0:00:04 > 0:00:07Well, luckily for us, the Mayans were wrong
0:00:07 > 0:00:09and it didn't all end in 2012.
0:00:09 > 0:00:13So here we are, back with a bang, braving the elements
0:00:13 > 0:00:16to bring you a brand new series of The Culture Show
0:00:16 > 0:00:19with the very best of the arts in 2013.
0:00:21 > 0:00:25'Tonight, Unexpected Lessons In Love,
0:00:25 > 0:00:28'the lowdown on Pride And Prejudice
0:00:28 > 0:00:30'and the biggest manhunt of all time.'
0:00:30 > 0:00:37But we're going to warm up, I hope,
0:00:37 > 0:00:42with the first blockbuster exhibition of the year.
0:00:42 > 0:00:45The Royal Academy is staging a major exhibition of portraits
0:00:45 > 0:00:49by the great 19th-century French artist Edouard Manet.
0:00:49 > 0:00:51As the organisers put the finishing touches to the show,
0:00:51 > 0:00:56I went along to take a look at the lives and loves of Manet's Paris.
0:01:02 > 0:01:04"Painting begins with Manet."
0:01:04 > 0:01:09So said another celebrated French artist, Paul Gauguin.
0:01:09 > 0:01:11High praise, indeed.
0:01:14 > 0:01:16As Paris steamed into the modern age
0:01:16 > 0:01:18in the second half of the 19th century,
0:01:18 > 0:01:21Edouard Manet painted life as HE saw it,
0:01:21 > 0:01:25restlessly breaking with accepted artistic conventions.
0:01:27 > 0:01:33In his lifetime, Manet was viciously attacked by conservative critics of the day.
0:01:33 > 0:01:36Others, especially novelists, poets, his fellow painters,
0:01:36 > 0:01:40revered him, both as the founder of Impressionism
0:01:40 > 0:01:44and as a father of Modern Art.
0:01:46 > 0:01:49Manet's less well known for his portraits,
0:01:49 > 0:01:51but as this absorbing exhibition shows,
0:01:51 > 0:01:54he ingeniously blurred the line between portraiture
0:01:54 > 0:01:56and scenes of everyday life,
0:01:56 > 0:02:00transforming the very idea of what a portrait might be.
0:02:02 > 0:02:05Take this deeply disconcerting,
0:02:05 > 0:02:10deliberately bewildering masterpiece of 1862,
0:02:10 > 0:02:13Music In The Tuileries Gardens.
0:02:13 > 0:02:17Manet shows us a gathering of fashionable Parisians
0:02:17 > 0:02:23in a little garden just between la Place de la Concorde and the Louvre.
0:02:23 > 0:02:28This is a painting of modern life. How does Manet see modern life?
0:02:28 > 0:02:31I think he sees it as a blur, as a chaos,
0:02:31 > 0:02:35as a constant experience of walking through the gardens,
0:02:35 > 0:02:37the streets of this new metropolis.
0:02:37 > 0:02:40Everywhere you look, you see people.
0:02:40 > 0:02:43Do you know them? Do you not know them?
0:02:43 > 0:02:46Then gradually, as you become accustomed
0:02:46 > 0:02:48to the apparent formlessness of the picture,
0:02:48 > 0:02:52you realise that people's faces begin to jump out at you,
0:02:52 > 0:02:54and they are recognisable faces.
0:02:54 > 0:02:57Here is Offenbach, the composer.
0:02:57 > 0:02:59Here's Manet's brother.
0:02:59 > 0:03:03Here, right at the edge, is Manet himself.
0:03:05 > 0:03:08Look at this lady's face.
0:03:08 > 0:03:10She is Valentine Lejosne.
0:03:10 > 0:03:14Then, move up, and who's that?
0:03:14 > 0:03:16That blurred face.
0:03:16 > 0:03:21That's Charles Baudelaire, the greatest critic of the 19th century,
0:03:21 > 0:03:26and it was in her house that Manet met Baudelaire.
0:03:26 > 0:03:30And that was absolutely key to him.
0:03:30 > 0:03:34Baudelaire's essay on the painting of modern life,
0:03:34 > 0:03:38in which Baudelaire argued that modernity is the fleeting,
0:03:38 > 0:03:41the transitory, the contingent.
0:03:41 > 0:03:45That became Manet's bible.
