Pride & Prejudice (2005 film) facts for kids

Pride & Prejudice
UK theatrical release poster
Directed by	Joe Wright
Produced by	Tim Bevan Eric Fellner Paul Webster
Screenplay by	Deborah Moggach
Starring	Keira Knightley Matthew Macfadyen Brenda Blethyn Donald Sutherland Rosamund Pike Jena Malone Tom Hollander Penelope Wilton Judi Dench
Music by	Dario Marianelli
Cinematography	Roman Osin
Editing by	Paul Tothill
Studio	Universal Pictures StudioCanal Working Title Films Scion Films
Distributed by	Focus Features (United States) Mars Distribution (France) United International Pictures (International)
Release date(s)	11 September 2005 (2005-09-11) (TIFF) 16 September 2005 (2005-09-16) (United Kingdom) 11 November 2005 (2005-11-11) (United States) 18 January 2006 (2006-01-18) (France)
Running time	127 minutes
Country	United Kingdom United States France
Language	English
Budget	$28 million
Money made	$121.6 million

Pride & Prejudice is a 2005 historical romantic drama film. It was directed by Joe Wright based on Jane Austen's 1813 novel. The film features five sisters from an English family of landed gentry as they deal with issues of marriage, morality, and misconceptions. Keira Knightley stars as Elizabeth Bennet, while Matthew Macfadyen plays Mr Darcy, who falls in love with her.

Pride & Prejudice was successful at the box office, grossing $121.6 million worldwide on a budget of $28 million. The film received positive reviews from critics upon release, with praise directed towards Knightley's performance. It received four nominations at the 78th Academy Awards, including Best Actress for the 20-year-old Knightley, making her the third-youngest Best Actress nominee at the time. The film received other accolades, including the BAFTA Award for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer for Wright.

Plot

During the late 18th century, Mr and Mrs Bennet and their daughters – Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Kitty, and Lydia – live at Longbourn, their estate in rural England. Mrs Bennet, eager to secure suitable marriages for her daughters, is delighted when wealthy bachelor Charles Bingley moves into nearby Netherfield Hall.

At an assembly ball, Bingley, his sister Caroline, and his friend Mr Darcy meet the local society. Bingley and Jane are immediately taken with each other, while Elizabeth instantly dislikes the snobbish Darcy and overhears his dismissive remarks about her.

Later, visiting the Bingleys, Jane falls ill and must stay to recuperate. While Elizabeth is visiting Jane at Netherfield, she verbally spars with the haughty Caroline and the aloof Darcy. Jane recovers and, soon after, Mr Bennet's cousin Mr Collins, a pompous clergyman, visits the Bennets; as the closest male relative, Collins will inherit Longbourn as it is entailed on the male line.

Mr Collins intends to propose to Jane, but Mrs Bennet says she will soon be engaged and consequently suggests Elizabeth, whom Collins considers an agreeable alternative. The Bennet sisters also meet the handsome and charming soldier Lieutenant Wickham, whose father worked for the Darcy family. He wins Elizabeth's sympathy by telling her that Mr Darcy denied him his rightful inheritance.

At the Netherfield ball, Elizabeth dances with Darcy, though the encounter is strained. The next day, Collins proposes to Elizabeth, who roundly rejects him; despite her mother's anger, her father supports her decision.

Elizabeth is astonished when her close friend, Charlotte, fearing spinsterhood, announces her engagement to Mr Collins. The Bingley party unexpectedly returns to London. Elizabeth urges Jane to visit their aunt and uncle, the Gardiners, who live in London, hoping she reconnects with Bingley.

Months later, Elizabeth visits Charlotte and Mr Collins, who reside next to Lady Catherine de Bourgh's estate in Kent. Elizabeth unexpectedly meets Darcy, who is Lady Catherine's nephew and visiting with his cousin, Colonel Fitzwilliam. Unaware that Jane is Elizabeth's sister, Fitzwilliam mentions that Darcy recently untangled Bingley from an imprudent match with an "unsuitable" family.

