It’s a sign of advancing age when a film remake rolls along and your first reaction is: “Already? Didn’t we just have the last one?” So it was with me when the news landed that Greta Gerwig was making a new version of Little Women – the first major big-screen adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s pioneering young adult novel in 25 years. Not that long ago to some of us; a literal lifetime to the little women (and men) who are its primary audience. Gerwig’s version, with its structural zigzagging and injection of Generation Z feminism, will be released in UK cinemas on Boxing Day.
While you wait for it, however, revisiting the timeline of past versions is both an interesting chronological exercise and a suitably seasonal comfort-viewing binge. Sadly, any Little Women streaming project begins with a dead end: two silent version were made nearly back-to-back, in 1917 and 1918, and both have been lost. So we start with George Cukor’s rather lovely 1933 version – available most cheaply on Chili. Shot in silvery black and white, it downplays the romanticism of later versions for a more sober, bittersweet study of familial togetherness and resilience amid hardship. The 19th-century setting may remain, but it’s palpably depression-era cinema, with the then 26-year-old Katharine Hepburn as charismatic and aptly tomboyish a Jo March as we’ve ever seen.
Sixteen years later, MGM decided the time was ripe for a full Technicolor treatment: Mervyn LeRoy’s 1949 version (again on Chili) is bathed in a sense of postwar luxury and abundance. Costumed and set-dressed to the hilt in frills, ribbons and colour-saturated velvet – it won an Oscar for its art direction – it looks a chocolate-box treat but is dramatically statelier and less emotionally immediate than its predecessor. Seventeen-year-old Elizabeth Taylor makes a vibrant, bright-eyed Amy, though she rather shows up June Allyson’s wooden miscasting as Jo.
For the next few decades, Little Women became regular small-screen fodder instead. The BBC couldn’t get enough of it, serialising it in 1950, 1958 and 1970 – though somewhat disappointingly, none of those seem to be available to view. The Beeb’s 2017 miniseries is, of course, readily available on Amazon and elsewhere (though not on the iPlayer or Britbox), and it’s a bright, airy pleasure: at least as bracingly youthful as Gerwig’s version, while Cranford writer Heidi Thomas plays up the gentle comedy in Alcott’s novel more than most.
American TV networks, of course, made their own share: a 1978 miniseries can be found on YouTube for real completists. It creaks along rather, but the curious may wish to seek out William Shatner’s rather bizarre scenes as Professor Bhaer. The most unusual of the TV versions, however, is Tales of Little Women, an anime series from 1986 by Fumio Kurokawa that neatly tailors the saga for very little ones, with lush, luminous cartoon imagery. Best of all, it’s free to view on Amazon Prime.
Back to the big screen, and probably the most all-round satisfying Little Women adaptation. Gillian Armstrong’s 1994 version (available on iTunes) remains a warm, joyous family film, ideally cast top to bottom, and visually rich without feeling overdone. Winona Ryder’s Gen X-tinged Jo is a very different character from Hepburn’s – sprightlier, a little dreamier – but a worthy, Oscar-nominated successor. Armstrong, the first woman to direct a film version, has a tender, empathetic touch that never slides into stickiness. New versions will keep being made (aside from Gerwig’s, an ill-reviewed, hard-to-find modern-dress film came out last year), but this may remain the gold standard.
New to streaming & DVD this week
Western Stars
(Warner Bros, PG)
Bruce Springsteen’s concert film is a bit more than an album-flogging tie-in. Intimately shot and interspersed with archive materials and wearily poignant spoken interludes, it’s a paean to a mythic American west fading under the rocker’s boots.
Crawl
(Paramount, 15)
Everything you could want from a B-movie: stormy atmosphere, a plucky heroine in peril, and killer alligators all around. Set mostly in a flooded, death-laden basement, it’s handled with gleeful economy and bite by trash maestro Alexandre Aja.
Mystify: Michael Hutchence
(Dogwoof, 15)
The Australian rock star’s tragic demise is mournfully charted in this devoted, affecting documentary, which incorporates some of Hutchence’s own diary-like video footage. It’s both a tribute and an essay on the terrors of celebrity.
6 Underground
(Netflix)
We really have passed into a new age when Michael Bay – the king of big, noisy Hollywood action spectacle – is now making films for Netflix. But here we are, with Ryan Reynolds heading up a vigilante thriller; it all feels a bit low-rent.
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