0:03:45 > 0:03:50Manet WAS Baudelaire's painter of modern life.
0:03:50 > 0:03:55What looks like a chaotically random depiction of a sea of humanity
0:03:55 > 0:03:59is, in fact, a carefully planned assault
0:03:59 > 0:04:03on all of the existing conventions of portraiture
0:04:03 > 0:04:06and group portraiture.
0:04:09 > 0:04:13Throwing his friends into the maelstrom of city life was itself highly unusual.
0:04:13 > 0:04:17It was also the striking way Manet captured individual subjects
0:04:17 > 0:04:19that was revolutionary.
0:04:21 > 0:04:23Meet Berthe Morisot,
0:04:23 > 0:04:26the poster girl of the exhibition, and you can see why.
0:04:26 > 0:04:33What a wonderfully fresh, informal, intimate portrait this is.
0:04:33 > 0:04:38What's remarkable about the pose is how unposed it is.
0:04:38 > 0:04:43Looking at the painting, you feel as if you've just chanced upon her, perhaps at some gathering,
0:04:43 > 0:04:47she's caught your eye, she's ready to strike up conversation.
0:04:47 > 0:04:50There's none of that stayed, school photograph formality
0:04:50 > 0:04:52of the portraiture of the past.
0:04:52 > 0:04:55I think the blacks and whites of the image
0:04:55 > 0:04:59very much suggest Manet's interest in photography.
0:04:59 > 0:05:02He was fascinated by the way particularly blurred photographs
0:05:02 > 0:05:05seem to confront you with the image of someone
0:05:05 > 0:05:08who's moving as you speak to them,
0:05:08 > 0:05:11and he's created his own equivalent to that blurring effect
0:05:11 > 0:05:13in his handling of paint.
0:05:13 > 0:05:17What's also new about the picture, I think, is "the gaze"
0:05:17 > 0:05:20with which she confronts you, she meets you.
0:05:20 > 0:05:23As a new kind of woman, bohemian, independent,
0:05:23 > 0:05:26as Morisot was herself, a painter.
0:05:26 > 0:05:30She is looking at Manet. He is looking at her. And they're equals.
0:05:34 > 0:05:37As he looked to push the limits of portraiture ever further,
0:05:37 > 0:05:41Manet's habit of painting people he knew allowed for great intimacy
0:05:41 > 0:05:43and freedom on the canvas.
0:05:43 > 0:05:46Victorine Meurent was his favourite model
0:05:46 > 0:05:50and the main subject of some of his most controversial works.
0:05:50 > 0:05:55Here, she's a hard-faced prostitute greeting another client.
0:05:55 > 0:05:58But she appears again in the Dejeuner Sur L'Herbe.
0:05:59 > 0:06:05This picture is a later and slightly sketchier, smaller version
0:06:05 > 0:06:10of the original Dejeuner Sur L'Herbe in the Musee D'Orsay, but it's every bit as shocking.
0:06:10 > 0:06:14Here, we see Victorine completely naked,
0:06:14 > 0:06:19having a picnic with two fully clothed Parisian gentlemen,
0:06:19 > 0:06:24while her scantily clad companion bathes in the background.
0:06:24 > 0:06:31Manet based it on Renaissance images of the legendary Arcadia,
0:06:31 > 0:06:35a rural paradise peopled by nymphs and shepherds,
0:06:35 > 0:06:38where men go to retune their troubled souls.
0:06:38 > 0:06:42It's as if Manet's asking, "What would that paradise be now,
0:06:42 > 0:06:45"in 19th-century France?"
0:06:46 > 0:06:51Manet's trying to distance himself from the myths of the past
0:06:51 > 0:06:56and present a thoroughly disenchanted,
0:06:56 > 0:07:00disconcerting view of present reality.
0:07:04 > 0:07:09Manet said, "It has always been my ambition not to remain the same,
0:07:09 > 0:07:12"constantly to be inspired by something new,
0:07:12 > 0:07:14"to register a new note."
0:07:14 > 0:07:17His determination to stay fresh is reflected
0:07:17 > 0:07:21in one of the most enigmatic works in the show.
0:07:23 > 0:07:27What a radiant, haunting picture to leave us with.
0:07:27 > 0:07:33From the National Gallery of Art in Washington, it's the Railway of 1873.
