The beginning of a novel from page to screen: the example of Pride and Prejudice (1813 and 1940)

Nowadays, the relationship between literature and film is so important that it is impossible to ignore how many of the great classics have been adapted for the cinema. English literature and Jane Austen are certainly no exception and Pride and Prejudice is a classic that boasts a number of adaptations for film and TV. Of particular interest for this paper is Robert Z. Leonard’s 1940 adaptation, famous, among other things, for being the first film adaptation of an Austen novel. The interest of this paper is to see how Chapter 1 and especially the opening sentence of the novel were adapted in Leonard’s film, and to demonstrate how images can help in the interpretation of Jane Austen’s written words.