthy. Fanny Price is not so very different from Jane Bennett, Anne Elliot or Elinor Dashwood. I don't understand why so many people find her character "difficult"