Distraught, Elizabeth is then met by Darcy, who surprisingly proposes marriage, declaring his ardent love despite her inferior rank and family. Offended and angry, she refuses him. He defends separating Jane and Bingley, believing Jane indifferent to his friend, and criticises the other Bennets' occasional social impropriety. Elizabeth also cites his mistreating Wickham.

Angry and heartbroken, Darcy later delivers Elizabeth a letter describing Wickham's true character: Wickham squandered the bequest Darcy's father left him, then attempted to seduce Darcy's 15-year-old sister, Georgiana, into eloping to gain her fortune.

Elizabeth returns home, as does Jane. Accompanying the Gardiners on a trip to the Peak District, Elizabeth reluctantly tours Pemberley, the grand Darcy estate. She unexpectedly runs into Darcy, who invites her and the Gardiners to dine there. Darcy's manner has softened considerably, his manners impressing the Gardiners, and Georgiana sharing her brother's flattering reports about Elizabeth.

An urgent letter from Jane reveals that Lydia has run off with Wickham. Darcy leaves abruptly, and Elizabeth returns home, certain she will never see Darcy again. Her mother fears Lydia's disgrace will ruin her other daughters' chances of good marriages.

After a tense waiting period, Mr Gardiner sends news that Lydia and Wickham are now married, and the newlyweds return to Longbourn. Lydia lets slip to Elizabeth that it was Darcy who found them and paid for their wedding; he also purchased Wickham's military commission.

Bingley and Darcy return to Netherfield and visit Longbourn. Bingley proposes to Jane, who accepts. Late that night, Lady Catherine arrives to see Elizabeth and demands she never become engaged to Darcy because, she claims, Darcy has been engaged to marry Lady Catherine's daughter, who suffers poor health, since infancy. Deeply insulted, Elizabeth orders her to leave.

Walking early the next morning, Elizabeth encounters Darcy, who apologises for his aunt's intrusion. He professes his continued love and Elizabeth, her feelings radically altered, accepts his proposal. She tells her father the truth of Darcy's actions, and Mr Bennet gives Elizabeth his consent to marry, overjoyed she has found love.

Cast

Production

Conception and adaptation

As with several recent Jane Austen adaptations, Pride & Prejudice was an Anglo-American collaboration, between British studio Working Title Films (in association with French company StudioCanal) and its American parent company Universal Studios.

Screenwriter Deborah Moggach changed the film's period setting to the late 18th century partly out of concern that it would be overshadowed by the 1995 BBC adaptation.

Given little instruction from the studio, screenwriter Deborah Moggach spent over two years creating the script. She had sole discretion with the early script, and eventually wrote approximately ten drafts. Moggach's first script was closest to Austen's book, but later versions trimmed extraneous storylines and characters. Moggach initially wrote all scenes from Elizabeth's point of view in keeping with the novel; she later set a few scenes from the male perspective, such as when Bingley practices his marriage proposal. Small details were inserted that acknowledged wider events outside of the characters' circle, such as those then occurring in France. While Moggach is the only credited screenwriter, playwright Lee Hall provided early additions.

Television director Joe Wright was hired in early 2004, in his feature film directorial debut. He was considered a surprising choice for a film in the romance drama genre due to his past work with social realism. Wright's body of work had impressed the producers, who were looking for a fresh perspective; they sent him a script despite the fact that Wright had not read the novel. He commented that at the time, "I didn't know if I was really all that interested; I thought I was a little bit more mainstream than this, a bit more edgy. But then I read the script and I was surprised I was very moved by it". He next read the novel, which he called "an amazing piece of character observation and it really seemed like the first piece of British Realism. It felt like it was a true story; had a lot of truth in it about understanding how to love other people, understanding how to overcome prejudices, understanding the things that separate us from other people ... things like that".

The only adaptation of Pride and Prejudice Wright had seen was the 1940 production, which was the last time the novel had been adapted into a feature film. The director purposely did not watch the other productions, both out of fear he would inadvertently steal ideas and because he wanted to be as original as possible.

