annpan, I haven't seen the P&P film but do agree re 'hats' and similar costume re-arranging.
I understand the costume depts. of the BBC and film companies claim to go to great length to get these things accurate, but sometimes I'm surprised to see a shot say, of Victorians 'taking the air' in a park, and the number of characters that are both hatless, jacket/coatless and without gloves.
If you have ever read The Go-Between you may remember Leo looking back on the Edwardian days of his boyhood and saying how hot he became dressed in a tweed suit while sitting on the beach but, of course, he couldn't take the jacket off as he was a young gentleman.
In the BBC series of P&P in almost the last shot Darcy is shown kissing Elizabeth without removing his hat. The cad.
We saw a TV prog. not long ago which explained how the food for period dramas plus the cutlery, tea-services etc are all carefully researched. I have tried to see what the characters are eating but it is not easy, although often a Granny Smith of Golden Delicious apple (recent foreign imports) appear in a Georgian fruit bowl or there is a shot of someone eating an orange in August.
Have you seen the film Mrs Brown? They did a good job in one scene where Q Victoria came into lunch, and in her 'German' way attacked the soup. As soon as she had finished the next course was served to her . . .and to everyone else whether they had finished or not. Q V was a fast eater.
It didn't become a tradition until later in the UK (don't know when) that everyone ate a course together before being served the next. The dishes were all served as 'removes' or were already on the table so everyone could help themselves.

As a gardener who specializes in antique roses, I find it particularly jarring to see hybrid tea roses in historical films. Modern hybrid teas did not come into existence until the 1860's, and older roses looked quite different. I am still waiting for Hollywood to hire me as a rose consultant so that their movie roses will be period-correct, but it has not happened yet.

Paula, we have just watched the first of three programmes in the BBC series The Impressionists. I noticed roses among the flowers being sold by a street vendor and wondered if they would fit your bill. Also lots of oranges, apples, pears etc. no doubt added for a splash of colour.
If anyone is interested in art and art history they may enjoy these progs. Told in flash back by an elderly Monet with many scenes shot at the locations in which the group painted.

Veer, we aren't seeing The Impressionists on PBS here in the United States yet, so I don't know.

The first exhibition of Impressionist paintings was in 1874. The very first hybrid tea roses had been introduced a few years earlier, but they didn't look much like modern hybrid teas. The most popular classes of roses were still teas and hybrid perpetuals, which were combined to create hybrid teas. Sorry, more than you wanted to know, but a subject dear to my heart.

I've included a link to a typical hybrid perpetual that would have been widely available in the period so you can see what it might have looked like. Teas, on the other hand, would be pastel yellow or pink, with a modern pointed bud, but much more delicate and with the flower drooping rather than standing up straight.

As time went on, the impressionist painters would have encountered more and more hybrid tea roses, though not in the modern scarlet, orange, and brilliant yellows that were not introduced until around 1900. The older roses would have begun to look old-fashioned to them. Now some gardeners are starting to like old or modern old-style roses again (David Austin roses for example), and it is the older hybrid teas that are in danger of being forgotten.

Now I promise to stop talking about old roses unless some RP member is so imprudent as to actual asks me a question!

Rosefolly

Here is a link that might be useful: Baronne Prévost

Veer, I laughed so much at your put-down "the cad". I can usually find something that amuses me in the threads. I wished that I could have drawn the soapy spaniels in the Alphabet thread we had earlier but like Lizzie, I cannot draw!
Interesting to read about the rose mistakes, Rosefolly. I too love roses but am no expert. Since I now have a small garden area, I have put in probably too many but when I see a lovely one, preferably fragrant, at my local supermarket, I bring it home. As I have to go on a bus, this can be a problem, especially lugging a four foot Mr. Lincoln in a wheeled shopping bag and trying not to hook the other passengers!

OK Paula! I happen to be a fan of the David Austin's and have a lot of them - I realize that they are grafted onto old stock (here in California!) but why oh why do they get so tall & leggy when the description of them says 4 or 5ft bush! We prune them all the way back in January and I can tell you right now several of them are over 6ft tall!

Back to the P & P question - it is one of my pet peeves when they remake a perfectly good period movie, the last one was Vanity Fair with Reese Witherspoon....if they want to make a period movie-OK! just don't change it so much and keep the same title-call it something else ! There is no way they can take great books like those and whittle them down to a 2 hr movie.

