Film Review: Persuasion, Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park (PBS, 2007)

by Elizabeth Urbach, First published for the March/ April 2008 issue of Finery

In Persuasion, the women’s costumes were mostly well done, although it seemed to me that they were almost always wearing the same thing. I would have appreciated more variety in accessories and outerwear, especially, although I did enjoy seeing Anne’s “invalid” sister wearing a dotted shortgown over her morning dress. However, there are many opportunities for historic seamstresses to see these repeated styles from all angles, for the purposes of copying them! Some of the women’s hats and bonnets looked good, and the scenes in Bath afford several turbans and “top hat” styles, as well as the more common bonnet styles. This is an interesting take on the novel, although the acting was not as good as it should have been, and several of the women’s hairstyles were too modern.

I found the costumes in Northanger Abbey to be confusing, as they incorporated stylistic elements from every decade between 1790 and 1830. I thought it was an interesting touch to put the older ladies in earlier robe a I’anglaise styles, and the younger ladies generally in the later 1800 to 1810s, except for the blue, double-breasted pelisse that Catherine wears through-out the film, whose Peter Pan collar and scoop neckline seem more 1820s to me. Catherine’s friend Eleanor was always wearing an l840s cottage bonnet, rather than a period appropriate style, which would have been preferable. I also felt that the women’s hairstyles were too modern.

The costumes in Mansfield Park are interesting, but somehow “not right” in my mind; it seems that they were set in the late 1790s, maybe as late as 1800. Most of the older women wear the late 18th century robe a I’anglaise rather than the “Regency” style of 1800-10; Fanny is generally seen wearing a kind of compromise between 1800 and l820s styles, and her female cousins wear both 1790s and 1800s styles. The younger women’s hats look more Edwardian than Gainsborough, and one of Fanny’s aunts briefly appears in an outfit – complete with a straw boater and leg-o’ -mutton
sleeves – that looked, from the shoulders up, 1890s. The women’s hairstyles also struck me as too modern: Fanny’s, in particular, was more of a modern shoulder-length perm, worn down with the sides pulled back (perhaps to suggest her poverty?). The older women’s 1790s hairstyles looked all right, if perhaps too small, but the other women’s hairstyles were variations on the modern slicked-back bun with some long, straight wisps hanging down over the ears.

In general, I enjoyed these movies despite the inaccuracies; the women’s costumes were, in the words of Mr. Darcy, “tolerable, [although] not handsome enough to tempt me,” while the hairstyles were too modern. It seems that the production company lacked the money, time, and even knowledge, to give enough attention to the details of costume and acting that would have improved these adaptations.