The Buccaneers

This movie, The Buccaneers, is one of my all-time favorite movies ever! I love everything about it. The lush, beautiful English homes and countryside. The amazing characters and awesome acting. The authenticity of the period (everything from costumes, hairstyles, sets, etc. - wonderful). The score is so beautiful. I could watch this movie over and over and over and love it each and every time.

The plot moves at just the right pace throughout the entire movie. Never too slow or dragging - but not to fast either - allows you to absorb the richness and beauty of the aristocratic homes (oh, they are so amazing!) and all that surrounds the story. I found myself totally drawn in to these characters in a way I rarely have in any other movie.

Do yourself a favor and watch this enchanting movie!

Backdrop: In the latter half of the 1800's, America's New York was a rising industrial and financial giant. Many "old money" families like the Vanderbilt's and Astor's began to look to England to secure English titles to add to their prestige. Whereas, the "new moneyed" Americans denied admittance into New York society, also looked to England for a title and acceptance. On the other hand, where England was still a colonial power with extreme amounts of wealth in the hands of a few landed gentry, many of these landed English families were cash poor; thus paving the way for marriage alliances to be formed across the Atlantic.

The Story: Edith Wharton's unfinished novel, The Buccaneers takes place within these historical times, and portrays the hazards that develop when socially driven families manipulate and connive young minds through the use of duty, honor, title and wealth.

This BBC production is splendidly done, with grand costumes of the day, beautiful locations, and strong performances by the cast. One slight drawback is that several key characters seem to simply fade away within the story, so that the emotional investment is oddly lost and dismissed for three of the four girls halfway through the series.

The ending developed from Wharton's notes is satisfying, at the same time that it is unsettling. For true to the time, women's choices were difficult, and often crushing. Surprisingly, you may find that you'll think on this story long afterwards.

We almost gave up at the end of the first episode, which is slow moving and frivolous -- endless scenes of giggling young ladies behaving like thirteen year old girls. But by the end of the second episode we were glad we persisted. In the context of the full story, the carefree lives of the American girls before they get to England, although overdone, is a necessary contrast. This five episode mini-series is a watchable adaptation of Edith Wharton's last (and unfinished) novel. The characters are well drawn, the settings are sumptuous, and the depiction of upper-class English life in the late nineteenth century is believable and illuminating.

Wonderful adaptation of Edith Wharton's last novel. If you enjoyed films like Sense and Sensibility or Age of Innocence, you will enjoy this as well. This film is beautiful to look at, lush production values, a strong cast.

Seez, you seem to be very confused.

Edith Wharton and Jane Austen are two totally different authors. They both were women and both wrote socially-oriented novels, but that's about all they have in common.

Jane Austen was English. She lived from 1775 to 1817 and published only six books, two posthumously. The major theme of her books is genteel but impoverished young women trying to make advantageous marriages. She had nothing whatsoever to do with the story of The Buccaneers; she died 120 years before the book was written.

Edith Wharton was an American. A member of New York's old Society, she was born Edith Jones in 1862. She was married at age 23 to Teddy Wharton, a socially acceptable young man, but the union was not happy. She published her first book in 1900 and soon moved to France when she began to experience commercial success. She would spend much of the rest of her life in Europe, divorcing Teddy when he threatened to spend all her money, for as a best-selling author her income was large. Wharton's books center around the American social scene and the socially constricting expectations of that world; she usually portrays marriage as a sort of prison, as she herself experienced it. The Buccaneers (1937) was her last novel. She died before it was finished, but left an outline; it has actually been finished by several authors in several different versions based upon her notes.

And finally, it is not set in "the Regency period of English history" (that term refers specifically to the years 1811-1820). It is set in the 1870s.