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A cheerful Rochester? A beautiful Jane Eyre? A slapstick Adelle? Oy, what's the point of adapting a classic novel if you're gonna change every character!

I suppose the film has a certain appeal anyway; it's pleasantly ancient and strange, and it's nice to see Colin "Dr. Frankenstein" Clive in another role. But, to true devotees of the original novel, this is a real butcher job.

Creaky stagy and truly muffled and, well, ancient, this 1934 Monogram talkie has 1929 production values which clearly irritate some viewers. One must be kind to these 61 minute double feature barrel bottom scrapers and emotionally account for the time and place they were made. Monogram was formed in 1931 as a result of the talkie boom, and by 1934 were trying to upgrade their image. They were probably still using the same 1928 equipment the first bought second hand in 1931 from some creaky talkie outfit the folded in 1930. Remember this was a time when there was 30,000 single screen cinemas in the USA alone so anything and everything had a chance of showing in maybe six or seven thousand cinemas. Monogram charged a flat rental fee for their films and since they knew how many cinemas would play a particular sort of film they knew show much profit was in it before it was even made. Some very entertaining films from this period include their 61 minute version of OLIVER TWIST, their 66 minute operetta musical KING KELLY OF THE USA complete with an animated sequence!...and their super block buster again around 65 minutes GIRL OF THE LIMBERLOST. The only reason they would have attempted JANE EYRE is because: a: it was out of copyright and they could make it 'for free' b: Oliver Twist made some money and the sets and costumes were still at the studio c: Monogram Pictures were double feature fillers usually and they needed to make another, and one with a veneer of 'quality'. d: they were trying anything to see if they could make it. Monogram fans would see the same stairs and rooms and furniture for the next 25 years in almost every other Charlie Chan Mr Wong and Bowrey Boys Monogram Picture...even as late as 1958 in The House On Haunted Hill and in 1965 in the Elvis comedy in a ghost town TICKLE ME. True!

I give this "version" of Jane Eyre 5 stars because I think every Eyre-lover should see it, for a laugh and a lark. The story has absolutely nothing to do with the book, and it doesn't stand alone as an individual piece either. It's just wretched and sloppy. And I don't blame the production values for that.

Virginia Bruce looks like she really doesn't want to be there, and she can't lose that depression-era slouch...She saunters around Thornfield, flops her away down the road, and just looks dour and unpleasant. Her loosey-goosey posture was really distracting.

Poor old Bertha locked upstairs, clearly off she's off her rocker, but she didn't seem demented enough to be hid away.

The only really good thing about this picture was when Jane tells Brocklhurst off for interrupting her class at Lowood. I half expected her to start slashing away at him with the pointer. Given that the rest of the script had nothing to do with the book, it would have been a nice touch. I mean, why not? Everyone wants Brocklehurst to get his come-uppence. And this Jane is just the girl to do it!

See this one, then see Cusack/Jayston, then see Welles/Fontaine, then see Stephens/Wilson. In that order, for me, the most recent is the most satisfying...except for a few missed marks.

Jane Eyre is my favorite novel. I have read Charlotte Bronte's classic story many times over the past 30 years. The original story has many spiritual aspects that appeal to me, beautiful inner and outward dialogue, an intriguing plot, complex characters, and other fine qualities no longer appreciated by a large segment of the reading public in the modern world.

I bought the DVD for this ancient film dinosaur with Virginia Bruce and Colin Clive (Dr. Frankenstein! no less) because I suspected it would be good for a laugh. But this film version is so bad I was more shocked than amused.

They ominously started the film on the wrong foot by misquoting the first line of the novel; they removed the character of Helen Burns altogether; they gave Grace Poole a husband who was a servant in the house who warns Jane "I like you, so I'm going to tell you: lock your door at night!"; they have Jane screaming at Mr. Brocklehurst and calling him names, so she is fired from her job as teacher there. In the book Jane isn't fired; she leaves to find a governess position to escape from Lowood Institution (here called an orphanage, even though in the novel not all the children were orphans - Lowood in the book was a charity institution, not an orphanage); in this film Adele is not French, her origins in the house are not even discussed; she calls Rochester "Uncle Edward", and he fawns over her and spoils her rotten, something that didn't happen in the book at all.

