Mansfield Park

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!

If you enjoy Jane Austin's novels, this is the best of the two available versions of Mansfield Park. It is very true to the book, but lacks the beautiful production values and outstanding cinematography of the 1999 version that stars Frances O'Connor.

Fanny Price has always been a problematic character for Austin's fans. Many that read the book when it was published in the early 1800s found her unbearable compared to Austin's other, more spirited heroines. Sylvestra Le Touzel does a nice job in this very challenging role.

The best performance in the movie, though, is Jackie Smith Wood's Mary Crawford. Mary is beautiful, flirtatious, morally confused, good hearted and shallow, all at once. She is one of the more complicated characters in all of Austin's novels, and Jackie Smith-Wood plays her to the hilt. It's a mystery why such a terrific performance did not yield further opportunities, but her career seems to have evaporated after this role.

This is a movie for the more patient Austin fan. The pacing is measured, and the characters, particularly Edmund and Mary Crawford, evolve as the story moves forward. Mansfield Park, unlike Austin's other successful novels, is really about the failed love affair between Edmund and Mary. As a result, it is a more somber read than Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. The wedding at the end is a natural result of Edmund coming home to Fanny as the one stable element in his life.

It's a solid movie with good acting and a complicated plot. It is well worth seeing.

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.

Ok so maybe you all disagree, but I prefer this old mini-series to the modern 1999 film.

I read the book before I had seen either, and this version is so much more true to the book. For me that is much more important than modern touches that spoiled the movie.

Even though Sylvestra may not give a good performance as Fanny Price, I find her much more believable as Fanny than Frances O Connor.

The camera work is very dodgey. At the start when Fanny is in the carriage with Mrs Norris, when Fanny is introduced to the Bertrams and when Tom, Edmund and Mary Crawford are walking together.

Mrs Norris is just how I imagined her, and Lady Bertram too. Henry Crawford is not played well I feel, the way he speaks seems all wrong and strange, I think they chose the wrong actor there.

I was struck by the scene where Maria wants to go through the locked gate and sends Mr Rushworth to get the key. This scene is just how I pictured it in the book, it is quite remarkable.

The settings serve their purpose, the house is furnished as you would expect. That was another thing I disliked about the recent movie. Mansfield Park looked like a Fortress inside! All bare and ugly, more suited to Northanger Abbey I feel.

The music was simple, but it was obviously a low budget production.

If anyone agrees with me please say.

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"