Watched the new BFI Blu-ray release. It looks…ok, but I can’t help feeling like it could have looked better?
I read the novel four years ago but I found this adaptation even more affecting. I felt more of the slow strangulation of Lily Bart’s social status as Bertha Dorset and others freeze her out. Viewed this over two nights because I needed a break midway, the sadness of what was to come felt overwhelming.
I wrote to my movie club:
The House of Mirth has always struck me as the bleak cousin of Austen’s Persuasion.
Both are about hotties who may have overplayed their hands, but If Persuasion’s Anne Elliot is reunited with her true love at the end, Mirth is like, nah, make it tragedy.