They make Blanche ugly and older, and Jane Eyre a platinum blonde with Mary Pickford curls. Hello? Jane was supposed to be plain, and Blanche was supposed to be gorgeous. They turn it all around in this monstrosity. In the scene where Jane saves Rochester from the fire the possible reason for that fire is not even discussed between them; he kisses her hands and she promptly leaves the room like she was leaving a garden party, seemingly unaffected by his passion.

The worst liberty they took with the classic novel was having Edward Rochester apparently trying to have his marriage to his first wife "annulled", which made no sense, since Rochester was not Catholic. There is no Mr. Mason in this version; there is no attempted wedding scene. The "insane" wife just walks into a room at Thornfield in which Jane, Rochester, and the minister are standing and announces she wants to see her husband. The servants spirit her away and she protests in a totally normal voice: "I want to see my husband!" LOL! Why didn't they LET HER SEE HER HUSBAND??? I was starting to think that everyone in the house was insane, and Bertha was the only normal one!

There's more that I can say about this sad state of affairs (like having Jane singing to Rochester, which DID send me into fits of laughter) but I won't bore you, and will simply conclude with this statement: do NOT show this version to anyone who has not read the book first. This is NOT "Jane Eyre"; this is some other story!

The best, most faithful version of Jane was the 1982-3 BBC version with Timothy Dalton. Why the Timothy Dalton version has not been put on DVD yet, and this 1934 Monogram Colin Clive fiasco has been, is totally beyond my comprehension. Hopefully this sad state of affairs will be attended to and corrected shortly.

A classic becomes a classic for very specific reasons. When film companies approach a story like Jane Eyre with disrespect, and feel they can change anything and everything about it to their heart's content, then the very spirit of that classic is destroyed. When will they ever learn?

Adapting a classic novel faithfully and accurately is a good thing, and most IMDB reviewers have condemned this version for its fast-and-loose adaption of the Charlotte Bronte novel. However, faithfulness to the source material isn't the only standard by which to judge a movie. This version of Jane Eyre is only an hour long, so all except a few of the main plot points are sacrificed or, as others have noted, altered. But if you don't intend to pass a school exam on the novel by watching the movie, and if you judge the movie on its own merits, it does have merits. Virginia Bruce and Colin Clive are attractive and appealing leads. Several of the character actors are given moments in which to shine, and make the most of them. And the settings and photography are suitably moodily atmospheric. On its own, without reference to the book, it's not half bad, and worth the hour.

According to the Internet Movie Database there are 22 versions of the famous Charlotte Bronte novel Jane Eyre done, counting both silent screen and small screen adaptions all the way to the present time. I never realized how popular a property Jane Eyre was for dramatization. I doubt very much if anyone would ever consider this 1934 version starring Virginia Bruce and Colin Clive as the best of them.

Still in reviewing this movie you have to take into account that this was done for Monogram Pictures on a shoestring budget. Bruce and Clive were borrowed from MGM and Universal respectively and neither was exactly a box office name. The running time is only 63 minutes so like every other work of literature there will always be stuff left out unless it's a TV mini-series and you have several hours to play with.

One criticism I will agree with. Jane Eyre in fact is a plain Jane and the glamorous blond Virginia Bruce just isn't right for the part. Joan Fontaine was far closer to Charlotte Bronte's idea of Jane Eyre in her version with Orson Welles on a much bigger budget with MGM.

It's definitely a subpar version of the novel, but be a bit more charitable to this Jane Eyre considering the circumstances of its creation.

This version of the classic story should move like the wind at 62 minutes, instead its slow and talky and not very good. I'm not certain how much is the result of too much time having passed since this film was made, 70 odd years ago and counting, but this is a movie to a avoid simply because time has not been kind to it. The film feels more like a filmed stage play than a movie as there is never any sense place beyond what we would see if it were on a stage. The performances are okay but there are times one wonders if they were aware of that film acting for sound had advanced from the overdone to a more naturalistic style. I don't think it would be fair to comment on the additions and subtractions from the book, especially in light of the fact that they use chapter headings from the book to advance the plot that gallop from one to ten and onward. Not something to watch unless you love the story or hate yourself enough to watch a film thats almost too painful to get through.