Wright came on while Moggach was on her third draft. Despite her desire to work closely with Austen's dialogue, Wright made an effort to not "be too reverential to [it]. I don't believe people spoke like that then; it's not natural." While a few scenes, such as the discussion over accomplished women, aligned closely with the author's original dialogue, many others "substituted instead a mixture of modern idiom and archaic-sounding sentence structure". One alteration concerned politeness; Wright noted that while Austen's work had characters waiting before speaking, he believed that "particularly in big families of girls, everyone tends to speak over each other, finishing each other's sentences, etc. So I felt that the Bennet family's conversations would be overlapping like that." Sense and Sensibility actress and screenwriter Emma Thompson aided in script development, though she opted to be uncredited.

Costume design

Jacqueline Durran designed the Bennet sisters' costumes based on their characters' specific characteristics. From left: Mary, Elizabeth, Jane, Mrs Bennet, Kitty and Lydia.

Known for her BAFTA award-winning work on the 2004 film Vera Drake, Jacqueline Durran was hired as the costume designer. She and Wright approached his film "as a difficult thing to tackle" because of their desire to distinguish it from the television adaptation. Due to Wright's dislike of the high waistline, Durran focused on later eighteenth century fashions that often included a corseted, natural waistline rather than an empire silhouette (which became popular after the 1790s). A generational divide was established: the older characters dress in mid-eighteenth century fashions while the young wear "a sort of proto-Regency style of hair and dress".

Durran's costumes also helped emphasise social rank among the different characters; Caroline Bingley for instance is introduced in an empire silhouetted dress, clothing that would have then been at the height of fashion. During her interview, Durran opined that all the women wear white at the Netherfield Ball due to its contemporary popularity, an idea that Wright credits as his reason for hiring her. Costumes and hairstyles were adjusted to appeal to contemporary audiences, sacrificing historical accuracy.

To help differentiate the Bennet sisters, Durran viewed Elizabeth as the "tomboy", clothing her in earthy colours because of her love of the countryside. For the other sisters, Durran remarked, "Jane was the most refined and yet it's still all a bit slapdash and homemade, because the Bennets have no money. One of the main things Joe wanted was for the whole thing to have a provincial feel. Mary is the bluestocking: serious and practical. And then Lydia and Kitty are a bit Tweedledum and Tweedledee in a kind of teenage way. I tried to make it so that they'd be sort of mirror images. If one's wearing a green dress, the other will wear a green jacket; so you always have a visual asymmetry between the two." In contrast to the 1940 film, the 2005 production displayed the Bennet sisters in worn-down but comfortable dresses.

Filming

Stamford, Lincolnshire represented the fictional village of Meryton. (Filming of the militia pictured)

Moggach believed the novel was very filmable, "despite it containing no description and being a very unvisual book". To Wright, many other period films had relied on paintings for inspiration rather than photographs, causing them to appear unreal. He thus used "Austen's prose [to give him] many visual references for the people in the story", including using close-up shots of various characters. The filmmakers also changed several scenes to more romantic locales than those in the book. For instance, in the film, Darcy first proposes outdoors in a rainstorm at a building with neoclassical architecture; in the book, this scene takes place inside a parsonage. In the film, his second proposal occurs on the misty moors as dawn breaks; in the book, he and Elizabeth are walking down a country lane in broad daylight. Wright has acknowledged that "there are a lot of period film clichés; some of them are in the film and some are not, but for me it was important to question them".

Pride & Prejudice exhibition in Basildon Park, which was used as the location of Netherfield, home of George Bingley

Groombridge Place served as the filming location of the Bennet family house

During script development, the crew created a "constant going back and forth between script and location". The film was shot entirely on location within England on an 11-week schedule during the 2004 summer. Co-producer Paul Webster noted that "it is quite unusual for a movie this size to be shot entirely on location. Part of Joe [Wright]'s idea was to try to create a reality which allows the actors to relax and feel at one with their environment." Working under production designer Sarah Greenwood and set decorator Katie Spencer, the crew filmed on seven estates in six different counties. Because "nothing exists in the United Kingdom that is untouched by the twenty-first century", many of the sites required substantial work to make them suitable for filming. Visual effects company Double Negative digitally restored several locations to make them contemporaneous; they eradicated weeds, enhanced gold plating on window frames, and removed anachronisms such as gravel driveways and electricity pylons. Double Negative also developed the typeface used for the film's title sequence.

