MissGreerGarson.com by Ed S.

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Pride and Prejudice (1940) (poster)

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Colour pictures!

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Some of Ed's favourite moments

• This movie is the first real Greer-fest.
  It's the movie that transformed Greer from a 35-year-old ingenue into a star. Two years later, after "Mrs. Miniver" and "Random Harvest", she was a super-star.
• Jane Austen mentions Greer's birthday (Michaelmas) on the very first page of her novel. Perhaps Jane had Greer in mind all along to play the part of Elizabeth Bennet.
• If you don't like this movie because it takes liberties with Jane Austen, then you are an Austen-snob.
  Why do you even bother going to the movies? Just stay home and read the book.
• I feel like smacking Lady Lucas when she says to Charlotte, "You may not have beauty, my lamb," when in fact Karen Morley is so lovely.
• The conversation between Lizzy and Wickham during their dance at the Meryton assembly is a treat. How did they manage to choreograph the dialog and dancing all so perfectly? Edward Ashley (Wickham) has a little dancing miscue at one point, but Greer just laughs it off and the camera keeps rolling.
• At the Meryton assembly, Mrs. Bennet (Mary Boland) gives the girls their final instructions as the Bingley party arrives. She tells Mary Bennet (Marsha Hunt) to sparkle, but just a little.
  
  And Marsha Hunt is still with us! Marsha, where is your autobiography!
• And did you notice the cute thing that Kitty (Heather Angel) does after her mother has told her that her dress is too decolleté?
  I may be the only person to ever have noticed this.
  ( Here is the animated answer)
• When Greer is sitting down with Charlotte at the Meryton assembly, just before they overhear Darcy, Greer wonders why England is cursed with so many more women than men, and she gives us a very cool cockeyed smile.
• The archery scene. This is the Greer showcase that caused me to lose my mind over Greer in the first place.
• I don't know why, but I just love it when Greer tilts her head down to look at the bow as Darcy is about to give her a lesson. "The arrow goes here..." Then she glances up at him without moving her head.
• Just before and after Greer releases the first arrow, she has a small smirk on her face. Two subtly different smirks. I call these the "pre-smirk" and the "post-smirk".
• Greer's face jiggles each time she releases an arrow.
• Look how Greer uses her left forefinger to grasp the arrow, and then moves that forefinger out of the way just before releasing the arrow.
  
  There's some additional left-fore-finger action in "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" and in "Mrs. Miniver."
• After she tells him that he doesn't laugh enough, the backlighting on her teeth make her look funny. Didn't the cinematographer notice this? Joseph Ruttenberg would never have let this happen.
• A delicious "Oh" as Greer says to Miss Bingley, "You knew I referred to Mr. Wickham."
• "How clever of you, my dear Miss Bingley, to know something of which you are ignorant." Wonderful close-up. Jane Austen is kicking herself for not thinking of this line herself.
• After the archery scene, Greer is listening to Mary sing (poorly) in the parlour. Charlotte (Karen Morley) is watching Greer and her father with very shifty eyes, and then she skulks off as if she's plotting something. I wonder if a later scene was removed.
• Greer wipes her nose and says "Well I do, frequently." No actor ever enunciated adverbs as well as Greer did. Just listen to her say "splendidly" in "Chips" or "Random Harvest".
• The actor who plays Sir William Lucas (E. E. Clive) is delightfully droll. As his wife enters Longbourn with their newly-betrothed Charlotte, he says "come in and share in the rejoicing" with a completely straight face. Unfortunately, poor Mr. Clive died just before this movie was released.
• After Greer's strip-tease at Hunsford, Charlotte holds up a dress. "I wouldn't dare show it to Mama." A beautiful laugh follows. Then she hears Lady Catherine's carriage and she shows us a lovely profile.
• There is a lovely moment when Darcy is about to lead Elizabeth into dinner at Rosings. They are about to enter the dining room, arm in arm, and they are smiling and looking to our left. This is how I picture them when they are married and are greeting guests at Pemberley.
• I think Greer is playing the piano here herself.
• When Mr. Collins (Melville Cooper) gets a bit too ebullient in his praise for Lady Catherine ("That goes without saying"), Charlotte (Karen Morley) takes his liqueur glass from him. It's nice to think that Charlotte is not totally subjugated to her husband.
• "There's a very fair instrument in the housekeeper's room. You'll disturb no one there." "You are really too gracious, Lady Catherine, but I shouldn't care to disturb the housekeeper." Jane is kicking herself again.
• "Having already met you, I was happily prepared for your aunt's manner."
  Jane is beating herself silly by now.
• When Elizabeth enters Hunsford after having had a stroll with Colonel Fitzwilliam, Charlotte (Karen Morley) has to flinch to avoid being hit as Greer flings off her hat.
• "It's all my own stupid fault."
  
  
  
  
  
  
• When Lydia and Wickham return to Longbourn at the end, Greer throws the word "prodigiously" back at Wickham. That was the very word he had used earlier in the movie, at the Assembly Ball, when he told Lizzy that he had begun to like Meryton when he first laid eyes on her.
• Greer also does a similar thing as the archery scene is starting.
  Darcy says that he's "tolerable" with a bow and arrow, and Lizzy asks "Only tolerable?", a clear reference to his use of that very word when describing her to Bingley at the Meryton assembly. ("She's tolerable enough.")
  This sounds to me like a very "literary" thing to do, and my guess is that Aldous Huxley himself contributed these ideas to the script.
• I get all choked up when Greer reacts to Lady Catherine's revelation that Darcy had helped Wickham and Lydia.
• Greer does her wonderful "Oh" three times near the end: after Lady Catherine tells her about Darcy's aid to Wickham ("Did he do that? Oh!"); when she sees Darcy standing with her mother in the hallway; and then later as she is sitting with Darcy and hearing about Caroline Bingley's inadvertent aid to her brother.
• "You know, my aunt likes you."
  "Me?"
• She also puts her hand to her neck as she talks to Darcy on the bench about how rude she was to Lady Catherine.
• This movie has several fake doors. When the Bennets enter the dress shop at the very beginning, and much later when Elizabeth enters the library at Hunsford to receive Darcy's first proposal, the door opens and the camera enters the room, there being no door jamb on the right.
• What did Fitzwilliam Darcy go through while Elizabeth Bennet was waiting for her life to happen to her? If you'd like to know, then I have to shamelessly suggest that you investigate ExceedinglyJane.com, in which we see how Darcy deals with all manner of friend and foe while falling hopelessly in love with Lizzy.