Pat

It is fun to learn about other times and customs. People once took very seriously things that matter not one bit to us. Someday no doubt people will look at our social nuances with much amusement.

I think that what bothered me most about the latest P&P were misinterpreted social attitudes, especially toward the end. I actually enjoyed it, and found it beautiful to watch, and was particularly pleased to see it costumed for 1790 rather than the usual Regency period. Austen wrote her first draft First Impressions for what later became Pride and Prejudice, which made it a clever choice, I thought. And I did not fault the alterations made from the book. We already have a pretty much faithful, definitive movie in the Ehle/Firth version. What bothered me was the way the movie portrayed social attitudes toward courtship in the later part of the movie. I simply cannot imagine a respectable gentleman's respectable daughter meeting her lover at dawn, both so informally dressed. No marriage would follow such a meeting. She would be ruined. And we won't discuss the little add-on scene appended for us vulgar Americans who apparently need our i's dotted and t's crossed. I guess the director realized we are too dim to get it otherwise!

Annpan, having hijacked your thread for one of my favorite hobbyhorses, I thought I had better return it to its original topic.

Rosefolly

Pat, we were writing at the same time, so I missed your question. David Austin roses get way taller in the US than in England, and this seems to be especially true on the west coast. It is a climate difference. Garden writer Andrew Schulman called this the Jolly Green Giant syndrome, and recommended a low nitrogen fertilizer to combat this. I think most will get big anyway. To quote from his now-defunct website: "enormous top growth with stingy bloom and compromised resistance to fungal disease. As a group, the yellow English Roses are especially susceptible to this". Try Prospero, William Shakespeare 2000, and Tamora for ones that stay a reasonable size in my garden.

- R

Re Rosefolly's remarks: I simply cannot imagine a respectable gentleman's respectable daughter meeting her lover at dawn, both so informally dressed. No marriage would follow such a meeting. She would be ruined. And we won't discuss the little add-on scene appended for us vulgar Americans who apparently need our i's dotted and t's crossed.

I felt that way, too, about those scenes, though I did enjoy the movie.

I also wondered why they used statuary rather than portraits in the scenes where Lizzie is at Pemberley.

Paula. OK here is a question. Didn't hybrid teas change their names a few years ago, or at least here in the UK or am I thinking of something else?

As we have what you might call an 'old garden' with a large part of it 'walled' the DH decided to try and grow 'old fashioned roses' .. . only here and there, we don't have a 'rose garden'. So we have Madame Perrier, Little White Pet, La Reine Victoria, Cardinal Richlieu, Fantin Latour, Zephrine Drouhin & Cecile Brunner. I don't know if these would all fit into your idea of 'old fashioned'.
I asked the DH to put up a photo of our Buff Beauty (I aways want to call it a Buff Orpington as we keep hens) but he said as you were an expert the BB wouldn't count as 'old' . . .he is a scientist and can only think in straight lines, I'm not and my thoughts go all over the place!
We have fantastic soil here but it it rather too light for roses and the 'older' varieties do suffer with blackspot and just about everything else.

Did they meet on purpose though? Perhaps I don't recall correctly, but I thought she was out walking because she was so disturbed by Lady Catherine's accusations and insinuations and ran into Darcy in the field. I did enjoy that last little bit though. (the kiss)
Overall, I liked the movie and looked forward to each scene unveiling. "How will they handle that part?" was what I kept thinking. The scenery was spectacular as was the art direction and residences; LizzieÂs and DarcyÂs and Lady CÂs.

The inaccuracies didn't bother me because I wasn't expecting much. A & E's version is still my favorite by far.
I found Matthew Macfadyen to be a bit too bug eyed, bland, and bald for my taste (picky, picky, I know!)
and KeiraÂs bangs really bothered me. They seemed wrong for some reason. Maybe the lack of bonnet?

One of my favorite parts in the book is when Elizabeth tells her mother about Mr. Darcy. I am always disappointed when a movie version leaves that out.

Georgia, the director mentioned that he saw the statue gallery in a house where some of the film was shot so decided to use that with a bust of Darcy. He removed one of Napoleon!
What was in the scene that was shown in the US, please? On my DVD version, after the dawn meeting, there was a scene with interviews by Darcy and Lizzie with Mr. Bennet and his final request for any suitors for Mary and Kitty to come and see him!

You can find all you want to know here. Scroll down to the message board.