Production staff selected particularly grand-looking residences to better convey the wealth and power of certain characters. Locations included Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, the largest privately held country house in England with its spectacular rooms frescoed by Antonio Verrio. Chatsworth House is often believed to have been Austen's inspiration for the Darcy residence. Chatsworth and Wilton House in Salisbury stood in for Pemberley. After a search of various sites in England, the moated manor house Groombridge Place in Kent was chosen for Longbourn. Location manager Adam Richards believed Groombridge had an "immense charm" that was "untouched by post-17th Century development". Reflecting Wright's choice of realism, Groombridge's interior was designed to be "shabby chic". Representing Netherfield Park was the late-18th century site Basildon Park in Berkshire, leading it to close for seven weeks to allow time for filming. Burghley House in Cambridgeshire stood in for Rosings, while the adjacent town of Stamford served as Meryton. Other locations included Haddon Hall (for The Inn at Lambton), the Temple of Apollo and Palladian Bridge of Stourhead (for the Gardens of Rosings), Hunsford (for Collins' parsonage and church) and Peak District (for Elizabeth and the Gardiners' tour). The first dance scenes were shot on a set in a potato warehouse in Lincolnshire with the employment of local townspeople as extras; this was the only set the crew built that was not already in existence.

Music

Italian composer Dario Marianelli wrote the film score. The soundtrack is performed by the French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet accompanied by the English Chamber Orchestra.

The early piano sonatas of Ludwig van Beethoven "became a point of reference" and "starting point" for the original score. Some pieces were inspired by the film's period, with the assumption that they could conceivably have been heard during that time and contained actual dance cues that were fitting for the late eighteenth century. Pieces that actors perform were composed first, before filming began.

The soundtrack ultimately contained seventeen instrumental tracks of music organised in a different way from the film.

Editing

In contrast to the five-hour BBC adaptation, Wright compressed his film into two hours and nine minutes of screen time. He remarked that the film is "obviously about Elizabeth and Darcy, following them and anything that detracts or diverts you from that story is what you have to cut". Some of the most notable changes from the original book include time compression of several major sequences, including the departure of Wickham and the militia, Elizabeth's visit to Rosings Park and Hunsford Parsonage, Elizabeth's visit to Pemberley, Lydia's elopement and subsequent crisis; the elimination of several supporting characters, including Mr and Mrs Hurst, Mr and Mrs Phillips, Lady and Maria Lucas, Mrs Younge, several of Lydia's friends (including Colonel and Mrs Forster) and various military officers and townspeople; and the elimination of several sections in which characters reflect or converse on events that have recently occurred—for example, Elizabeth's chapter-long change of mind after reading Darcy's letter.

Moggach and Wright debated how to end the film, but knew they did not want to have a wedding scene "because we didn't want Elizabeth to come off as the girl who became a queen at this lavish wedding, or for it to be corny". Shortly before the North American release, the film was modified to include a final scene (not in the novel) of the married Darcys enjoying a romantic evening and passionate kiss at Pemberley in an attempt to attract sentimental viewers; this became a source of complaint for the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA). After watching a preview of the film before its wide release, former JASNA president Elsa Solender commented, "It has nothing at all of Jane Austen in it, is inconsistent with the first two-thirds of the film, insults the audience with its banality and ought to be cut before release". It had been removed from the British version after preview audiences found it unintentionally humorous; however, later audiences complained that they were excluded from viewing this version, causing the film to be re-released in the UK and Ireland 10 weeks after the original UK premiere date. The original British version ended with Mr Bennet's blessing upon Elizabeth and Darcy's union, thus circumventing the last chapter in the novel, which summarises the lives of the Darcys and the other main characters over the next several years.

Release

Box office

On 11 September 2005, Pride & Prejudice premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival as a special Gala Presentation. The film was released in cinemas on 16 September in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It achieved the number one spot in its first week, earning £2.5 million ($4.6 million) while playing on 397 screens. The film stayed at the top for two more weeks, earning by then a total of over £9 million at the UK box office. It was featured on 412 screens at its widest domestic release.

