| Northanger Abbey (BBC, 1986) | 
 enlarge | Director: Giles Foster
Actors: Katharine Schlesinger, Peter Firth, Robert Hardy, Googie Withers, Geoffrey Chater
Studio: BBC Warner
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.98
Buy New: $8.31
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Avg. Customer Rating:  121 reviews
Sales Rank: 19844
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dvd-video, Ntsc
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 90
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: WARDE2273D
ISBN: 1419810626
UPC: 794051227324
EAN: 9781419810626
ASIN: B0007OY2P8
Theatrical Release Date: 1987
Release Date: April 19, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New and Factory Sealed Item Fast Shipping
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| Customer Reviews:
 Good Book....not so good movie April 15, 2008
This movie was directed in a very weird fashion. The characters were awkward and the lines seemed cheesy. The weirdest part of all was the music, which was very much modern and not of the time period of the story. This pretty much ruins movies for me. I really enjoy this story though. But there is a newer 2007 version which I think does a much better job of telling the story and making you fall in love with the characters. Plus, the music is very fitting.
 Poorly created April 1, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
First off, I would like to say that this film might be mildly entertaining for someone who has never read the book, Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen. However, having read the book, I find this BBC adaptation a poor substitute. The film cuts out so much of the plot and action. The action it does not cut out, it changes or summarizes. For the BBC to have done the book justice would have required at least 200 minutes. Instead,the film is compacted into about 90 minutes.
In fact, I enjoyed the Wishbone children's television 30 minute edition more than this one. The emphasis of this BBC film seemed to be into making General Tilney a villain with horrible habits rather than merely a villain in Catherine's eyes. Furthermore, the film makes Catherine too gothic in my opinion. The music and seens all appear too hastily create, with poor action and an extremely modern-gothic setting.
Futhermore, many of the secondary characters are hardly even developed. While I generally enjoy the BBC versions of Charles Dickens' and Jane Austen's works, this BBC work is flawed. Unlike many BBC productions, (ex: Oliver Twist, Bleak House, Jane Eyre, Sense and Sensibility, Emma)I would not want to show this to a class of students for fear of them coming away with the wrong themes and motifs.
 An unfortunately anachronistic assumption January 23, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
The saddest part about this story, and even this video version, is that most modern people don't get the references. It's not a true gothic but only satire, although surrounded by a truly good coming-of-age story of lost innocence, more comparable to (the truly good) 'Ten Things I Hate About You' than to anything purporting to be any edgier.
Jane Austen begins her deliberately sardonic 1797 novel with a full paragraph of what Catherine Morland is NOT, to insinuate is that Cathy is merely ordinary, not as intelligent as Lizzie, sappier than Marianne, a clueless precursor to the later Emma. Wide-eyed Katherine Schlesinger depicts poor little Cathy as an eager ingenue, easily amazed and impressed by what any seasoned urbanite would find trivial and suspect. In her facial expressions alone she gives us a bona-fide picture of a young girl's discovery that what she thought was duplicitous and what she thought was genuine are in reality the reverse.
Peter Firth plays the modestly mysterious Henry Tilney with a sly, benign teasing. He reveres Cathy's innocence even as he is irresistibly drawn to her for it. Cassie Stuart (typically known in other films for taking off her top) plays the ridiculous Isabella Thorpe like an exaggerated Britney Spears, neither pretty nor seductive enough to be taken seriously, but still she tries. Robert Hardy plays the willfully ignorant General Tilney as aloof, brusque, and secretive, a proud man with much less to hide than he thinks he has. Jonathan Coy is sarcastic and oppressive as the egotistical John Thorpe, the very date we all want our daughters NOT to see. Above all Googie Withers is delightfully bombastic, a kind of more urbanised and even less clued-in Mrs Jennings from 'Sense and Sensibility', someone too naive and yet too controlling to be a successful fairy godmother.
Some of the best lines in the movie are unfortunately not in the book, including Henry's assumption that dancing and marriage are alike and Cathy's unwittingly witty reply. Likewise the closing scene includes more dialogue than in the novel, but for most viewers who go right to the book for more of the same, Austen film adaptations prove a little less than accurate.
It is true the 1980s music is often a distraction; it is more telling of the time of filmmaking than of the time of setting and especially transparent as a faint effort at making Jane's parody into a viable late-20th-C gothic. But the exquisite Bath settings were not to be rivalled till 1995's 'Persuasion'-- the 'gig' scene and the umbrellas scene could only have been done on location. And the odd scene filmed in the actual Roman baths had actually been done before, in the appropriately bawdy 1977 'Joseph Andrews', and here, as in that one, the ingenue's quiet awe and amazement perfectly represents the viewer's unfamiliarity with the place was well.
