Young Pip (Oscar Kennedy) visits Satis House (Holdenby House's courtyard transformed digitally by Triad Digital).
One of the most polarizing aspects of Great Expectations 2011 is Gillian Anderson’s portrayal of Miss Havisham. Many people loved it; as many hated it.
At 43 years of age, some critics regard the actress as being too young for the part. Yet Martita Hunt played Miss Havisham in David Lean’s classic when she was 47, only fours years older than Gillian. Helena Bonham Carter is set to play Miss Havisham in a new theatrical film version coming out later this year. She will soon be 44 years old.
Others find Gillian Anderson’s take on Miss Havisham to be all wrong. I agree with the critic who wrote that regardless of how one feels about the actress as Miss Havisham, she dominates her scenes as the jilted bride. Paired with the CG changes made to Holdenby House to transform it into Satis House, the viewer is treated to one of the creepier interpretations of Miss Havisham in her rotting manse.
Stone angel in courtyard strangled by vines.
The film sets up Pip’s first meeting with Miss Havisham and Estella by transforming the courtyard into a dark, vine-strangled environment. This alone should tell Pip that all is not right with his new patron.
Transformed courtyard.
Miss Havisham glides down the stairs like a ghostly apparition.
In this adaptation, Pip’s first glimpse of Miss Havisham is of her gliding down the stairs in a candle-lit, dark oak stairwell. A break in the curtain backlights her figure and features. Not a word is said. In the novel, Pip has heard that Miss Havisham is an immensely rich and grim lady who led a life of seclusion.
The stairs are covered with dust and candles are fully ablaze despite the day light.
Miss Havisham as an eerie apparition is enhanced in this scene in which her white figure is indistinct and as fuzzy as the dust on the stairs.
When she discovered that her bridegroom-to-be had absconded with her money and her heart, Miss Havisham was at her dressing table putting on her bridal clothes. She had put on one shoe, her other foot was stockinged. Gillian Anderson is seen walking barefoot, a change in Dickens’ story that I found perplexing. In fact, many of the changes in both plot, scenes, and costumes seemed odd.
Surely the dress would have been yellower and more ragged and tattered after having been worn for so long?
While I enjoyed Gillian Anderson’s reworking of Miss Havisham into a neurotic recluse with a tendency towards self-mutilation, I wondered at the decision to make her appear like a mini-me version of Bette Davis’s Baby Jane. Her wedding gown, I suppose, was meant to look like a Regency version of a bridal dress, but to my way of thinking it resembled a nightie. Her curls, which were not supposed to have been touched in years, hung tight around her face. By the time Pip met her, her white hair would have looked like a rat’s nest. The delicate fabric of her gown remained remarkably intact – it should have been frayed, especially at the edges and where she sat. She was not wearing a veil, which should have been attached askew on her head. And her train would have been tattered and filthy, and had an ombre look about it, going from black at the floor to dark gray, to lighter grey until it met the yellowing white color of the gown higher up.
One way to assess if the changes were beneficial is to turn to Dickens’ own words:
In Dickens' great tale, Pip met Miss Havisham as she sat near her dressing table.
However the only thing to be done being to knock at the door. I knocked and was told from within to enter. I entered therefore and found myself in a pretty large room well lighted with wax candle.s No glimpse of daylight was to be seen in it. It was a dressing room as I supposed from the furniture though much of it was of forms and uses then quite unknown to me. But prominent in it was a draped table with a gilded looking glass, and that I made out at first sight to be a fine lady’s dressing table.”
In this film, Miss Havisham walks Pip through a room filled with dusty glass dome-covered scientific specimens that her dead brother had collected from exotic places, much as a docent would accompany a visitor through a musty science museum.
Dead specimens under dusty glass.
Pip’s actual first impression of Miss Havisham after walking through a dark house was much more powerful and immediate:
In an armchair with an elbow resting on the table and her head leaning on that hand sat the strangest lady I have ever seen or shall ever see.”
Once beautiful butterflies pinned into a frozen position, a rather obvious visual simile.
