An Undying Love for ‘Jane Eyre’

After enchanting viewers with its sparkling adaptations of the Jane Austen classics “Pride and Prejudice” and “Emma,” A&E; has set its literary sights on another 19th century British masterpiece--Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre.”

The stylish adaptation of Bronte’s oh-so-romantic 1847 novel, which was filmed in Hertfordshire and Oxfordshire, England, premieres Sunday on the cable network. The British co-production aired earlier this year in England.

Samantha Morton (A&E;’s “Emma”) stars as Jane Eyre, a young woman who survives a horrible, love-starved childhood to become a governess at Thornfield Hall, an estate owned by Mr. Rochester (Ciaran Hinds).

Despite their age and class differences, Jane and the brooding Rochester fall in love. But Jane flees on their wedding day when she learns at the altar of his hidden past. Their love for each other, though, refuses to die.

“ ‘Jane Eyre’ is one of those fabulous love stories that just never goes out of date,” says Delia Fine, vice president of film, drama and performing arts programming at A&E.;

It’s also one those haunting stories that has captured the imagination of filmmakers. Over the past 60 years, there have been numerous film and TV versions of “Jane Eyre,” including the famous 1944 Orson Welles-Joan Fontaine adaptation and the lovely 1971 NBC romance with George C. Scott and Susannah York. A&E; even aired one with Timothy Dalton as Rochester in the 1980s. Last year, William Hurt and Charlotte Gainsbourg starred in Franco Zefferelli’s rather bloodless adaptation.

Fine feels Morton’s delicate performance as Jane sets this adaptation apart from the others.

“I think what impressed me [about the novel] is the extraordinary journey this character goes on, and the extraordinary moral fiber and backbone this young woman develops,” Fine says.

“She finds a moral compass to fight all the terrible things that have been done to her,” Fine adds. “I think Samantha’s performance really illuminates that aspect of Jane. She has this quiet dignity.”

As for Hinds, who is best known as Capt. Wentworth in Jane Austen’s “Persuasion,” Fine says: “He has an absolute magnetic quality. I think you sense in Ciaran’s performance the real tortured quality of this man’s soul.”

Morton was just 19 when she made “Jane Eyre”--the same age as Bronte’s heroine. “That’s never happened before,” says Morton, pointing out that previous actresses who played Jane were in their mid- to late-20s.

“I just think nowadays, we have so many younger actresses who directors can trust,” she says. “I felt very good about that.”

Morton first read the book a few years ago in preparation for auditioning for the Zefferelli film. Though the audition never came to fruition, she fell madly in love with Bronte’s novel and felt a real connection to Jane.

“I really admire people in the world who are honest and good,” the actress explains. “I love this person. Charlotte wrote it in such a way that was so personal. At times it was like you were inside Jane and going through [her life] with her. I felt so connected to her. Not that it was personal to me, but I thought I was on this journey with her.”

Five years ago, Hinds played Rochester on a four-hour British radio adaptation. “That’s probably how I got the job, because the director, Robert Young, had heard it on the radio,” Hinds recalls.

“He had no idea who I was, but it was the passion that drew him to me. He believed that Rochester was a passionate man that had buried his feelings underneath--rather than being a maudlin, depressed figure.”

There’s also a childish element to his personality. “He gets angry over the smallest thing,” Hinds says. “He covers his life with a veneer of coolness, but inside he’s a desperately passionate man.”

Though Hinds never read the entire book, he would take a chapter to peruse during production for “color and background--to try to fill in the gaps that we didn’t have enough time for in the screenplay to cover. Some of it was fantastic. You would find this piece of dialogue [Jane and Rochester would] speak to each other that was full of outrageous, hectic, flowery language. It was extraordinary.”

Still, Hinds says, “it always amazed me he was at the heart of classical English literature along with Heathcliff [the hero of Emily Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights”].” Both, he adds, are “just so arrogant in their bluntness.”

Morton believes that Jane fell in love with Rochester, arrogance and all, because “she knows him. You know when you know somebody so well automatically? He’s her soul mate, and she recognizes that.”

The actress recalls that when the movie aired in England, people remarked to her about the age difference between Jane and Rochester.

“They are not different ages if you look at people and their souls and their life experiences,” Morton says. “They both met at the right time. They both needed each other. If he hadn’t have met Jane, his life would have been very, very lost forever. He would have been a very lonely, unhappy man.

“Whereas, meeting Jane was his form of healing,” Morton says. “Meeting Rochester was her form of healing--to allow herself to love. At the end of the day, you can be on your deathbed and the only thing that matters at all in the world is love in your heart.”

“Jane Eyre” airs Sunday at 5 and 9 p.m. and Tuesday at 6 and 10 p.m. on A&E.; A&E; Home Video will release the movie on Oct. 28.