Vanity Fair (1998)

Excellent adaptation.

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

Thackeray prefaced his book with a short piece apparently explaining that the characters were just "puppets" who lived, ate and made love in a (fictional?) world that was neither moral nor immoral. Some have taken this at face value. However the book is generally seen as a savage satire and even today the appearance of Knight of the Realm, Sir Pitt Crawley, is rather shocking in that the reader just as much as the characters in the book, mistake him for a footman or even watchman such are his appearance and manners - breaking a convention that other Victorian writers such as Dickens and Trollope strictly observed. In the opening chapter the exceedingly disrespectful young Becky Sharp is again a character set against the Victorian archetype. Neither virtuous nor fallen woman (generally the literary alternatives at the time), Becky Sharp fights her way through life using her sharpness of perception and her bodily attractions - sometimes winning, sometimes losing badly.Thackeray portrays a world where people can and do behave badly and act grossly. They are though not puppets - satire is not the portrayal of puppets, rather a clear-sighted, uncharitable and somewhat exaggerated version of reality. Thackeray is writing without rosy spectacles. The virtuous do not necessarily live happily ever after and the bad go unpunished. The weak, it seems, go to the wall. His preface then should be seen as a disingenuous disclaimer to quiet and fob off those who took exception to the sourness of his portrayal of humanity. But the book stands on its own two feet. The real Becky Sharp, on the make and none too scrupulous, existed then, she exists today, as do all the other characters but it requires the removal of the rose-tinted spectacles to see them - and perhaps some courage to write about them too.This production plays the story entirely straight - an excellent cast portraying their characters realistically and without exaggeration, living according to their respective values and the hand Life deals them. It is left to the titles - the visuals and the music - to sound a ripe raspberry at their antics - and to remind us that this is not a puppet show but a sharp satire on how some people lived in England 200 years ago.A pretty fine cast, not all though got an opportunity to shine, but memorable were Jeremy Swift as a perspiring great dumpling Jos Sedley; an unsmiling, uncharming and unsightly Lord Steyne, removing the noble from the nobility; Philip Glennister as the ever reliable Dobbin; Nathaniel Parker as the dashing officer/adventurer snared by adventuress, Becky Sharp. The problem however I had with Natasha Little was that she was no seductress, there was no sweetness (however false) that surely would have been an essential weapon in her fight to get what she wanted? Perhaps the book does not make clear the nature of her appeal to men, only her will, her lack of scruples and the mixed success she had. Was she too sharp to successfully mask it with sweetness? Was her practical, cool matter-of-factness attractive? Perhaps for all his sharp observation, Thackeray did not have intimate knowledge of such aggressively ambitious women? Nobody mentions adapter Andrew Davies? Probably because he has done his job so well that nobody notices. I rather doubt there will be a better version.

Loved this production! I had never read the book (I will now!) but have grown to have a lot of trust in any adaptation that BBC does. I was not disappointed. Especially impressive was the ability of Natasha Little (Becky Sharp) to express Becky's manipulativeness through her subtle facial expressions and subtle use of her eyes and her voice. She was able to convey the mix of wicked cunning and refined pleasantness in a way that was really convincing. Not hard to believe that so many of the characters were completely sucked in by Becky's wiles. This subtle and superb acting ability is often lost in modern films that rely so heavily on on visual/graphic effects to make the point. Bravo,BBC!

I haven't seen the new version (it's not out in the theaters yet here), but the fuss led me to re-watch the DVD of the mini-series. I agree with the comments that this is not the top-of-the-drawer BBC miniseries, although there are some very dramatic scenes, particularly as the venue of the film shifts to Brussels in the lead-up to Waterloo. Natasha Little is indeed bewitching as Becky Sharp, a slippery character if ever there was one, and it will be interesting to see how Reese Witherspoon will cope with this role. Perhaps since Ms. Little is much less well-known than Ms. Witherspoon, she has more scope for creating a unique image of the ambitious Becky Sharp. I look forward to the comparison.

Rarely has a classic work of literature been adapted for television so well. This is a marvellous retelling of William Thackeray's 19th century novel, successful in almost every possible way. Purists may quibble that any attempt to adapt this sprawling bane of literature students' lives will always be doomed to failure simply because of the sheer size of it. But what makes this so good, particularly for those familiar with the novel, are two things: its total commitment to the spirit of 'Vanity Fair', and joyously perfect casting and acting.As readers of VF will know, the narrator plays a very important part in the book. His sly comments on the 'puppets' (as he often refers to the characters) that perform in his 'play' are frequently funny, exciting and always engaging. If VF is indeed 'a novel without a hero', it is no less engrossing for it. For the story is literally a Fair: characters come and go as the narrator sees fit while we the audience look on with amusement. We start with both Becky Sharp (the main character but not the traditional heroine as Thackeray's contemporary audience would have expected) and Amelia Sedley, and we follow their fortunes and interaction with other characters over some twenty or thirty years. Characters come, characters go; some die, some are born. But nearly always the narrator is there to invite us to feel something towards them: sympathy, repulsion, anger, love. And though he is notable by his absence in the book's most powerful scenes, he will return shortly to talk about something else that another character is getting up to. This is where this adaptation nails the spirit of VF so precisely; it never forgets that these characters are puppets in a play, performing for our entertainment. Traditional bandstand music plays over scenes to reinforce this impression. The comedy elements make us laugh (Jos Sedley and his enormous, well-fed behind trying to mount a horse or carriage), the battle scenes are visceral, the dramatic scenes are engrossing. And the sly comments of the narrator are subtly retained in bizarre camera shots: the fat pig snuffling outside Queen's Crawley, or the beggar playing 'Rule Britannia' with his little bells as the soldiers march off to fight the Battle of Waterloo.But this would have been for nought if the casting had not been spot on. Natasha Little IS Becky Sharp. Beautiful, alluring, charming, witty, cunning, deceptive and manipulative, she is every man's dream on the outside (I fell in love with her, and I can see all she is getting up to!). One look from her eyes is all that is required to get her climbing the social ladder, which ultimately is all that she wants. Frances Grey is also perfect as Amelia; not as beautiful as Becky, but still pleasant, sweet and kind-hearted, and forever doting on George Osborne. Tom Ward as Osborne was not what I was expecting, yet he got it right: a dashing English officer, strikingly handsome, and not totally devoid of morals, but very easily succumbs to his vanity and pride. Philip Glenister as the only genuinely heroic character in the book (though still not without faults), Dobbin, again is not how I pictured the character, but again nails it perfectly: slightly clumsy, socially awkward, but clear thinking, level-headed and always ready to do the right thing. The rest of the cast play their respective grotesques with equal perfection and relish - to single out each and every one is impossible, though all deserve it.As a lover of this book, I congratulate all on a job well done. I cannot comment on how someone who has not read VF will like this series, but I can understand that they may be a little bewildered by it all: the occasional dizzy camerawork and loud brass band music. So long as you understand that we are the audience of a colourful, vibrant fair populated by a rich assortment of people, all with faults, all with redeeming features (however materialistic they might be), then I think you should derive great pleasure from it, because more than anything, this is great fun.