Questioning the Classics

So, I was flipping through channels yesterday and found the 1940 version of Pride and Prejudice, starring Laurence Olivier. So, naturally, because I love Laurence Olivier, I stopped and watched the rest of the movie, which was most of it because I turned it on when they were at the dance when Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy first talk to each other.

Now, I don't know much about Hollywood politics, especially back then when they seem to have been so... corrupt, but I started to wonder about them as I watched this movie. From what I understand, having never read Pride and Prejudice, Darcy is kind of a snot and a jerk, and generally a man to be avoided. Elizabeth finds him arrogant and snobbish, and she wants nothing to do with him. It is fate, however, that seems to keep bringing them together. And the more it does this, the more they tolerate each others' presence, though Darcy is never really a warm-hearted man. But in the end, Elizabeth with her devil-may-care (for 1800s society, anyway) attitude, her combination of grace, wit, control and pluck wins Mr. Darcy over, and they fall madly in love. This is what I've gathered from the, oh, 3 other versions of this story that I've seen haha.

Anyway, I didn't get any of this from the 1940 version. Is it because back then they didn't want their movies to have too dark of themes? Could the heroine not struggle for love? Well, that's a lie; just look at Wuthering Heights from 1939 (also, starring Laurence Olivier!). But then again... that version of Wuthering Heights made Heathcliff look like a sympathetic character. To an extent, he was, but he was a very power-hungry man. Once he had the wealth and fortune, he turned and treated Hindley's son like crap, the way he had been treated by Hindley when they were growing up. However, in Olivier's version, Heathcliff is a love-struck young man, who is determined to better his station in life to win the affections of the cold-hearted, but somehow lovable Catherine. And, also, it completely leaves out the second part of the book... when everyone is all grown up or dead, and now their children play out their story in an eerily similar fashion. I loved that about the book. However, not in the 1939 movie.

But why? I suppose it might have something to do with that era's movies not being that long, and thus not having enough allotted celluloid to record that part of the story. Or maybe Laurence Olivier was so damn dashing that they didn't want to make him unsympathetic, or a creep. Maybe they wanted to make him romantic (which they succeeded in doing). So then, that just makes me wonder, how different are our understanding of the classics than our grandparents? Or even parents? Well... if we went solely by movies. I guess our grandparents probably read them. But in a cinematic sense, we know the true story, while they got the sugar-coated one. No wonder our world is so much different than theirs was.

But back to the original, Olivier made Darcy seem like such a sweetheart. I couldn't figure out why Elizabeth was avoiding him. Yes, I suppose I might have been just blinded by the light that was Larry Olivier, and fell for him the way we all fall for the really good looking bad boys.... But still. Why was Hollywood so scared to make Mr. Darcy (or Heathcliff, for that matter), the scary dudes that more recent depictions make him out to be?

Does anyone know? Makes me want to research old Hollywood. Or at least watch more Laurence Olivier movies... :)