For British castle fans the use of the 13th-C moated Bodiam for Northanger is disappointing, because we all know it is an uninhabitable ruin now, but it is a spooky fortress from which one cannot easily escape, and the dramatically sinister picture of 18th-C armed guards lurking above the mediaeval portcullis legitimises the anachronistic reality.
The 2007 rendition of this story makes several unnecessary substitutions, most vitally by referring to Matthew Lewis' suspense novel 'The Monk' rather than Ann Radcliffe's 1794 'The Mysteries of Udolpho'. Mrs Radcliffe was a favorite author of many 1790s teenagers, Jane Austen among them, though with 'Northanger Abbey' the cynical student deliberately poked fun at her hugely-popular mentor's style of gothic romance. It is significant that Jane chose 'Udolpho', as it is the quintessential gothic romance full of forced marriage contracts, shrouded inheritances, evil Papists, amoral country banditti, a half-ruined castle and especially, paid homage to as a dream sequence in 'Northanger' the movie, the climactic rescue of the threatened heroine in a filmy evening gown as she is whisked away on horseback into the night by a dashing young brigand. It's all the stuff little Cathy Morland dreams of. For Jane the full effect of 'Northanger' was nothing without 'Udolpho', a book she assumed everyone had read first (witness the authentic 1790s scene in this version of the two girls reading it to each other in bed). But it is unfortunately not as safe a premise 200 years on, and so modern people may tend to find the references confusing and the comparison's context irrelevant.
Do yourself a favour and see the 1986 one before the 2007... or instead of it.
Northanger Abby January 12, 2008
Received DVD with second side unplayable, disk separation, very unhappy result. I now purchase my DVD's at another site, which was a ease and has great costumer support and much better prices. Amazon has become too bloated to check it's quality and have a responsive customer service. I love Jane Austen, have read and have all versions of videos of her work going back too BBC stuff from the seventies [my most favorite]. The newest version so to be released in 2008 Northanger Abby, sounds good. Amazon does not keep up with new releases or version of Austen, Dickens, Elliot, or James. Do yourself a favor though look to other DVD suppliers for your DVD's.
John S.
Disappointing November 23, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Overall, I found this version of Jane Austen's "Northanger Abbey" disappointing. While no one element was completely horrible, several factors combined to make this the worst screen adaptation of an Austen novel I've seen to date.
The screenplay was scanty where I wanted more detail. The first half of the book, where Catherine enjoys Bath and becomes acquainted with the other characters was glossed over, without giving any of the characters a chance to emerge as believable. The time poured into the ridiculously repetitive dream sequences might have been better spent developing some of the other characters to the point where Catherine's relationship with them might have been believable. A few tender moments of friendship between Catherine and the mercenary Isabella would have given me at least some reason to believe that Catherine might have voluntarily spent some time in her company. John Thorpe was presented as an evil kind of buffoon, which made me wonder why the sensible James Morland would have befriended him at all. Even the relationship between Henry Tilney and Catherine was rendered implausible by the omission of his character development. The addition of the Marchioness was ridiculous. There was no need to invent her, as Austen already provided the General with enough flaws. The latter half, at Northanger Abbey itself, was not handled adroitly. The developing friendship between Eleanor and Catherine was never allowed to show, and Henry's tenderness toward Catherine was completely absent. The subtlety and understated humor that defines Austen's work was completely absent.
The direction could have been handled better. Everything was overly dramatic, with no trace of subtlety anywhere. Catherine was an idiot, Tilney a rebelious younger son, Isabella a devious fortune hunter, Thorpe an unalloyed villain, General Tilney a stern yet capricious patriarch. I blame the directing, here, rather than the acting, because there were times that it looked like the actors, left to their own devices, would have put on a more credible performance.
As for the acting, all I can say is that they did their best within the bounds set them by the director. Robert Hardy gave an outstanding performance, of course, and the second star I gave was by his merit alone.
The soundtrack is completely inappropriate. It is disjointed, jarring, and modern. All in all, it was a distraction rather than an enhancement.
The costumes were fine, although the Marchioness, who had no reason to be there anyway, was a bit of a joke.
All in all, I felt that the movie missed the point. "Northanger Abbey" was meant to satirize the gothic novel, not exemplify it.
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