A sublime black and white film. A film about a beautiful time in which kindness and nobility were mandatory. Purity and arranged marriages and also less hurried were part of the painting that period of time. This movie is great for lovers of classic films. I do not want to reveal the action yet but I can say that it is a movie with a happy ending. I'm excited fashion of the time , attention and habits that everyone must follow. And yet there is something that makes ordinance established to give everything up, love. Is a perfect film for a relaxing evening in the family. I encourage you to watch and I wish you " Enjoy ". Worth seeing.

I recently watched again this film version of Jane Austin's classic novel. Of course, by now, I have had the opportunity to watch all the later versions as well. This 1940 film and the 2005 film might best be viewed as adaptations of the Austen story, based more on the modern mores and culture of the time each film was made. That excuses the departure from the settings, clothing, manners, and mores of the early 1800s and the landed gentry of England. Those were the substance of Austen's great book, and she beautifully put them under a huge microscope for all to see in her novel. I am most grateful to the BBC for its 1980 and 1995 mini-series that so faithfully and painstakingly transposed the printed pages onto film. Hollywood often alters, revises, rewrites and sometimes completely changes stories or their outcomes. Sometimes it makes for better movies. Sometimes, great reductions are needed just to get a story on film. So, I understand that. And, we movie buffs can take or leave the results. As some of the IMDb reviews indicate on the 2005 movie, there is an audience out there that likes the modern-day adaptation. I too enjoyed the 2005 film. It is truer to the times and culture than this 1940 film. But it omits or drastically condenses significant parts of Austen's story—of necessity, no doubt, to fit the movie length. For the much better and complete telling of the story, viewers should watch either or both of BBC TV minis-series. I'm in the camp of people who really enjoy the wit and humor of clever dialog, accompanied by wonderful expressions to match, and the poking and jabbing at the foibles and follies of cultures. Those things are the essence and value of this story. Through it, Austin explores and exploits those very time-specific mores of English society. She does it with wonderful irony, satire and spoofing. So, when those things are altered significantly, as they are in this cramped version, we are left with something else. A soap opera of sorts, perhaps? Or maybe even a romantic comedy? But it certainly is not the wit, clever story-telling and wisdom of Jane Austen. This 1940 film has a cast of great actors. But many are too old for the roles they play. The costumes are only the start of the failings of this film – from the opening scene. But the script and direction are its biggest failings. One reviewer (vincentlynch-moonoi from the U.S.), on 3 July 2012, wrote: "I confess – I don't get it." I think that honestly reflects the script. For anyone who doesn't know the story, too many things in the movie are left dangling or have just piecemeal references. The plot is too disconnected at times. I won't go into more detail on the many miscues in this adaptation. Two other reviewers nail these very well – Ivan-166 from Australia, 16 August 2006; and Keith-moyes from the U.S., 21 November 2006. So, while some people today may enjoy this 1940 film as a light comedy- romance of sorts, we don't know if they also would be interested in reading Austen's novel or watching the longer accurate depictions on film. What would be interesting to me would be to see how people rated this film in 1940. How would reviewers have posted comments on IMDb if it were around back then? And what would they have to say?My five stars for this film are for Jane Austen, just for the parts of her great novel that are in this film. And for the cast of wonderful actors of the time who gave it a try with a very poor script and far sub-par direction.