Dickens gave the costume and set designers a plethora of descriptions to work with:
She was dressed in rich materials, satins and lace and silks, all of white. Her shoes were white. And she had a long white veil dependent from her hair; and she had bridal flowers in her hair, but her hair was white. Some bright jewels sparkled on her neck, and on her hands, and some other jewels lay sparkling on the table. Dresses less splendid than the dress she wore, and half packed trunks, were scattered about. She had not quite finished dressing, for she had but one shoe on, the other was on the table near her hand; her veil was but half arranged, her watch and chain were not put on, and some lace for her bosom lay with those trinkets, and with her handkerchief; and gloves and some flowers and a prayer book all confusedly heaped about the looking glass.”
Gillian Anderson's lips are as parched as dry paper, but the curls are too neat for someone who has not tended to her hair in decades.
I have no quarrel with Gillian Anderson’s age. The book is written through Pip’s eyes, and a young boy would have found anyone in their 40’s to be ancient. Gillian did an excellent job of resembling someone who had not seen sunlight in decades, and whose physical condition was deteriorating as a result of physical and emotional neglect. Her curls make her look much too young and are incongruent. Why would she take care to wear such beautiful curls when she has neglected everything else about her appearance?
Helena Bonham Carter plays Miss Havisham in the yet to be released Great Expectations
If viewers were turned off by Gillian’s creepy Miss Havisham, with her high-pitched little girl voice and nervous bird-like mannerisms, then the above photo indicates that Helena Bonham Carter’s take on the spinster is set to go over the top as well. Let’s go back to Dickens’ description of Pip’s first meeting with his new patron to see if these interpretations fit in with his vision of the jilted bride:
It was not in the first minute that I saw all these things, though I saw more of them in the first minute than might be supposed. But I saw that every thing within my view, which ought to be white, had been white long ago, and had lost its lustre, and was faded and yellow. I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and, like the flowers, and had no brightness left, but the brightness of her sunken eyes. I saw that the dress had been put upon the rounded figure of a young woman, and that the figure upon which it now hung loose had shrunk to skin and bone. “
Miss Havisham was a skeletal, withered shadow of a woman who shone as dimly as a pale moon hidden behind clouds. Gillian’s Miss Havisham shines just a little too brightly.
Pip approaches Estella for the first time.
It was when I stood before her avoiding her eyes that I took note of the surrounding objects in detail, and saw that her watch had stopped at twenty minutes to nine, and that a clock in the room had stopped at twenty minutes to nine.”
For some strange reason, the clocks in the film had stopped at 11:00. It’s these minor inattentions to detail that grate.
Izzy Meikle-Small plays the haughty young Estella.
“Look at me”, said Miss Havisham. “You are not afraid of a woman who has never seen the sun since you were born.”
These words would have been much more powerful in the introductory scene than Gillian’s museum tour guide of her rooms.
David Lean's Great Expectations featured a rather mature Jean Simmons. Martita Hunt as Miss Havisham and Tony Wager as Pip.
David Lean’s set was dark, as described by Dickens. Too much sunlight was allowed inside the house Gillian Anderson’s Miss Havisham inhabited. This served to make Satis House look much dirtier but less creepy.
I find it remarkable that many critics found this adaptation visually too gloomy. I think there is too much light. Dickens described the curtains as emitting no light whatsoever.
I glanced down at the foot from which the shoe was absent, and saw that the silk stocking on it once, while now yellow, had been trodden ragged. Without this arrest of every thing, this standing still of all the pale decayed objects, not even the withered bridal dress on the collapsed form could have looked so like grave clothes, or the long veil so like a shroud.
So she sat corpse like as we played at cards; the frillings and trimmings on her bridal dress looking like earthy paper, as if they would crumble under a touch. I knew nothing then of the discoveries that are occasionally made of bodies buried in ancient times which fall to powder in the moment of being distinctly seen, but I have often thought since that she must have looked as if the admission of the natural light of day would have struck her to dust”
The above description tells us why it would have been more important for the set designer to have kept Miss Havisham in total darkness. While some of the effects of the light on the dust and dirt was striking, the only evidence of “earthy paper” was on Gillian Anderson’s parched lips.
