Gothic-Thick ‘Jane Eyre’ Is Welles Worth the Effort

Write the word “Gothic” and underline it about three times and you get an idea of “Jane Eyre,” one of Hollywood’s more effective adaptations of classic literature.

The 1944 movie based on Charlotte Bronte’s bleakly romantic novel is so intensely Gothic that it makes the book seem almost buoyant. Orson Welles stars as the mysterious and pained Edward Rochester, but his influence goes beyond that--it seeps all over the movie. Welles helps director Robert Stevenson create a cinematic brooding in “Jane Eyre” that drapes like a heavy blanket.

“Jane Eyre,” screening Wednesday and Sept. 23 at the Cypress Senior Citizen Center, can be amusing in its gloominess. The film’s emotional extremes reach for the morose and overwrought and demand that we reach with it. These days, going along makes us giggle over some of the melodramatics, even while we’re admiring the strong storytelling.

Welles, who historians tell us had a big influence over Stevenson, seems to be in on the humor. His portrayal of Edward, the wealthy gent bogged down by a strangle of a secret in the form of a mad wife he keeps locked in a back room, is winkingly Byronic in its poetic vulnerability.

Stuck in tight Victorian duds fit for a misty moor and sporting an appropriately wavy do, Welles makes fun of Edward while trying to do justice to Bronte’s tortured hero.

The woman who lifts him out of hell is Jane, played with a Joan of Arc purity by Joan Fontaine. Nothing gets Jane down for long. She was abused by a ferret-faced aunt (Agnes Moorehead) as a child, then shipped to a dungeon of a school for abandoned girls. At the oppressive Lowood, Jane runs into the sadistic Brockelhust (Henry Daniell), a headmaster who thumps the Bible while he’s thumping the kids.

All this just toughens Jane, and she grows into a durable, good-hearted woman. As governess at Edward’s castle, Jane is prepared to bring him back from the dead. Fontaine doesn’t gush (or throw tantrums) as well as Merle Oberon in that other Gothic weepie, “Wuthering Heights,” but she’s a more than serviceable heroine.

Besides, Welles fills in the gaps, both in his oddly satisfying overacting as Edward and in the movie’s look. Much of “Jane Eyre” carries the Welles stamp, from the chiaroscuro lighting to the quick-cut close-ups to the moody exteriors.

The supporting actors are much in love with histrionics, but the performances fit the picture’s tone. Daniell and Moorehead are fierce-eyed monsters, and a very young Elizabeth Taylor makes a tender appearance as a school chum.

* What: “Jane Eyre.”

* When: Wednesday, Sept. 21, and Sept. 23, at 12:45 p.m.

* Where: Cypress Senior Citizen Center, 9031 Grindlay St.

* Whereabouts: Take the San Gabriel River (605) Freeway to Lincoln Avenue and head east to Grindlay Street, then go right.

* Wherewithal: FREE.

* Where to call: (714) 229-6776.

MORE SPECIAL SCREENINGS

Girl of the Golden West

(NR) Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald play a mismatched pair falling in love in this 1938 film that features Buddy Ebsen as the comic sidekick. The film, directed by Robert Z. Leonard, screens Friday, Sept. 16, at 12:45 p.m. in the Cypress Senior Center, 9031 Grindlay St. Public welcome. (714) 229-6776. FREE

A League of Their Own

(PG) Gina Davis, Madonna and Tom Hanks star in this 1992 film about a team in the women’s baseball league that was created to fill the void left when the male ballplayers went to fight in World War II. The film, directed by Penny Marshall, screens Tuesday, Sept. 20, at noon at the Michael E. Rodgers Senior Center, 1706 Orange Ave., Huntington Beach. (714) 536-9387. FREE

The ‘20s: From Illusion to DisIllusion

(NR) The effect the 1920s had on artists is explored in this film, which screens Sept. 22 at 7:30 p.m. at the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art, 2002 N. Main St., Santa Ana. Included with museum admission of $1.50 to $4.40. (714) 567-3600.