Here is a link that might be useful: Pride and Prejudice

Here in the US, there is a scene on the balcony of the bedroom some time after the wedding where Lizzy and Darcy indulge in a little mild marital courtship behavior. I'm being coy in case Spike's old censoring software is still on the lookout. Do we still go to Disney if we say something naughty? It's there so we'll know they have passion as well as romance, I guess. Sigh.

Veer, you are right that in the UK they dropped hybrid tea and floribunda and instituted class names that made more sense to them. I can see their point. However, we didn't here in the US, and I forget what the UK calls these classes now. Your husband is right about Buff Beauty. While it is an older rose, it belongs to the class hybrid musk, which is considered a modern class. (It's not the age of the rose; it's the age of the class it belongs to. Really.) However, it is a wonderful rose, and many people I know who prefer old roses are delighted to grow it. I do myself. In fact, probably about a quarter of my own roses are modern roses, though some of them are very old modern roses from the early 20th century. The others you mentioned, except for Little White Pet and Cecile Brunner which are polyanthas, would count officially as Old Garden Roses if you were to show them in a rose show here in the US. I never do this myself, being more interested in the garden itself than in a competition. Also, LWP was introduced in 1879 and CB in 1881. That seems plenty old enough to me to call them old roses! I grow Cardinal Richelieu and Fantin Latour myself, as well as the climbing verion of Cecile Brunner. Do post a picture of your walled garden if you get a chance. I would dearly love to see it.

Rosefolly, thanks for that info about the US P&P ending.
I have a Cecile Brunner, it came into full flower this summer, probably because it was in a part of the garden I didn't do much to in the way of fertilising! Talk about watched pots! Isn't it sweet? Lots of little blooms just crying out for a pretty posy vase and some baby's breath to set them off.
I now have a DVD of Vanity Fair and watched the ending that did not make it. Thank goodness, I preferred the film ending as it did even if not the way the book finished.
As I cannot sit comfortably through a cinema showing but now have a player, it is so interesting to get DVDs with all the extras. I used to rely on videotapes.

I was much struck by the portrayal of Mr Collins in the two recent versions. Until I saw the new movie, David Bamber's interpretation in the 1995 movie was the definitive one for me. It was his face and manner that I pictured the next time I re-read the book. However, Tom Hollander's very different interpretation worked, too. David Bamber's Mr Collins seems to me completely oblivious to his foolishness. Tom Hollander's darker Mr Collins seems to know, to be unable to change, and to be grimly determined to charge forward. I quite liked them both.

Paula, I can't get the 'Buff Beauty' pic to come up. The DH (I'm far too simple and non-technical) spent the best part of an hour fiddling with the site and it wont play.
If you wait 2/3 weeks the roses should be in bloom and I'll take another photo.
I could try sending it to you as an email attachment?

Veer, that would be fine. If you go to my member page I think you can get my email address - or at least send me an email to which I could reply sending you mine.

I was never able to post pictures here either. Someone suggested that I try www.photobucket.com. It is a free service and it is easy to use. Just create an account, upload the images you want to share, and paste the link that begins with a href= into the message here on the forum.

Paula, sent the pic to your member page email address (Not Gardenweb) 20.30 'our time' yesterday.
I was trying to use photobucket but had no luck with that particular photo.

I enjoyed this newest version very much because
I felt that all of the characters were more sympathetically portrayed. Although I love the Firth/Ehle epic for its faithfulness to the text, parts of it crawled (reading letters), made me cringe (Darcy's face in the mirror), and served up caricatures (Miss Bingley, Mr. Collins, Mary, and Mrs. Bennet in particular -- what's not to dislike?)

The country ballroom scene was delightful with its vigorous dancing and multi-generational costuming -- I have no idea if the dances were accurate, but it certainly conveyed the provincial atmosphere that Darcy found distasteful and Bingley, refreshing.

Small details explained characters' foibles like Mrs Bennet's vulgarity (alcohol) and Mr Bennet's scholarly passivity (dragonfly on pin). I felt sorry for Mary, who would have gladly accepted Mr Collins (watch her face in the aftermath of his proposal to Lizzie). Tom Hollander's portrayal was touching -- Mr Collins so earnestly wanted to do the right thing(s) but was undone by frigidity, not smarminess.