JANE EYRE (Monogram, 1934), directed by Christy Cabanne, is another "poverty row" screen treatment taken from classic literature in the formatted style to the studio's own presentation to Charles Dickens' OLIVER TWIST (1933) starring Dickie Moore. While not the original screen adaptation to Charlotte Bronte's immortal novel, "Jane Eyre" consisted of numerous silent screen versions, one as early as 1913 starring Lisbeth Blackstone, another, retitled WOMAN AND WIFE (1917) with Alice Brady, and again (1921) in retained title featuring Mabel Ballin. For this first talkie edition, the title role goes to Virginia Bruce (1910-1981) on loan from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Bruce, a fine actress, is one who never really achieved the sort of movie stardom of a Bette Davis or Katharine Hepburn. Regardless of its merits and low-budget structure, JANE EYRE, in fact, didn't help nor hurt Miss Bruce's screen career, nor did it prompt any possibilities for other movie studios in remaking the Bronte story over and over again, namely the next-in-line remake, the oft-revived and admired 20th Century-Fox 1944 production starring Orson Welles (Rochester) and Joan Fontaine (Jane). For now, let's concentrate on this JANE EYRE from Monogram Studios.

Told through the passages of the novel, Jane Eyre begins with, "Chapter I, 'The cold winter wind had brought with it somber cold and penetrating rain.'" Jane Eyre (Jean Darling) is introduced as an child orphan living in the home and charity of her unsympathetic Aunt Mary Reed (Clarissa Selwynne) and her spoiled children, Georgiana (Anne Howard) and John (Richard Quine). John, a momma's boy, pleasures himself "disciplining" his cousin through unnecessary tactics of facial slaps and accusations of being a thief who's stolen one of his books. Because of her unruly outbursts for defending herself, Mrs. Reed soon deposits her niece to the Lowood Orphanage for Girls where Jane finds herself under the kindness of Miss Temple (Greta Gould) and strict disciplinary actions of its no-nonsense headmaster, Mr. Brocklehurst (David Torrence). As the pages flip, skipping through various details of Jane's childhood, the story resumes with "Chapter X, 'I remained an inmate of Lowood's walls for ten years, eight as a pupil, and finally two as a teacher."' The adult Jane Eyre (Virginia Bruce), is shown as a humanly kind schoolteacher getting through to her pupils with kindness and understanding. Because Mr. Brocklehurst doesn't believe in her tactics, he immediately dismisses her. Jane soon acquires a new position, that of governess in the estate of Edward Rochester (Colin Clive). Though Jane enjoys her new position caring for Rochester's mischievous niece, Adele (Edith Fellows), and the fine companionship of Mrs. Fairfax (Beryl Mercer), the housekeeper, she's surrounded by strange surroundings and occurrences by night with the sounds of tormented screams from the far distance of the mansion, a mysterious fire in one of the rooms, and a strange figure roaming about, reasons known only by married servants, Sam (John Rogers) and Grace Poole (Ethel Griffies - a role she repeated in the 1944 version), but most of all, Mr. Rochester, who'd rather spare Jane from the outlandish details.

Other members of the cast include that of Aileen Pringle (Blanche Ingram, Rochester's snobbish fiancée); Lionel Belmore (Lord Ingram, Blanche's father whom Adele says resembles a walrus); Claire DuBrey (Bertha Rochester); and Jameson Thomas (Charles Crack).