This set of the decaying bridal banquet is gorgeous. The house itself is allowed to rot (and Pip begins to notice the water damage and crumbling walls as he matures), much as Miss Havisham is allowing herself to rot inside and out. There were moments when the production shone. The film’s colors follow the current trend for digital color correction to create atmosphere. Whether you like it or not, I’m afraid the trend is here to stay.
The wedding cake looked skeletal and creepy, as if bugs were ready to crawl out of it. Still, would so much of the food and flowers have remained recognizable?
Miss Havisham's self-mutilation is evident early on in the film.
The self-mutilation, in this instance, Miss Havisham is constantly scratching her hand, was an interesting touch that added another layer to her manic obsessions. At times she seemed completely insane and incapable of self-possession. In this adaptation, Gillian portrays Miss Havisham as a weak victim who somehow finds the strength of will to plot her revenge on all male-kind.
The letter of betrayal from Compeyson, the fiance who jilted Miss Havisham.
The incongruity of a perfect white veil over the decaying flowers and (finally) the tattered sleeves struck me as being wrong in Gillian’s final scenes. While I loved the cinematography of the exterior sets, these visual mistakes detracted from my enjoyment of the story. One other thought: while I enjoyed watching the young Pip and Estella, I was bothered by their older counterparts. It was very hard for me to swallow that Pip was more beautiful than the girl he loved.
Vanessa Kirby as Estella and Douglas Booth as Pip
Your thoughts?
You can watch Great Expectations online through May 8th on PBSs website.
Jane Austen's World 
This rendition of Great Expectations needs to be shelved – forever. If there are
further adaptations they will, surely,veer from Dicken’s work so that they will become nothing more than……….
I doubt that anyone will ever match David Lean’s screen adaptations of Dickens.
That said I enjoyed this interpretation and particularly Gillian Anderson’s role in it.
I enjoyed Anderson’s performance, as well, but I agree the costuming, etc was mishandled. Another thing to add about the hair… there was too much of it! Sunlight deprivation for such an extended period of time would have caused a lot to fall out. I think perhaps the reasoning might have been while that tattered approach reads well in a book, it’s just too overwhelming on film.
I thought…Can’t we get a more attactive Estella?..To me,she was too plain considering Dickens described as very beautiful… other wise a good adadption.
The ending..Dickens wrote two… The first where they just parted ways and the third (after a friend of Dickens insisted he do so) leaves then standing together… the reader is allowed to imagine the ending.
Vic,
Gillian’s bare feet annoyed me, too. Surely no one could have survived so long in a drafty, musty old house in bare feet and a flimsy Regency gown, which is
not satin and silk. I found her performance and appearance like that of a 60’s hippie airhead, but I also didn’t dislike her performance. The self mutilation was idiotic and her acting should alone have conveyed the role.
What bothered me more was your observation that adult Pip was better looking than adult Estella.
I think there’s a great deal of corruption in show business and sometimes people are cast who know someone or have an influential relative who donates money to some cause. When I saw the homely adult Estella, I thought immediately that she was given a push to be allowed this role and her acting skills are minimal.
David Lean is so much better. One reason is the dialog moves light years faster.
I sensed the ghost story aspect of this novel for the first time. While some may have liked the horror of the rats/mice in the wedding cake and subtle sadistic personalities of the earlier version, I thought the more redemptive fiery death scene extremely memorable. To see Pip’s change in personality was also rewarding. Just as one should not judge a good book by the first chapter, perhaps this new movie version should be judged by what new light it casts on what Dickens was trying to convey. For me, I will reread the novel to see its ghost story aspects. If I remember correctly, even Dickens rewrote the ending to make it more Hollywood!
What a fine article. I agree with all you said but Gilian was wonderful. I couldn’t take me eyes off of her. I would love to someday have Jessica Lange slip into the role.
Oooooo – Jessica Lange…. AGREED
Images 1 – 10 GA’s lips don’t work.