0:07:33 > 0:07:38Once again, Manet has taken an existing convention of portraiture,
0:07:38 > 0:07:40here it's the mother-daughter portrait,
0:07:40 > 0:07:44and he's turned it on its head, turned it inside-out.
0:07:44 > 0:07:46They're not even mother and daughter.
0:07:46 > 0:07:49That's Victorine Meurent once again.
0:07:49 > 0:07:53The little girl is the daughter of Manet's neighbour.
0:07:53 > 0:07:55And even more radically,
0:07:55 > 0:07:59he's turned her AWAY from the viewer.
0:07:59 > 0:08:02It's a portrait in which you can't see the girl's face.
0:08:02 > 0:08:06Normally, mother and daughter would have been placed indoors,
0:08:06 > 0:08:09seated beside one another, perhaps on a chaise longue.
0:08:09 > 0:08:14But here, Manet's taken them outside and he's perched them
0:08:14 > 0:08:20on the edge of the pit of that great inferno, the Gare St Lazare,
0:08:20 > 0:08:23Paris's biggest railway station.
0:08:23 > 0:08:27And I think what he's doing is he's making us think,
0:08:27 > 0:08:33once again, about the nature of modern life.
0:08:33 > 0:08:36This little girl, if she has to learn one thing,
0:08:36 > 0:08:41it's that she doesn't know what this turbulent future holds.
0:08:41 > 0:08:46That, for Manet, is the essence of modern life.
0:08:46 > 0:08:54And I think it's as true for 2013 as it was for 1873.
0:08:54 > 0:08:57Manet didn't just change portrait painting,
0:08:57 > 0:09:00he didn't just change painting,
0:09:00 > 0:09:06he changed the very way in which we think about ourselves
0:09:06 > 0:09:08and about our world.
0:09:14 > 0:09:17Manet Portraying Life opens on Saturday
0:09:17 > 0:09:21and continues here at the Royal Academy until 26th April.
0:09:21 > 0:09:24Next, film director Kathryn Bigelow,
0:09:24 > 0:09:29much celebrated as the only woman ever to win the Oscar for Best Director
0:09:29 > 0:09:32back in 2008 with The Hurt Locker.
0:09:32 > 0:09:36Her new film is based on the assassination of Osama bin Laden.
0:09:36 > 0:09:41Zero Dark 30 has already caused a huge stir everywhere from Washington to Waziristan.
0:09:41 > 0:09:47Amidst the rumour and controversy, Mark Kermode caught up with her.
0:09:48 > 0:09:51Are you ready back there?
0:09:51 > 0:09:52OK. And, action.
0:09:55 > 0:09:59'Undercover CIA operations have an enduring appeal for filmmakers.
0:09:59 > 0:10:02'You know the drill - the maverick agent with the questionable past,
0:10:02 > 0:10:07'determined to win the game - but then, that's just Hollywood.
0:10:07 > 0:10:09'Or is it?'
0:10:09 > 0:10:13With any depiction of the CIA, on film or television,
0:10:13 > 0:10:17there's always a tension between hard fact and dramatic fiction.
0:10:20 > 0:10:25'In Zero Dark 30, Kathryn Bigelow has chosen a mission
0:10:25 > 0:10:29'that ended in one of the most reported moments in CIA history...'
0:10:29 > 0:10:32- We will never find him. - '..the hunt for Osama bin Laden.'
0:10:32 > 0:10:35He's one of the disappeared ones.
0:10:36 > 0:10:40Dramatising such an important news story so soon after it happened
0:10:40 > 0:10:44is both bold and provocative - qualities we've come to admire in Kathryn Bigelow.
0:10:44 > 0:10:48Unsurprisingly, Zero Dark 30 has itself made headlines,
0:10:48 > 0:10:52becoming the centre of a media storm about the depiction of torture
0:10:52 > 0:10:55and the uneasy relationship between journalism and drama.
0:10:55 > 0:10:59For her detractors, Bigelow's movie is nothing short of militarist propaganda.
0:10:59 > 0:11:03For the director, the heart of the story was always its human aspect,
0:11:03 > 0:11:07taking us deep into the murky waters of the war on terror
0:11:07 > 0:11:11as seen through the eyes of a tough female protagonist.
0:11:13 > 0:11:16Kathryn, when you started making Zero Dark 30,
0:11:16 > 0:11:18it was about the failed hunt for Osama Bin Laden.