On 11 November 2005, the film debuted in the United States with an opening weekend of $2.9 million on 215 screens. Two weeks later, it played on 1,299 screens and box office returns increased to $7.2 million; the film left cinemas the week of 24 February 2006 with a total US gross of $38,405,088. Jack Foley, the president of distribution of Focus Features, the film's US distributor, attributed Pride & Prejudice's success in America to Austen's appeal to "the boomer market" and its status as a known "brand".

Pride & Prejudice was released in an additional fifty-nine countries between September 2005 and May 2006 by United International Pictures. With a worldwide gross of $121,147,947, it was the 72nd highest-grossing film of 2005 in the US and was the 41st highest internationally.

Home media

In the US and UK, Universal Studios Home Entertainment released the standard VHS and DVD in February 2006 for both widescreen and fullframe; attached bonus features included audio commentary by director Joe Wright, a look into Austen's life and the ending scene of Elizabeth and Darcy kissing. On 13 November 2007, Universal released the deluxe edition DVD to coincide with the theatrical arrival of Wright's 2007 film Atonement. The deluxe edition included both widescreen and fullscreen features, the original soundtrack CD, a collectible book and booklet, as well as a number of special features not included in the original DVD. In the US, a Blu-ray version of the film was released by Universal on 26 January 2010, which also contained bonus features.

Influence and legacy

Wright's adaptation failed to have the same cultural influence as the 1995 serial and has since attracted sharply-divided opinions. However, even three years after the release, Knightley was still associated with Elizabeth Bennet among a generation of young viewers who had not seen the 1995 production. Given the varied opinions about the film, JASNA published an edited special issue of its online journal Persuasions On-Line in 2007 with the collaboration of 19 Austen scholars from six countries; the intent was to foster discussion and stimulate scholarly analysis. JASNA had done this only once before, for the 1996 film Emma.

Pride & Prejudice influenced later productions in the costume drama and heritage film genres. Literary critics protested that Wright's adaptation effectively "popularized Austen's celebrated romance and brought her novel to the screen as an easy visual read for an undemanding mainstream audience". Carole Dole noted that the film's success "only made it more likely that future adaptations of Austen will feature, if not necessarily mud, then at least youthful and market-tested performers and youth-orientated filmmaking techniques balanced with the visual pleasures of the heritage film." She cited Anne Hathaway in the 2007 film Becoming Jane as an example. Jessica Durgan added that Pride & Prejudice conceived a new hybrid genre by rejecting the visual cues of the heritage film, which attracted "youth and mainstream audiences without alienating the majority of heritage fans".

Production of Pride & Prejudice began Wright's relationship with Working Title Films, the first of four collaborations. Many members of the film's cast and crew joined Wright in his later directorial efforts. For his adaptation of Atonement, which he viewed as "a direct reaction to Pride & Prejudice", Wright hired Knightley, Blethyn, Marianelli, Thibaudet, Greenwood, and Durran. Atonement employed themes similar to Austen's, including the notion of a young writer living in "an isolated English country house" who "mixes up desires and fantasies, truths and fiction". Wright's 2009 film The Soloist included Hollander, Malone, and Marianelli, while Hollander was also featured in Hanna (2011). Wright's 2012 adaptation of Anna Karenina features Knightley, Macfadyen, Marianelli, Durran, and Greenwood and is produced by Bevan, Eric Fellner, and Webster.

On 11 December 2017, Netflix announced that a person from Chile watched the film 278 times during the entire year. It was later reported that the person was a 51-year-old woman, who declared herself as "obsessed" with the film and saw Elizabeth Bennet as "a feminist icon".

See also

In Spanish: Orgullo y prejuicio (película de 2005) para niños

• Jane Austen in popular culture
• Janeite
• List of literary adaptations of Pride and Prejudice
• 2005 in film
• List of British films of 2005
• List of oldest and youngest Academy Award winners and nominees – Youngest nominees for Best Actress in a Leading Role
• 78th Academy Awards
• 63rd Golden Globe Awards
• 59th British Academy Film Awards