Jane Eyre (1943)

As with many classic novels, I’ve never read Jane Eyre. Joan Fontaine is Jane, who after her own harrowing childhood is hired to look after mysterious Orson Welles’s young ward. At a brisk hour and a half, I’m certain there are character-defining scenes that must be missing from this portrayal. Fontaine’s portrayal is fairly acceptable, but Welles’s over-acting, directed to no one else in the world but himself, does nothing to further the romantic angle of the story. The young actors in the film (Peggy Ann Garner, Elizabeth Taylor, and Margaret O’Brien) all give sweet performances and it’s a shame they weren’t more of the focus of the story if they were going to butcher the novel anyway.