Anatomy Of A Series: Little Women 1978 Part 1
Eight years later, over here in America, they did a two-part version in 1978. Some of the actors I am little familiar with. I have seen them in certain things. The two stand out names for me are William Shatner and Greer Garson. It is not star filled cast, or I guess it could have been for the 70s, people who knew who lot of these actors were, for me most of the names don’t stand out. If I can remember, at least a month ago, you can watch both of the episodes on YouTube.
Niina: Yes. Someone has uploaded them for free. I have this series on dvd, but our listeners can watch it on YouTube as well.
Christina: This one I think is not bad.
Niina: I have the be honest, I love this version. It has become one of my favorites.
Christina: It is one of those hidden gems. You are not quite sure, when you hear people to say stuff about it. When you watch it you like it a lot more than you expected.
Niina: It surprised me.
Christina: Here in America..it’s almost a running joke..which is why I almost avoided this version, because we have this running joke that William Shatner can’t act because he -talks — like -this — all — the -time I don’t know how much of that is true. I haven’t seen the original Star Trek so I can’t say about his acting, but he has been in few other things that have been pretty good and I think he did really good job in this adaptation.
Niina: You know my sister was going to meet William Shatner to a Comic Con here in Finland, few years back but he had to cancel when the pandemic started. My sister is a huge fan of Star Trek and I told about this version and that William Shatner plays the professor. My sister was like “Give it here! I want to see it!”
Christina: This is one of those where Amy should have played by two actresses.
Niina: Catfight
Christina: Yes, compared to the 1971, she wasn’t as annoying but still wasn’t the weirdest. She didn’t have that weird high-pitch whiny voice but she is still very clearly a woman in her 20s.
Niina: It wasn’t that long ago that I watched the first part of this 1978 series. I’m going to watch the second part soon. I remember the burning scene was quite intense. Amy is like sneaking around, looking over her shoulder, if Jo is near. I got this feeling that they made Amy to be 16 when that happens in that version. When in the book she is suppose to be 12. It feels like it is a high school girl, trying to frame another girl. It feels very malicious.
Christina: Yeah. I recently watched it. Really felt like “ooh lets get the dirt on the girl” type of thing.
Niina: I didn’t like that at all.
Christina: I really liked the actress that played Jo. I thought she did a pretty good job and I didn’t mind the narration bit. I think that was actually kind of helpful in some ways. It moved the story along. I don’t know how you thought about that. I didn’t mind it. I know some people don’t like it when, stuff like that happens. They are like “ugh” it totally gets me out of the mood of the moment, or whatever but I think they managed to make it work.
Niina: I don’t think there was a lot of it. In the beginning of each episode Jo starts with the narration, but she doesn’t do that through the whole episode, it is just in the beginning. That never bothered me. You know it is really funny when I watched this. She is at aunt March and she is reading Three Musketeers. I read that Rossano Brazzi played Athos in the Italian version of Three Musketeers, sometimes in the early 40s.
Christina laughing.
Niina: Gabriel Byrne played Professor Bhaer in 1994 film. He played D’Artagnan in Man In The Iron Mask, which means that Jo marries a musketeer.
(musketeer laughter)
Christina: Somehow they are all connected to each other.
Niina: I love that.
Christina: That is so funny.
Niina: I need a Three Musketeers and a Little Women mash up.
Christina: Beth could be Aramis. Maybe Jo would be Porthos. Meg could be Athos. Amy could be a good D’Artagnan. Porthos I think is a little bit more wild and michievious.
Niina: Porthos is very adventorous.
Chrisina: So if you ever wondered who would Little Women be as musketeers. We just did that.
Niina Laughing.
Niina: You are welcome.
Christina: I was going to say earlier about the narration. I think they did pretty good job with it. I have never been able to see full version of this, I have only seen bits and pieces but there is an adaptation of Jane Eyre from the 70s, where the narration just never stops. It was to the point where like she is narrating what she is doing. Like “then I moved on to open the curtains”. She is doing that all the time and we don’t need that kind of narration. Certain moments, fine, but that was like, that was very weird. If I want to complain about narration, that version comes to mind. I would say that this version is pretty faithful? what would you say?
Niina: Yeah. I think it is.
Christina: Obviusly there are moments they kind of mashed up. I was thinking in the beginning, where Jo and Meg go to that party, it is a mash up between that and Meg’s Vanity Fair moment. They put all of that together at once, but it worked all right I think. It didn’t feel as awkard I think it could have been. They managed I think, to do good job, compared to this 1970 where it was like..how many episodes was that..four?
Niina: I think it has like eight episodes.
Christina: Eight, yeah. 1971 has a lot more episodes to expand it, where this one had 2. I think they managed to do a pretty good job of putting everything together in away that, you can sit there and go “Oh I remember this moment from the book”. It gets a point from me on how they manage all of the girls stories. 1970s in general movies and productions are not my most favorites. Without some exceptions I feel like it feels very dirty and grunge or they really take certain things and really mess around. I think they did pretty good job exploring all the girls stories. I was afraid this was going to be like, here is Jo and her sisters. You know what I mean.