What's a social climbing mother to do when she has all girls, none of them eligible to inherit a family fortune? Find them all rich husbands, that's what! The problem is that once an eligible rich bachelor (Laurence Olivier) moves into their pretty ritzy neighborhood, all of the other mothers are out to do the same thing. Elizabeth (Greer Garson) is perhaps the best catch of the five daughters, and when she catches the eye of handsome Mr. Darcy, a misunderstanding threatens to keep them apart. She overheard what she felt was a slight against the middle class girls ogling him, and when he asks her for a dance, she politely declines. But there's lots of stars to cross in this period romantic comedy of manners (based upon Jane Austen's most famous novel) and the clever Olivier has a few tricks up his sleeve.When your mother or husband is Mary Boland, there's lots of unintentional henpecking going on. Just that voice alone gives the impression of imperiousness as she talks and talks. Moving from the train to Reno (in "The Women") to the English countryside, she is a determined mother, and with daughters that besides Garson include Anne Rutherford, Maureen O'Sullivan, Heather Angel and Marsha Hunt, she has her hands full. Papa Edmund Gwenn (pre-Santa Claus) makes one thing clear to Garson when mama insists she'll never speak to her again if she refuses to marry their wealthy distant relative (Melville Cooper): He'll never speak to her again if she does!The opulent costumes of the period and witty dialog of the classy kind make this an enjoyable romp into "Downton Abbey" territory. And when Edna May Oliver makes her entrance as Olivier's imperious "great lady" aunt, it's as if Maggie Smith's Lady Violet from that smash PBS/BBC series has taken a step back in time into corsets and bloomers rather than her early 20th Century matriarch. Even in her long two scenes, Oliver is guilty of theft: she steals every moment she is on screen. This is classic movie magic at its best and an absolute must.

The 1940 version of Pride and Prejudice is what I think of as a typical MGM movie of the Golden Age. Of course, MGM made many other types of picture, but they were particularly associated with this kind of 'prestige' movie. It is a big, expensive production, based on a world famous book, written by an eminent literary figure (Aldous Huxley), with lavish sets and sumptuous costumes, starring their most prestigious English actors. In other words: portentous, showy and completely empty.This movie is all packaging and no content.It goes without saying that it is a travesty of the book, but it is hopeless even as a simple exercise in story-telling. It would be easy to deplore it for its technical incompetence, its wild historical inaccuracy and its somewhat trashy notion of elegance and sophistication, but I suspect that would be missing the point.In 1939, when this movie was being planned, America was still mired in the Great Depression and there were millions of women who had been struggling to make ends meet for the best part of a decade. What they wanted from MGM was to be transported out of the grim reality of their own lives into a fantasy world of opulence and ease; of glamour, luxury and elegance. That is what movies like Pride and Prejudice were designed to do. I can complain that the plot is, at best, perfunctory, but who cared? The story was almost incidental to its core audience. It was the over-the-top costumes, the soaring sets, the glittering chandeliers and the gleaming carriages that the audience really wanted to see.The packaging was the point!For example, the costumes are absurd – they are not only wrong for that period, they are probably wrong for any period. However, I am sure the MGM costume department could have designed gowns that were authentic down to the last button, if that was what MGM had wanted – but they didn't. And who am I to say that they were wrong? MGM was the only Hollywood studio that went right through the Great Depression without ever making a loss. They must have been doing something right.When I view this movie today, I know I must try to understand why it was made the way it was. This vision of Regency England may have been very naïve and very fanciful, but there is no reason to suppose that the people that made the movie were naïve: or even that the people in the audience were. I know I have to put myself into the position of that audience if I am to enjoy it in the way that was originally intended, but I cannot do that. I have to judge the movie on the basis of how it looks today, in the context of other movies of the era, not how it might have looked then.From that perspective, it has not lasted well. Nor, I suspect, have MGM movies as a whole. From the very beginning of the Thirties, Hollywood churned out scores and scores and scores of movies that are still highly watchable today. You don't have to be a movie buff or film historian to enjoy Universal horror films, Warner Brothers gangster movies, RKO musicals, Disney animations or the Westerns, 'screwball' comedies, romances, melodramas, thrillers, historical pictures and other movies that flooded out of Hollywood at that time. Until the last twenty years or so they were part of everyone's film education.MGM was the biggest and most successful studio of the Thirties, but my gut feel is that fewer of their movies have stood the test of time than those of most of their competitors. Too many look like Pride and Prejudice: frothy, over-stuffed, over-egged but ultimately unsatisfying: timely but not timeless.This movie is of undoubted historical interest as a representative artifact of Hollywood at a particular time in its history, but from any other perspective it is utterly negligible.