I love Gillian Anderson as an actress, and (despite the fresh curls, self-mutilation and other flaws mentioned) found a certain merit in her interpretation. (Miss Havisham was rather like a ghost caught in a moment of time and had to be certifiable to live like she did!) However, my main complaint about movies based on books I love is how frequently they stray from the book unnecessarily-the visual details do distract. The change in the stopped clock time to 11:00 is a classic example…
I thought Gillian was perfection. Though Dickens wrote Miss Havisham as older, 44 was also a good age, considering her age as a bride and the amount of time it could have taken to acqure and raise Estella. It allowed for an appealingly beautiful Miss Havisham, which, in my opinion, added to the story. The same goes for the color of her gown. While yellowed would have been more realistic, it would not have been as visually appealing. I thought the lighting was perfect, also, despite the straying from the story. In a visual production, it is important for the viewers to be able to see at least a small amount of what is in the room, and candles alone would not have accomlished that well enough. The sheer curtains toned down the daylight in a near-mystical way. So I think that these variations from Dickens and realism needed to be there for effect in a visual production.
What bothers me in a movie is when it departs from the author’s plot or throws in modern nuances, such as politcal correctness or sexual mores, which were nonexistant at the time.
It surprises me that so many found Vannessa Kirby as unattractive.
Hi Debra, I did not find Vanessa Kirby unattractive. With most other actors, her looks would have been fine enough. But Douglas Booth, a former male model for Burberry, has the sort of skin and coloring that every female aspires to achieve with make up. This young man’s features are drop dead gorgeous. His facial features remind me of a Grecian statue’s. What woman, even one who has been raised to despise men, could resist such a beautiful suitor?
I’m not enamored with this version either. It’s not the Miss Havisham in my mind, and Estella ought to be strikingly pretty to best accomplish what she’s been trained to do. Having a new perspetive is fine, but it still should be realistic (Estella, scene details). Interested in seeing Helena Bonham Carter as Miss Havisham – I like seeing HBC in anything.
Having just read the novel again, it was still very fresh in my mind. It was disappointing to me because I had formed a picture of Miss Havisham as described by Dickens, and Gillian (although a wonderful actress) did not fit. As mentioned above, everything from her gown to her curls were not right, also to me she was not a whimpering weak person, she thrived on the strength of her extreme hatred. I was not happy with the other departures from the novel, I watched with someone who has never read it I found myself explaining that this was not as written so that they did not think it was a true interpretation. I did love the lovely marshes and inside Satis house was amazing,except for the light. As for Estella, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I personally did not feel she was a match with Dickens description. I too look forward to Helena’s interpretation and hopefully a production that will follow the story as Dickens would wish.
This adaptation was ghastly, and not in a good way. Who do these producers, set, costume, and makeup designers think they are to disregard this major author’s description of his characters and their habitat? It is too bad that this adaptation is recorded in a digital format, and not on the old silver nitrate film, which would decompose by itself. This version deserves to be degaussed, along with the horrid Keira Knightley version of Pride and Prejudice.
Screen adaptations of classic literature almost always disappoint if one expects a complete and accurate portrayal of the novel down to the most minute details. That’s why there is no substitute to the direct connection established with the author from actually reading the novels. I judge the screenplay more by the quality of the acting and set design, which I think were very well done. I enjoyed this adaptation for its striking visual cinematography, and I think GA played it in the right way. Miss Havisham, in my mind, was both mysterious and creepy in the way she was portrayed, although I pictured her as being older when I read the novel. I thought that David Souchet played the lawyer, Mr. Jaggers, in just the way I pictured him. Dickens always had Jaggers washing his hand after meeting with his clients, which I always found an interesting detail from the novel, however that was not written into the screenplay. I also thought the older Estella not pretty enough.
Barry, you make some excellent points. We should not expect films to adhere perfectly to novels, for they can set up scenes and characters in a quick, visual way that sometimes would take pages and pages of exposition.
Overall I enjoyed this production of Great Expectations, and found Suchet’s Mr. Jaggers memorable. Still, if a director and writer are going to take liberties, they should have a good reason for doing so. I first viewed this series back to back in one sitting, unable to take my eyes from the small screen. During my second viewing I became more critical and began to notice some details that just seemed to veer off for no good reason.