For anyone quite familiar or in favor of either the 1944 Joan Fontaine version or the numerous latter theatrical and/or made-for-television editions to JANE EYRE, would be quite disappointed by this production. Though comparing with the others is inevitable, this JANE EYRE presents itself more like an early 1929 sound talkie than one made in 1934. The low budget qualities and musical background limitations would have been forgivable had it not been for the present structure of the film. Although quite a common practice for the screen treatment to stray from the book in favor of rearranging situations and characters to add more interest, JANE EYRE might have succeeded into at least an average product had the film itself been fully developed in both characters and plot. As much as Bruce, Clive and Fellows dominate in these proceedings, the cast support results to mostly extended cameos. A major character of John Rivers (Desmond Roberts) becomes a third dimensional one appearing briefly as a man running a charity mission who's gotten to know and love Jane enough to offer her his hand in marriage. Rivers suddenly disappears, never to be seen again. While Leonard Maltin's TV and Video Guide clocks JANE EYRE at 67 minutes, it's curious as to whether the director's cut was originally longer at possibly 80 minutes, than the now circulating 62 minute edition.

Retaining Colin Clive (immortally known for his title role of Universal's 1931 edition of FRANKENSTEIN) in the role of Rochester, it's a wonder how JANE EYRE of 1934 might have succeeded had it been produced and distributed by major studios as RKO Radio with Katharine Hepburn (excellent choice); MGM (with Maureen O'Sullivan); Paramount (Elissa Landi); Warner Brothers (newcomer Jean Muir); United Artists (Joan Bennett) or even Universal (newcomers Jane Wyatt or British born Valerie Hobson), as possible casting examples for the Bronte heroine.

Not as frequently televised as Monogram's OLIVER TWIST (1933), the long unseen JANE EYRE has become available over the years on either video cassette (1990s) and/or DVD format, the only method of getting to see how "it happened to Jane" as well as an opportunity in rediscovering Virginia Bruce in a rare leading screen performance and getting to hear her sing Franz Schubert's "Serenade" while playing the piano. (**)

I was very curious to see this film for a long time, and was happy to finally get the chance to see it when it came out on DVD not long ago. I've always liked Colin Clive, and it seemed to me that he would be a good choice to play Edward Rochester. I wasn't disappointed. He was nervous, agitated, sympathetic and quite tormented as usual. I wasn't familiar with Virginia Bruce going in, and was absolutely astounded that she was chosen for the part of Jane Eyre. What we have here is a big, buxom, beautiful blond with a flawless, pale complexion and a gorgeous smile. With her shoes on she's nearly as tall as Clive & that sultry, fleshy body of hers suggests she outweighs the gaunt actor by more than a few pounds as well. During the party Rochester has for his guests he says to Jane, "You're a funny little thing..." which I thought was a hoot since the script writer must have wrote the scene before clapping an eye on Ms. Bruce, who is anything but a "Funny little thing."

What does all this mean? Well yes, as others here have said, this film has only a glancing similarity to the novel. The discrepancies are so outrageous that they border on being quite charming and sweet. Aileen Pringle as Blanche Ingram is an attractive actress, yet Virginia Bruce has a huge advantage in looks over her that actually leads to dialog suggesting as much! In the novel Rochester is tormented and difficult, but he is a powerful and dominating figure. Here, Colin Clive as Rochester is tormented and weak, and as such we have a romance where he is all but consumed and comforted by Jane's tall figure and ample charms. The sequence where Rochester tricks Jane into choosing jewelry, clothes and other items out for herself and not Blanche Ingram (which is Jane's mistaken notion) is consistent with the novel and other film versions and is very touching. This is the no stress version of Jane Eyre that I found very pleasing to watch.

Charlotte Bronte's novel is a classic, and while I wasn't expecting something word-by-word adaptation-wise, I was expecting at least some of the novel's spirit to come through. Sadly, no. Apart from some curiosity value, decent(but not timeless) production values, a touching scene with Rochester tricking Jane into choosing clothes and jewellery and a sometimes scary performance from Claire DuBrey especially with the banshee routine, this is probably the worst Jane Eyre film or adaptation to exist. Its lack of faithfulness is not its only problem. The script feels really stilted and sloppy, the music is stock and the story here is completely lacking in the book's heart and complexity and bears only glancing resemblance to it and the film is far too short and rushed. I have no better news to say about the acting. Virginia Bruce was a gorgeous woman, but she was far too beautiful for a plain character such as Jane, while Colin Clive turns Rochester from a brooding, dark and complex character into a performance too cheery and refined. The two don't convince really in their chemistry together in my opinion. The character of Adele is also too slapsticky for my tastes. All in all, has curiosity value, but apart from one or two things, as an adaptation and on its own terms this Jane Eyre doesn't work. For a better film adaptation, the best one is the Orson Welles film, the best overall adaptations are between the 1973 and 1983 mini-series. 3/10 Bethany Cox