Jennifer Ehle's Elizabeth Bennet was dutifully portrayed, but she never struck me as more than mildly witty and quite buxom. In contrast, Keira Knightley's performance was much livelier and passionate. The same comparison could be made between the actors playing Darcy -- except for the buxom part.

The only character I did not like was Charlotte -- what a wimp! The pragmatic portrayal in the E/F version was much better.

I think that the movie would have been better w/o the US ending (very un-Austen), a panoramic shot showing the pair driving up to Pemberley would have been better. I also wish that a director would allow Darcy to "express himself on the occasion as sensibly and as warmly as a man violently in love can be supposed to do" -- there's the place for a passionate kiss.

Juliana,thanks for your interesting comments. This thread has somehow got entwined with roses (not that I mind at all). I have just been given a La Marsellaise bush, lovely fragrant crimson blooms for my birthday/Mother's Day gift. They are about the same date in Australia so I get a mixture of presents from various family members.A day of wine, roses and chocolates, also the garden got dug over. Yesss!!
On a literary note, was it correct for early 19thC aristocratic ladies to attend interments? The unused ending of the latest Vanity Fair had Lady Jane doing this. I seem to recall from G. Heyer's "Bath Tangle" that Lady Serena and her step-mother Fanny stayed at home.

Mine is the late late viewing, I suppose. I stayed away because I was afraid it would taint my appreciation of the BBC miniseries, but after having reread the book and rewatched the miniseries last week, I was craving more P&P so I took the plunge.

I have to say that I like this Mr. Darcy much much better than Colin Firth. I know JA writes him more like Colin Firth, but I could never understand how anyone who acts as sneering and rude and haughty as CF could be so beloved by his servants and family. I know I must be in the extreme minority for never having found CF right for the part, I always thought he was too old, and the scenes of him standing around at the Lucas's looking in agony is just unbelievable.

I liked MM's proud, reserved and serious, yet passionate, portrayal very much. The next time I reread the book, I'll try to keep in mind that it is mostly Lizzie's impression of him, tinged with the memory of him having found her only tolerable. That does tend to colour one's view of a person.

That scene in the rain was amazing. I felt DS's Mr. Bennett looked a bit slovenly, but then again there can never be perfect casting. If Darcy thought the elder Miss Bennet was very pretty, but smiles took much, I wonder what he thought of this Lizzie. She burst out laughing and smiling at every occasion. I didn't mind her though.

The anachronisms and simplifications didn't bug me, I enjoyed it as an adaptation of P&P rather than a faithful retelling. I would be quite happy if they were to film a new P&P every year!

Now, I watched the DVD and have read somewhere that there are 8 more minutes in the NA version than in the UK version, but don't really know what exactly, apart from the scene at the end (and I felt cheated out of a long passionate kiss, BTW).

Oooh, look what I found while trawling the Net:

The success of the film version of Pride and Prejudice has prompted ITV to commission a season of costume dramas based on AustenÂs novels. Persuasion, Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey are to be given the small-screen treatment in autumn 2006.

What is this ITV, do they do quality work? I am quite ready for a new Persuasion and a younger Captain Wentworth.

venusia, this ITV stands for Independent Television which used to be the overall controller of the various commercial TV companies in the UK. The other TV and radio co is, of course, the BBC, which carries no advertising.
This company is rather going into the doldrums with loss of revenue and not much quality programming hence these 'dramas' have been commisioned to try and boost the ratings.
There is no reason why they shouldn't be successful as they can call on the top actors and adaptors.
If you hurry over to the UK you may be in time to get a job as an extra in Persuasion which starts filming in the lovely city of Bath on Monday (1st Oct) . . .now where did I put my whimple?

BTW a BBC production of Jane Eyre has just begun over here with Toby Stephens (son of actress Maggie Smith) as Mr Rochester. I saw the beginning of the first episode but was not impressed. ;-(

Here is a link that might be useful: Filming in Bath

Oh Vee-I knew I shouldn't have looked at the link! I love Bath and have been there several times, loved the Roman Baths which I found amazing and I especially enjoyed the Tea Rooms across from the Baths and have fond memories of scones ....I am making my mouth water....

OK - P & P I think I have already said that I didn't care for the new version, totally unbelievable to me-ditto with the latest version of Vanity Fair. Not sure why remakes are necessary as there have already been several versions of Austen's works-and I hate it when they try to modernize these classic novels...shudder....and the Producers seem to take more license with the works with each new version and include-or omit-things never intended by the author.

Pat