New films move the Brontes back

Filmmakers' long affair with the divine Miss Austen is finally waning, after two decades of movies made from her elegant novels with their well-mannered characters, placid plots and witty repartee.

But enough with the endless circling of the Pump Room at Bath — time to get hearts racing! Time to bring back those wildly Romantic Bronte characters — plain Jane Eyre and moody Mr. Rochester, doomed Cathy Earnshaw and vengeful Heathcliff — to rend their garments, wail disconsolately and stagger across windswept moors.

"Austen's characters achieve their greatness through a kind of sideways movement toward happiness, (while) the Brontes hurtle themselves headlong into the maelstrom of emotions and situations," says James Schamus, head of Focus Features, the artsy studio that made Austen's Pride and Prejudice and now is making Jane Eyre (with BBC Films) with hot young director Cary Fukunaga (Sin Nombre).

The new Jane will star Australian actress Mia Wasikowska and Irish actor Michael Fassbender as Rochester.

The new Heights will be directed by Andrea Arnold (Fish Tank), and Cathy will be played by Kaya Scoledario (Clash of the Titans). The search is still on for Heathcliff.

The sisters Bronte get a chance to star

The Bronte biopic has been in the works since 2007 and has a director, Charles Sturridge (Brideshead Revisited), but no cast. Brontewill tell the story of the sisters themselves (the third sister was Anne Bronte, author of the less-well-known The Tenant of Wildfell Hall), whose collective life story is as dramatic and tragic as their classic novels.

"It's an astonishing story, endlessly fascinating," says Lynn Voskuil, an English professor who teaches Victorian-era fiction at the University of Houston. "You have reclusive but incredibly gifted children, child prodigies, creating fantastic worlds" in an isolated parsonage in the north of England.

Beloved books

First published in the mid-19th century, Jane and Heights have never been out of print and continue to occupy prime positions in the Western literary canon, routinely studied in high-school and college literature classes. In fact, the Brontes are the inspiration for a clutch of recent and forthcoming novels, such as A Taste of Sorrow by Jude Morgan, Romancing Miss Bronteby Juliet Gael, and The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronteby Syrie James.

Filmmakers have been drawn to the Brontes almost from the beginning of moviemaking, as early as 1910 for a silent version of Jane and 1920 for Heights. Since then, at least a dozen adaptations for film or TV in English have been made from the books, including such famous examples as the 1944 Jane with Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine and the 1939 Heights with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon.

Film production teams have made the requisite pilgrimage to the Bronte Parsonage Museum in Haworth, West Yorkshire, the family home that was already a tourist destination even before Charlotte, the last surviving sister, died in 1855. It has been a museum and home of the Bronte Society since the late 19th century.

"The Brontes have proved to be more adaptable to film than virtually any other writers," says Andrew McCarthy, director of the museum. "They seem to come to the fore in times of difficulty, while Jane Austen adaptations seem to thrive during periods of economic calm. There's a harsher feel to the Brontes. They are books that contain difficult, extreme emotions — and (maybe) they feel more appropriate in times of economic strife."