For the most part this is a fairly weak Monogram (read budget with a capital B) adaptation of the Bronte classic. Colin Clive is woefully miscast as Edward Rochester, a character so complex and filled with such passionate brooding that it takes the likes of an Orson Welles or a George C.Scott to really pull it off. Instead Clive plays the master of Thornfield like he is just some normal single dad on the make who just happens to have his unbalanced first wife locked up in the attic.Maybe director Cabanne thought that this interpretation would make the character seem more suspicious to the audiences of 1934. Unfortunately this reviewer writing in 2002 finds Clive's Rochester about as suspicious as a stained glass window. In a Lutheran church.Virginia Bruce is adequate as the title character but unfortunately her best lines are undermined by unnecessary stock music pulled from Monogram's Oliver Twist (released the previous year). However horror fans especially those who feel at home with the jump-out-of-your-skin style of Sam Raimi of Evil Dead fame should see this film for the well-timed SHREIKS emanating from that attic. Claire DuBrey's banshee routine is enough to make your heart jump out of your mouth and do the macarena on top of the TV. So see this Eyre for the Screamer not for Ward Cleaver.

For fun, our family is watching all the extant versions of Jane Eyre in chronological order. So, we all read the book first. And, the 1934 version was the oldest version we could get our hands on (Netflix). It took about 3 minutes to figure out we were going to stray far afield from the book.

Letter Grade: D

This must have been Matinée fodder. A "star vehicle". 62 minutes. When you look at the epics being done in 1933-35, there seems to be no excuse for butchering the storyline and the essence of Jane from Charlotte Bronte's writing.

Onward ...

I agree. This was not Bronte,and it was definitely NOT Jane Eyre. It was, however, MONOGRAM!!! Please don't blame the poor actors. The studio game them nothing to work with. Virginia Bruce was a lovely girl, and an up and coming MGM star. Colin Clive was classically trained in the British theatre and had 10 years of repertory work under his belt. You know what that means. One week you might be playing a country parson, and the next week, Shakespeare. They both had earned their acting chops. Unfortunately, the majority of Monogram's budget probably went to pay the stars, and their was little left for anything else. We're talking prehistoric sound equipment, high school dramatic writing, and summer stock wardrobe. For a 1934 film, the tech aspects were strictly 1919. I'm sure that at the end of shooting, the stars politely shook hands, grabbed their cheques and ran like Hell! I know that if Clive had made Jane Eyre at Universal, with the same quality as their Great Expectations, he would have knocked Orson Welles flat! (g) JS

... that's not at all faithful to that tale. Virginia Bruce stars in the title role, a young woman raised in an orphanage who hires on as a governess of the niece of the cranky Mr. Rochester (Colin Clive). As Jane tries to find her way within the household, she starts to fall in love with her boss while also wondering about the strange screams coming from the room into which she's forbidden to look.

Some sources have called this the best movie ever made by a Poverty Row studio. There are plenty that I liked more than this, but I'm not really the audience for this type of story. The acting is decent, and the costumes and sets are nicer than in most Monogram efforts, but it still seems clunky, sometimes amateurish, and with very uninspired direction. Running at just over an hour, it's not a major investment in time.

