And now for the version I grew up with. This came out around the same time my friends I passed around the novel. This was followed by a phase where I read a lot of Louisa May Alcott books. A. Lot. And I found out that I was almost named Beth (but my Dad found out what happens to Beth and said nope). This version, just to be frank, is sometimes a little sad for me to watch. It’s the moment of pure nostalgia in my youth and takes me back to the same feelings my friends and I had at those ages. Also, because it makes me sad that my childhood crush, Christian Bale, turned out to be such an ass in reality. Looking at him is still a treat though.
Other than them moving the play from the beginning into a quarter into the film, this is also the first great version that is close to the book. It gives all of the sisters more of their stories, it shows how Laurie was close to all of them, not just Jo. And it gives more of that sense of gradual growing up, not just switching scenes and suddenly everyone is married. The cast includes Susan Sarandon as a forms of Marmee that is not just a martyr and sage advise giver, but a woman who is trying to keep her family as happy and safe as she can. Trini Alvarado plays Meg, Winona Ryder plays Jo, Claire Danes (fresh from “My So Called Life”) plays Beth, and Kirsten Dunst shares the role of Amy with Samantha Mathis. As I already said, Laurie is played by Christian Bale and Professor Baher is once again not as attractive to me as a child, but at lest well cast with Gabriel Byrne in the part. Mary Wickes plays their crotchety Aunt March who I always enjoyed and deserves a mention here. Even John Brooke, Meg’s love interest, got be played by a familiar face in the 90s, Eric Stoltz.
This is also the first theatrical version that lets you understand that all of the sisters have dreams and goals beyond marriage in their adult life. There is a good amount of focus on Amy’s art and Meg’s desire to be respected as the family was when wealthy. One of my friends loved all of the subtle little details put in from the book to show how gentle Beth was like how she always carried the dolls the rest of the girls threw away. Even, as I stated before, Marmee gets to be the strong, feminist, but still struggling woman of literature. Although they made this a bit obvious in this movie with Marmee criticizing corsets and pointing out that Laurie as a male operates under different rules of society than them.
Once again there is focus on Jo’s writing, but it is interwoven with her life among the rest of the March clang. We have the same statements of misguided youth of becoming a famous author and buying Beth a piano someday. But there are also the actual evolution of being a young writer, how she starts with fantastical stories based on other things she reads, then transitions into writing her surroundings. In the book, the girls have their own newspaper called the Pickwick Portfolio (after Dickens’s the Pickwick Papers) and this was the first version I ever saw that included it in the film. It was the sort of thing most creative children do (my friends and I included) and it makes sense to have it within the film versions. They mix in some of the other key moments of Jo writing milestones like selling her first story in with the large changes in their life like Beth getting sick.
Something people always forget in the original novel that although Lauri thought he had that massive crush on Jo, he was a part of all four sisters’ lives as well as having some aspirations of his own (which he gives up in a moment of depression). That right, Laurie has more character development in the book and in this version of the film. And that the novel was full of normal sibling rivalries. The most significant included in this movie is when Amy, upset that she can’t go out with Meg, Jo, and Laurie to the theater, burns Jo’s latest novel. First, this is utterly evil and so very devastating to watch. Second, there is the long period of time it takes to create forgiveness (namely Amy almost dies in a skating accident). And honestly, I would have taken a long time to forgive her too. And when she finally starts to rewrite the novel, all 3 sisters help Jo to remember the wording and events. This film also shows the struggles to be published, especially as a woman, even in New York City where there were more opportunities.
When we get to the parts featuring Jo and the professor, their relationship is more of a meet cute mixed with ups and downs of a normal couple. He recognizes that she’s a writer from the ink smudges on her fingers. He talks to her about other writing not just the arts in general. Then, when he criticizes what she’s been publishing in the papers, tales of horror and 2 dimensional characters, she’s insulted. She defends her work and this is a more realistic reaction of a young author. More than that, what he says sticks in her brain, she learns from it, and thanks him later. Oh yea, and her book is going to be published at the end. Hell ya, writing ending established.
