“It’s set in a house in the middle of a moor,” she explained. Talking about classics of romantic literature, he added, “Part of the appeal is that the language still has a rich, sometimes poetic phrasing that a modern film has a tough time matching.” The period details the pretty (or not) costumes, the great or dingy houses, the carriage and candlelight and long-lost customs are all icing, but they are not the cake.” And I think that what gives them relevance is the human dilemma at the center of it. If it didn’t, it wouldn’t be a classic it would be forgotten.
Several, including the current one, were even filmed on the same location: Haddon Hall, an ancient, battlemented manor house in wind-swept Derbyshire that gets pressed into service whenever British filmmakers need someplace old and dank looking. So far there have been at least 18 film versions, going back to a 1910 silent movie, and 9 made-for-television “Janes” so many that they sometimes seem to quote from one another as much as from the novel. Of all the classic 19th-century novels, Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre” has been by far the most filmed, outstripping even the ever-durable “Pride and Prejudice.” CARY FUKUNAGA, the director of the new movie version of “Jane Eyre,” which opens Friday, joked recently that there was an unwritten law requiring that “Jane Eyre” be remade every five years.