Little Women (1994)

Compared to the 1933 George Cukor version and the 1949 Mervyn LeRoy remake this is a much-superior production with irresistibly picturesque New England scenery, excellent set and costume design and a script which softens the more strident qualities of the earlier versions and treats the fine cast much more even-handedly instead of, as was previously the case, making Jo the dominant figure and the other other three sisters satellites in orbit around her. By introducing a "four years later" lacuna this version also manages to get around one of the most insistent problems of the other two versions, having adult actors play young teenagers.

A young but remarkably effective Kirsten Dunst is replaced as the youngest whilst Winona Ryder, Clare Danes and Trini Alvarado age gracefully and naturally from girls to young women. The film loses its way, however, in the second part, when the author's alter ego, Jo,  moves to New York in search of herself and the film drowns in its own coffee-table book production values, unnecessarily developing certain aspect of the original plot.  Gabriel Byrne's turn as a violin-playing German philosophy professor does not get around another problem which dogged both earlier version, Jo's Oedipal attraction to a much older men, in fact, it only compounds it with implausibly meaningful dialogue and an excess of syrupy sentimentality.

It is understandable that many people prefer this film's updated sensibility and modern production values to the less naturalistic Cukor and LeRoy versions but somehow their more naive approaches were more suited to Alcott's book. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the film's final scene which has Profess9r Bhaer being given a double identity as Jo's husband and co-worker in what will be their future as school-teachers . In the earlier, less worldly versions he simply enters the March house and the door closes after him.

 

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