Jane Austen in Pictures: A Look Back at 7 Iconic Adaptations
250 YEARS OF JANE AUSTEN (5/6). Jane Austen has been a major source of inspiration for the seventh art since the mid-20th century. Films and series adapted from her novels are legion. Here are seven examples.
English writer Jane Austen, whose 250th birthday is celebrated in 2025, is an inexhaustible source of inspiration for screenwriters and filmmakers. This has been the case since 1940, with the first Hollywood adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, directed by American Robert Z. Leonard.
Since then, adaptations have appeared on both the small and big screen, each time targeting new generations. Here is a free selection of the most iconic of the most recent.
In this BBC miniseries that influenced a generation of Britons, Jennifer Ehle plays Elizabeth Bennet and Colin Firth plays Mr. Darcy. A cult scene would establish the latter, then on the rise, as one of the UK's favorite actors: the one from the lake from which he emerges, after a swim, in a see-through shirt because he is completely wet.
“This obsession with the wet shirt surprised us, I just thought of it as a funny scene and not a sexy one. When I wrote it, I had in mind the slightly pretentious idea of opposing nature and culture, with a Darcy who is desperately trying to escape the straitjacket of social obligations… And when he sees the lake, he thinks: 'God, it would be good to go there
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