When I was eight or nine or maybe ten years old and visiting my grandmother, she would hold back lunch until my father and grandfather returned from their pre-prandial pint “round the corner.” The delay made no difference; she was a terrible cook. There was a front window from which it was possible almost to look down the pavement, which was close to the front of the row of houses. It was O.K. with my grandmother for me to wait by a window—but not to chase down the street.
In “Sense and Sensibility” (Universal Pictures), based upon the 1811 novel by Jane Austen, showing now at the Montrose Playhouse, windows are used as vantage points for women in the same way. In the city, sisters Elinor and Marianne Dashwood watch the to-ing and fro-ing from the first floor. Etiquette prevents them from answering the door: only servants have that right. In the country, the women gawk at a duel between Marianne’s rival (male) suitors from an upstairs window. “We must show our disappointment or they will do it every day,” somebody says. “A duel should be kept for special occasions.”
Etiquette is the guiding principle for the solid film’s efficient screenplay. It prevents anyone saying anything that might offend anybody at all. Etiquette binds English social (upper) class, source of (male) wealth, and property ownership. To simplify the plot for the Austen-naïve (such as me; I have never read any of her work, or seen an earlier adaptation of this book, or felt the need to do so): Elinor and Marianne find men. The story’s women are depicted as being obsessed by marriage, money, property, and reputation; its men as either rich, cads, buffoons, or unable to emote at all.
Elinor is the oldest. Just before the end of the film, she asks, “How is it bewitching to think that one’s happiness depends entirely on another person?“ I had been wondering that for two hours. The women gossip about love, read poems about love, and sing songs about love. Their life’s work is to hoist their (female) contentment onto a (man’s) willingness to marry. “I will be mistress of myself,” Elinor says, after hearing that her beau, Edward, has married another gal. “Pass on my felicitations,” she says, meaning to the new wife. She is free. But not quite. She is in error: the new wife is “Mrs Robert Ferrars, not Mrs Edward Ferrars.” It is the brother who got married; Edward is, phew, free to marry her after all. (I guess women in 1811 lost both names after marriage.)
A second principle is honour. Years ago, Edward’s mum arranged for him to marry into a rich family; the child-bride lost her money; Edward’s mum wanted it all called off; Edward said no; mum disinherited him. “Your honour is worth more to you than your fortune,” Elinor says. Edward and Elinor must use “Miss Dashwood” and “Mr Ferrars” and pretend they don’t fancy each other. “You have been the dearest friend to me, Miss Dashwood,” Edward says. “The dearest I have ever known.”
A satisfying novel creates characters which can be studied from different sides. In general, its film adaptation must balance this potential pleasure with the risk of an ensemble story becoming uncontrolled. (Many people believe “Remains of the Day” (1993) to be the go-to of the genre.) Over-control flattens a smaller part into stereotype. Take the portly west-country landowner whose cottage the Dashwood women rent. He is happy that they are his tenants because “I despise the thought of another huntsman in my grounds.” He rates Marianne’s first match, Colonel Brandon, as “an excellent shot, after all” and because “he’s just returned from the East Indies.” But “excellent shots, both”—his comparison between the colonel and second-suitor Willoughby—over-eggs the stereotype.
A third theme is the boring man. “Do you frequent many galleries or attend any dances?” younger-sister Marianne asks Colonel Brandon. The colonel believes that people claim to enjoy these “pleasures” “as ornaments, to show off their own good taste.” (I often presume the same when I read the Sunday newspapers.) “I think a man ought to be at least artificially passionate or he’d be sincerely dull,” Marianne says.
I felt sorry for actor Herbert Nordrum, who plays the colonel. By the end he concurs—“A man must have his passions or else he’d be dull”—but the filmmakers haven’t permitted him a single smile. Willoughby—the cad, who smiles all the time—says, “Colonel Brandon is the sort of person whom everyone praises but nobody likes.” (I wrote in my notebook “colonel’s boring—GEDDIT!”) Marianne confides in Elinor that the colonel is “incapable of exquisite feeling,” says, “I think he left his heart behind in the East Indies,” and, one last time, just in case, “The colonel’s so boring.”
Mrs Jennings, played by Fiona Shaw, is “exceedingly fond of everyone” and polishes her reputation as celebrity matchmaker. “My daughter is to hold her winter ball,” she says. The Dashwood sisters must to London: “All the matches are made there.” “But be careful, girls, not to breathe. The stench can be quite overwhelming. The only drawback.”
Much of what “Sense and Sensibility” has to say is unsaid. The camera shows the livery as well as the deference; a walk from the Playhouse to, say, Usan would have required me to wear clavicle-to-chin collars, neck-to-ankle black coat, white waistcoat, over-revealing tights, and knee-high boots.
After the girls’ mother hears that “a gentleman” rescued Marianne, she says, “A gentlemen! Is he handsome?” And when she believes Willoughby has proposed to Marianne, she says to little Margaret, daughter number three, “We will miss [Marianne], dear, but she will be happy.” Mum needn’t worry—Margaret gets it. “I have no fortune of my own, no home,” she says. “I have been giving it some thought. I don’t mind if he inherits or earns it. I’m no snob. So long as he’s very, very rich!”
Adam Poole
27th September 2026
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