"Jane Eyre" (1983) was directed by Julian Amyes for the BBC. It's an adaption of the famous novel by Charlotte Brontë. Zelah Clarke portrays Jane Eyre and Timothy Dalton stars as Mr. Rochester.As we expect from the BBC, production values are high, and all of the supporting players do very well. My one criticism of this adaptation is an unusual one. Early in the film,Jane is cast out by her aunt. She suffers horribly at the boarding school to which she is sent. However, we don't see the suffering. At one point she is publicly humiliated, but the school is shown to us as more or less a standard English boarding school of the time. However, we then hear in a voice-over that typhus took its terrible toll because the children lived in squalor and were undernourished. It seems strange to say that they should have shown us more suffering. However, Jane Eyre did, indeed, suffer at boarding school. That's in the novel, and it should be in the film as well.The casting of the lead roles is interesting. Timothy Dalton is extremely handsome, in a Byronic way. When he asks Jane whether she thinks him handsome, she says no. However, here's what the novel says: "I knew my traveler by his broad, black eyebrows; his square forehead, made squarer by the sweep of his black hair. I recognized his strong nose, more remarkable for character than beauty; his full nostrils; his grim mouth, chin, and jaw—yes, all three were very grim. I saw his figure, now without a cloak, was athletic, though neither tall nor graceful." Although Dalton is very handsome, he looks enough like Brontë's description to fit perfectly as Mr. Rochester. In the novel and the film, Jane is described as poor, obscure, plain, and little. Zelah Clarke is small, but she's really not plain. True, Mia Wasikowska has played the role, and she is extraordinarily beautiful. However, Wasikowska must have had to overcome that beauty to portray Jane Eyre. In my opinion, Zelah Clark is perfect for the role. As another viewer has written, "Only Zelah Clark has ever brought the level of fervor, innocence, and intelligence to the role of Jane that makes it believable that Rochester would fall in love with her." Absolutely correct.Because this movie was made for television, it works well on the small screen. As I write this review, the film has an extremely high IMDb rating of 8.2. Obviously, thousands of other people responded to the movie just as I did. It's a fabulous film. Don't miss it.

If all of the actors and actresses played their parts equally well, I would have given this a 10! The passionate acting on the part of Sian Pattendon for Jane as a child, was superb. Timothy Dalton played the part of Mr. Rochester as well as the George C. Scott version. Yet I disagree with many of the other reviewers on Zelah Clarke's performance. While I agree she did a great job in her acting, yet her personality seemed a little too sedate and not as passionate as I picture Jane Eyre. I've seen this story in 3 different versions, and this version was the best one I've seen! I wish they had cast an actress with a more passionate personality, and it would have been perfect.

This adaptation is generally thought to be one of the very best and I can only say I agree wholeheartedly. It's the definitive version in my book and no adaptation made before or after can touch it.The advantage of the miniseries is (obviously) that it can do the book full justice, which shorter versions just can't. In this case, I think they did splendidly. Timothy Dalton is a great Rochester, even if his acting goes slightly bipolar in one or two scenes (I'm thinking of the post-marriage scene where he alternates between cooing over Jane and cursing her at the top of his voice within seconds…). He starts slightly too gruff but he soon gets it right. Anyway, most Rochesters start out a bit gruffer than they should, so I believe this to be a directing mistake… Timothy Dalton is able to express so much emotion with his face and yet you couldn't really tell which muscles are doing it, which is the hallmark of an excellent actor (I think anyway). One can really feel he is a tortured soul but he still has a sense of humour and conveys great depth of feeling after he falls for Jane. Other reviewers have pointed out that he's too handsome (which is true, but do we really mind, ladies?) and too young (which isn't true, he was 36 when they shot this, which makes him just right). I also like Zelah Clarke as Jane. Her acting scope is slightly more limited than Tims but I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing when playing Jane Eyre. Jane is passionate but also very proper. However when Rochester starts to draw her out she manages to convey both the humour that Jane and Rochester share and the painful confusion Jane feels when he starts toying with her. Also, she is suitably minuscule, if a bit old for 18-year old Jane… The rest of the cast is also excellent. Adele is suitably vain, silly and yet likable, Mrs Fairfax is just as I imagined her in the book and especially with St John Rivers they chose the actor brilliantly. He is wonderfully haughty, pious, cold and unlikeable… Of course the production values are less than top notch. I do not mind this personally but other reviewers have pointed it out and they're right. The costumes are superbly done however (probably because you can re-use those over and over in any Victorian drama, so they did them properly once so they would keep a while). The best thing however about this story is the dialog and storytelling. Jane's childhood is depicted in all its excruciating oppressiveness and you get to feel all her pain and her development into a passionate but very religious and strong woman is completely believable. The relationship and growing attraction between Jane and Rochester is depicted very accurately and carefully (which is something that other adaptations often made complete hashes of by not allowing the necessary time for it). The dialog is clean, produced more or less verbatim in many scenes, but they make it work as a movie nonetheless. And also Jane's flight from Thornfield is developed in detail, which shows how much she is willing to suffer to do what she thinks is right and how she manages never to lose her dignity. I think these latter points are what sets this version apart from almost all other adaptations and makes it such a masterpiece. A must-see for all Jane Eyre fans!

I am taking into account that this was made in a time when cameras stayed still but they still and the ability to do a bit of good casting.First off, piece of advice, if your camera blurs in poor light, don't have candle-lit scenes.Secondly, considering how much of the speech in the book is utterly pointless you don't need to stick with it word for word. You can cut out a lot of the instances in which Mr. Rochester repeats Jane for a start.Thridly, If your going to cast a tall actor for Rochestor don't cast a short one for Jane. It doesn't work. All the shots had to be wider than necessary to fit them both in and the actors must have got neck-ache surely.And finally, when it comes to casting someone for the part of Jane Eyre their ability to act is more important than the way they look. I couldn't care less about that Jane Eyre, she was utterly pathetic, completely unlikeable and impossible to sympathise with.Watch the 2006 version instead.