If you want accuracy or something better, you can check out the later versions of Jane Eyre. Anyway, this film was done in 1934 and it's an early talking version of the story. Please remember that most films until 1929 were silent and this film was only done five years later with the new sound of the time. I don't fault the studio for only delivering a short film version of the Bronte classic novel, Jane Eyre. Virginia Bruce is fine as the title character. Recently deceased Edith Fellows played Adele Rochester. Colin Clive was fine as Edward Rochester. The rest of the cast and the crew made films faster and more in quantity than they do nowadays. In fact, the studios worked their cast and crews making five or six films a year in those days. Times have changed the course of film-making. With the advent of sound to occur only 5 years before, this Jane Eyre version is faithful to the story even though the film is only about an hour log. Sometimes short is sweet! But films of that era were often about an hour long as well.

This version of JANE EYRE is for film history buffs only - in it's day, it probably would have been a "9". This is a very early talkie, from one of the smaller movie companies, and all the growing pains show. (Garbo's ANNA Christie was made the year before this, and while still stagy, it shows what a larger, more successful film company could do, compared to this smaller one. Garbo's film was a film, this feels more like a record of a stage performance.) The script is rather "favorite scenes from JANE EYRE." It takes major plot points and turns them into a brighter story all together, mixing and matching elements at will.

Virginia Bruce is tall, platinum, strikingly beautiful with a lovely contralto voice, voluptuous figure and mesmerizing sad eyes (that inspired Italian doll maker Lenci, in many of his boudoir dolls of this period). All of this, of course makes her wrong to play Jane, in one of the most total miscasting moments of film history. Worse yet, she slumps and slinks around like a 1930s starlet, more Jean Harlow than Jane Eyre. To see her languidly lounging against a pillar or a piano, combined with some of the abrupt dialog lines that contradict the original story, brings lots of laughs to a Bronte fan. This version also added characters and played loose with details in ways that also made me laugh.

Colin Clive as Rochester is handsome, refined, and gentlemanly. He treats her like an Etonian suitor. Virginia Bruce rather brusquely runs the scenes with him, and often seems very bored with him, practically rolling her eyes. So, of course, all of this is wrong for the story. Now, I must say, they are both very good actors, and inhabit their roles, and for this period, they are both very fine (compare them with the supporting cast, especially the hysterically bad Adele – a child actor coached to the ends of every finger and curl in the most obvious stage mannerisms of the day), but the limitations of the medium of that day and their miscasting does them no favors.

The casting of his fiancée is very odd indeed, and shows how the beauty of WOMEN was valued at that time, over girls. She looks a good ten years older than Rochester, and quite the dark-haired demimonde vamp. Watching many versions of JANE ERYE, I find that the casting of this role and Adele tell us a tremendous amount about the tastes of the times.

The sets are bright and light, but we must understand, that some of this dynamic was needed for the cameras that were being used at the day, the makeup is very dramatic, but again, the makeup then needed for a face to "read" on camera was not even natural skin tones. So for these things, this version is a fascinating film study of a particular moment when films were transitioning. Miss Bruce's costumes are lovely – more Cinderella than plain Jane – and are also a notable moment of history, when this high waisted, fully flounced skirt was "in style" for period films. This type of dress, too, was copied by doll maker Lenci. You will notice that all the lines are spoken very slowly and distinctly, and many will dismiss it as bad acting, but this too, had to do with early sound recording, it was necessary for the way film was made.

Since I AM interested in film history, this has made me anxious to see more of Virginia Bruce. I want to see if her particular presence was used in more contemporary pieces, where her looks and personal style would have made her shine. This is a time capsule.

What is this comedy?! I expected to sit through an old worn adaption that creaked and had little to no music, but honestly I did not think it would be this bad! It wasn't even the production values that brought it down, it was the interpretation. As one reviewer said, this was an entirely different story that simply borrowed characters -- well, the names of the characters (kinda how Monogram borrowed the actors) -- to create a sugar-coated drama very loosely based on the book, Jane Eyre. Every element of suspense in the story was removed. It's actually laughable; those changes made the story absurd. It didn't help either that Adele was constantly having pratt falls—why was the time constraint wasted on her? Bertha came across as a nice lady who was cruelly locked away because Rochester felt like it, yet he came across as such a nice guy, boring even. All in all, it's only worth watching for the sheer ridiculousness that it is. You'll get in a few laughs.