“When they’re in the kitchen, they’re dying ribbons with beetroot juice. I didn’t put that in, but it’s brilliant. They had to be making do. Again, a nice touch from my production designer, Sarah Greenwood. She´s my closest collaborator. We started in television together, and she’s just brilliant. She’s the one that comes up with ideas like the beetroot. When I don’t know what to do about a scene, she’ll come out with things like the beetroot.”
(Source: pemberley-state-of-mind)
“I was dubious about the entire thing because I knew Joe didn’t want me. I felt that after The Jacket, where I’d had John Maybury turning around and saying, ‘I don’t think you can act and I don’t want you,’ I just wanted to work with somebody who immediately goes, ‘Great, be in my film’. Our meeting wasn’t great at all and I knew I hadn’t got the part. Joe was so jetlagged and I’d been very much forced into it and I was so frightened of going for it anyway. But when I met him again in London and he realized that I am a complete tomboy and scruffy and not what he’d imagined, he offered me the part. It was the realization of a life-long dream.”
(Keira Knightley)
(Source: pemberley-state-of-mind)
“Pride & Prejudice must have been a similarly great experience for you?
Absolutely, yes. It was really happy. But that’s the thing about rehearsing. If we hadn’t rehearsed on Pride we wouldn’t have been able to capture that kind of atmosphere on film. We wouldn’t have seemed like we knew each other; we had to be a family by the time we started to film. And it really worked.”
(Rosamund Pike)
(Source: pemberley-state-of-mind)
“In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”
Elizabeth’s astonishment was beyond expression. She stared, coloured, doubted, and was silent. This he considered sufficient encouragement, and the avowal of all that he felt and had long felt for her immediately followed. He spoke well, but there were feelings besides those of the heart to be detailed, and he was not more eloquent on the subject of tenderness than of pride. His sense of her inferiority—of its being a degradation—of the family obstacles which judgment had always opposed to inclination, were dwelt on with a warmth which seemed due to the consequence he was wounding, but was very unlikely to recommend his suit.
In spite of her deeply-rooted dislike, she could not be insensible to the compliment of such a man’s affection, and though her intentions did not vary for an instant, she was at first sorry for the pain he was to receive; till, roused to resentment by his subsequent language, she lost all compassion in anger. She tried, however, to compose herself to answer him with patience, when he should have done. He concluded with representing to her the strength of that attachment which, in spite of all his endeavours, he had found impossible to conquer; and with expressing his hope that it would now be rewarded by her acceptance of his hand. As he said this, she could easily see that he had no doubt of a favourable answer. He spoke of apprehension and anxiety, but his countenance expressed real security. Such a circumstance could only exasperate farther, and when he ceased, the colour rose into her cheeks, and she said:
“In such cases as this, it is, I believe, the established mode to express a sense of obligation for the sentiments avowed, however unequally they may be returned. It is natural that obligation should be felt, and if I could feel gratitude, I would now thank you. But I cannot—I have never desired your good opinion, and you have certainly bestowed it most unwillingly. I am sorry to have occasioned pain to any one. It has been most unconsciously done, however, and I hope will be of short duration. The feelings which, you tell me, have long prevented the acknowledgment of your regard, can have little difficulty in overcoming it after this explanation.”
(Jane Austen,”Pride and prejudice”, Chapter 34)
(Source: pemberley-state-of-mind)
pemberley-state-of-mind:
“Pride and prejudice” first edition (1813).
“I had never read Pride and Prejudice, nor seen a television version. I come from a background of television social realist drama, and so I suppose I was a bit prejudiced against this material, regarding it as posh. But as I read the script adaptation, I became emotionally involved and by the end I was weeping. So I read the book, and discovered that what Jane Austen had written was a very acute character study of a particular social group. I saw that she was one of the first British realists. She had read the gothic literature which was fashionable at the time, and she turned away from that, and started writing what she knew, thereby inventing a new genre.”
(Joe Wright, Director)
I’m getting dreadfully into it and I want, you know, I want it all to be real and I want to be Mary. And I want us to all live in the house together and us all to be really sisters and it all to really happen. And then it doesn’t, and then Joe (Wright) says, you know,`check in the gate´and then it stops and I’m thinking, `oh, what happened?´.
(Talulah Riley)
(Source: pemberley-state-of-mind)
“I wanted to be able to shoot through the windows. I wanted a relationship between the interior and the exterior”.
(Joe Wright, Director)
(Source: pemberley-state-of-mind)
“She longed to know what at the moment was passing in his mind, in what manner he thought of her, and whether, in defiance of everything, she was still dear to him. Perhaps he had been civil only because he felt himself at ease; yet there had been that in his voice which was not like ease. Whether he had felt more of pain or of pleasure in seeing her she could not tell, but he certainly had not seen her with composure.”
(Jane Austen,”Pride and prejudice”, Chapter 43)
(Source: pemberley-state-of-mind)
pemberley-state-of-mind:
Knightley loved the book since she was seven, and with her first acting paycheck she bought a dollhouse of the hero’s mansion.
“The beauty of Elizabeth is that every woman who ever reads the book seems to recognize herself, with all her faults and imperfections. If you give an actress who is even remotely good the chance to play a fantastic character like that, they are going to revel in it.”
(Keira Knightley)
pemberley-state-of-mind:
Chatsworth House (Pemberley) by William Marlow.
(Many people ask me about my BG. This is the whole painting. See it in high-res to appreciate the beautiful details).
“Various sources suggest that Jane Austen set Chatsworth as Pemberley. There is no question Jane Austen knew Chatsworth cos she mentions it. There is a line about Pemberley:
“The town where she had formerly passed some years of her life, and where they were now to spend a few days, was probably as great an object of her curiosity as all the celebrated beauties of Matlock, Chatsworth, Dovedale, or the Peak.” (Pride and prejudice, Chapter 42).
She´s known to have come into this area. It´s very nice to imagine she was inspired by it, and let´s hope she was”.
“By focusing on Elizabeth Bennet and what’s happening to her, and her gruelling and difficult journey, certain things slough off as you go along. Jane’s trip to London, we don’t need to know. Although I did write those scenes with Jane in London, they weren’t needed and Lydia’s shenanigans with Wickham in London weren’t shot at all.”
(Deborah Moggach, Screenwriter)
(Source: pemberley-state-of-mind)
pemberley-state-of-mind:
Original script, bitter tears but no “almost kiss”.
“With Longbourn we wanted a house that we could move through all the rooms to give the film a sense of reality. I was always trying to find a balance between creating something fairy-tale but also very real. And it held that balance I think, Groombridge. Also had some nice other things, about it, like the fact that it´s got a moat around it. I really like the idea of the five virgins living on a island. And you have this picture of girls in the house being protected, not only by the structure, but the moat and countryside, waiting for the Mr. Darcy character to come along and whisk them away to a glorious kingdom”.
(Source: pemberley-state-of-mind)
“Elizabeth Bennet is fresh and free and that´s what make her attractive. That gives hope to women the last 200 years. You don´t have to be beautiful to nab the Darcys of this world, if that´s what you want, if you want a Darcy. Her wit and intelligence shine through. Of course the problem with casting Keira Knightley is that she is so dazzlingly lovely but hers is a modern sort of beauty. Keira’s gorgeousness is very modern, she has an extraordinary blazing life and wit and that really comes across.”
(Deborah Moggach, Screenwriter)
(Source: pemberley-state-of-mind)
“Again his astonishment was obvious; and he looked at her with an expression of mingled incredulity and mortification.”
(“Pride and prejudice”, Jane Austen, chapter 34)
(Source: pemberley-state-of-mind)