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Emma movie storyline. Based on a comic novel by 19th century author Jane Austen’s , this medium-budget romance features charming, sprightly humor chronicles the painful lessons learned by a well-meaning, over-confident upper class young woman who honestly believes she has the power to find a proper mate for anyone.
Miss Emma Woodhouse is beautiful, bright and a bit of a know-it-all… Living on a beautiful country estate with her daft father, she prides herself on her ability to repair broken hearts and to help others find romantic bliss. She would use many words to describe herself, but meddlesome busybody, are not among them. Still that is exactly what she is.
Her latest venture is to find a proper husband for lovely Harriet Smith, a woman of undistinguished breeding. With all the subtly of a run-away cart Emma begins trying to fix poor Harriet, who is actually in love with a kindly young farmer, up with the dubious Reverend Elton, who secretly loves the unaware Emma. Somehow, Emma gets her scheme working with Swiss-watch precision until dashing, loquacious Frank Churchill and taciturn, exotic Jane Fairfax show up to throw a spanner in her carefully orchestrated works. Things become quite tangled until the handsome family friend, Mr. Knightly gives Emma a serious heart-to-heart chat.
Emma is a 1996 period film based on the novel of the same name by Jane Austen. Scripted and directed by Douglas McGrath, the film stars Gwyneth Paltrow, Toni Collette, Alan Cumming, Ewan McGregor, Greta Scacchi, Juliet Stevenson, Polly Walker, Sophie Thompson and Kathleen Byron.
Douglas McGrath “fell in love” with Jane Austen’s 1815 novel Emma, while he was an undergraduate at Princeton University. He believed the book would make a great film, but it was not until a decade later that he was given a chance to work on the idea. After receiving an Academy Award nomination in 1995 for his work on Bullets Over Broadway, McGrath decided to make the most of the moment and took his script idea for a film adaptation of Emma to Miramax Films.
McGrath had initially wanted to write a modern version of the novel, set on the Upper East Side of New York City. Miramax’s co-chairman, Harvey Weinstein, liked the idea of a contemporary take on the novel. McGrath was unaware that Amy Heckerling’s Clueless was already in production until plans for Emma were well underway.
Although in general staying close to the plot of the book, the screenplay by Douglas McGrath enlivens the banter between the staid Mr Knightley and the vivacious Emma, making the basis of their attraction more apparent. Austen’s original novel deals with Emma’s false sense of class superiority, for which she is eventually chastised. In an essay from Jane Austen in Hollywood, Nora Nachumi writes that, due partly to Paltrow’s star status, Emma appears less humbled by the end of this film than she does in the novel.
Emma (1996)
Directed by: Douglas McGrath
Starring: Gwyneth Paltrow, Toni Collette, Alan Cumming, Ewan McGregor, Greta Scacchi, Juliet Stevenson, Polly Walker, Sophie Thompson, Kathleen Byron
Screenplay by: Douglas McGrath
Production Design by: Michael Howells
Cinematography by: Ian Wilson
Film Editing by: Lesley Walker
Costume Design by: Ruth Myers
Set Decoration by: Totty Whately
Art Direction by: Joshua Meath-Baker, Sam Riley
Music by: Rachel Portman
MPAA Rating: PG for brief mild language.
Distributed by: Miramax Films
Release Date: August 2, 1996
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