Vic, I don’t mean to criticize, as I really like this and all your blogs. I agree with your observations. To be clear, I don’t mean to say that screen adaptations should disregard the details, or take liberties to suit the director’s own predilections and whims. In fact, I believe the more the screen adaptation adheres to the author’s original vision the better the production. Unfortunately, I just find that watching a screen adaptation never transports me into the author’s world in the same way as reading the prose. I find this especially so with Jane Austen adaptations. The 1995 P&P production was probably the closest because much of the dialogue was taken from the novel. But I can never get the same enjoyment from watching the adaptations of Jane Austen’s work as I do when reading the words that spill out from her pen directly to me.
I enjoyed this version very much. I liked Gillian because she was so different than the usual Miss Haversham.
I saw Vanessa Kirby on stage in Leeds as Rosalind and she was fantastic, unfortunately she didn’t really get to shine as Estella. How do you compare this to the Guffudd/Waddell version?
All comments very interesting and well described. I did not enjoy this version at all. I am spoiled by Dickens’ descriptions and dialogue, little of which existed in this production. Also thought the actors “mildly talented”. Estella very unattractive and not believable as a woman irresistable to men, etc., etc. The only character I thought well played was Magwich. I was very disappointed in David Suchet’s performance as Jaggers. Too dark and stiff.
Well, no one can replace John Mills and Alec Guinness, let’s face facts!
Really enjoy this blog and loved all the comments. Keep ’em coming.
I am on the side of those who enjoyed Gillian Anderson’s fresh interpretation of Miss Havisham. Perhaps I missed it but I do not see a mention of one of the chief characteristics of her performance, which was her young girl’s voice – as though frozen in that moment of arrested development, along with other coquettish mannerisms suc as the very girlfriend-y way of pressing for the details of Estella’s conquests. She plays Estella as the girl she was at the moment of her rejection, with all her girlish ways now calcified and brittle to the point of being almost ghoulish.
Brilliant, I think, brilliant.
Harry, I described her voice as being high-pitched. I think your description is better.
. . . and I am among those who found it jarring to have this almost unfairly drop-dead gorgeous Pip paired with this Estella.
Thanks for the review; I had not known about this. I am downloading part 1 now. :D
What disturbed me about the production is the absence of Biddy. To me she is an essential element of Pip’s growing “snobism” and his gradual understanding of how he has lost his moral compass. On another note, I really liked the portrayal of Joe, but again, without Biddy, he seems to be missing the joy in life he so rightly deserves.
I know she’s too young.. I know the curls are too perfect… I know.. I know.. but I just loved Gillian. She is with me now for several days. Her power is growing inside me. She is a great diva. She works around limitations and makes fascinating virtues of them. Her need for love from Estella is very deep and the line deliveries in the crucial revelations to Pip are the real thing. Flawless. It’s a real performance and the reason the “Performing Arts” exist. They do not exist to faithfully reproduce novels. They exist to exhibit “performances”.
That is why her performance stays with me as well. Her Miss Havisham is unforgettable. What I like is that Gillian DARES……
Very interesting to read the varied opinions about this production. I too was disappointed in it overall, especially as it started well with excellent actors playing Joe, the hateful Mrs Joe, and young Pip. I agree that the actors playing the adult Estella and Pip are mismatched, but think it is unfair to call Vanessa Kirby ‘homely’ as some others have done. She is attractive, but it is an earthy sort of attractiveness, and she does not convincingly play the haughty, fascinating doll she is supposed to be. Douglas Booth does not look like someone who was brought up to be a blacksmith, and his acting is dull. The greatest disappointment is Miss Havisham. Gillian Anderson is a rather weak actress and entirely fails to convey the humiliation, rage and spite that fuel Miss Havisham’s cruelty. (I suspect that Helena Bonham Carter will do much better.) The conflagration scene was utterly insipid when it should have evoked horror and pity, but by then I had pretty nearly lost interest.
Gillian Anderson is one of the strongest actors of our time (or any, really). Her versatility is difficult to match, as is her willingness to, as Vic put it, be daring. I suppose it’s too much to expect that everyone appreciate subtlety, rather than in-your-face, prepackaged emotion.
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Good review. I must admit, even though I recognize that there have been many changes from the original book, I still love this adaption. :)