0:11:18 > 0:11:21Whilst you were doing that, they found him.
0:11:21 > 0:11:25How did that change what you were working on?
0:11:25 > 0:11:28Well, about two-thirds of the way through that screenplay,
0:11:28 > 0:11:31May 1st 2011 happened, and so history necessitated
0:11:31 > 0:11:35a rather sizeable pivot.
0:11:35 > 0:11:39The intelligence hunt became the predominant story
0:11:39 > 0:11:43and the individuals at the heart of that operation.
0:11:43 > 0:11:46Now, the movie only looks at a handful of people.
0:11:46 > 0:11:50It's meant to represent the hundreds of people in that operation.
0:11:50 > 0:11:55What was interesting was the psychology behind those individuals in the intelligence community.
0:11:55 > 0:11:59In that what does it take for somebody to have that kind of drive
0:11:59 > 0:12:01and dedication and determination and courage?
0:12:04 > 0:12:07'Amongst the tenacious agents involved in this sprawling operation
0:12:07 > 0:12:09'it's a woman who holds the key.'
0:12:09 > 0:12:14You got a phone call. "Get your ass to Islamabad!"
0:12:15 > 0:12:18'Maya is played by Jessica Chastain, reportedly based on the life
0:12:18 > 0:12:20'of a real operative still working undercover.
0:12:20 > 0:12:23'She's young, fiercely determined and focused
0:12:23 > 0:12:28'on what is a professional and personal mission to find bin Laden.'
0:12:28 > 0:12:32The publicity surrounding the movie has centred on the politics,
0:12:32 > 0:12:35but it seemed to me that the centre of the drama
0:12:35 > 0:12:39is what happens to Jessica Chastain's character and how we see the world through her eyes.
0:12:39 > 0:12:45Oh, absolutely. She is through whom you experience this intelligence hunt.
0:12:45 > 0:12:49And certainly as a filmmaker, what was interesting to me
0:12:49 > 0:12:51was to put you in her shoes.
0:12:54 > 0:12:56Third floor, north-east corner.
0:12:56 > 0:13:00'I think that's the way you experience the arduousness
0:13:00 > 0:13:02'and complexity of that operation.'
0:13:02 > 0:13:06You don't think she's a little young for the hard stuff?
0:13:06 > 0:13:08Washington says she's a killer.
0:13:08 > 0:13:11It's an interesting psychology to observe.
0:13:11 > 0:13:15How important or coincidental was it that she's a woman?
0:13:15 > 0:13:18Well, it so happened that she was a woman.
0:13:18 > 0:13:21'There were many women at the heart of this operation.'
0:13:22 > 0:13:26There are two narratives about the location of Osama bin Laden.
0:13:26 > 0:13:31'Had it been a man, we would have... we definitely would have...'
0:13:31 > 0:13:33The story would have revolved around a man.
0:13:33 > 0:13:38Ironically, I was surprised that I was surprised that there were women at the heart of this operation.
0:13:38 > 0:13:41The second narrative is that he's living in a city.
0:13:41 > 0:13:45Living in a city with multiple points of egress and entry,
0:13:45 > 0:13:50access to communications so that he can keep in touch with the organisation.
0:13:50 > 0:13:54You can't run a global network of interconnected cells from a cave.
0:13:54 > 0:13:55Action!
0:13:55 > 0:13:59'The controversy surrounding the portrayal of CIA methods,
0:13:59 > 0:14:04'including waterboarding, has reached the highest echelons of US politics.
0:14:04 > 0:14:07'Alongside an investigation by the Senate's Intelligence Committee,
0:14:07 > 0:14:12'the CIA itself has seemingly gone from collaborator to critic.
0:14:12 > 0:14:17'Highly contentious statements have been published, accusing the film of validating torture.
0:14:17 > 0:14:20'But in a recent open letter to the LA Times,
0:14:20 > 0:14:24'Bigelow has emphasised that depiction is not endorsement.'
0:14:27 > 0:14:31People have accused you of either glorifying or justifying torture.
0:14:31 > 0:14:34I was quite shocked at those allegations.
0:14:34 > 0:14:38How do you feel, and how do you answer them?
0:14:38 > 0:14:41I knew, going into it, it was going to be controversial.
0:14:41 > 0:14:45I was... I was surprised at the, um...
0:14:47 > 0:14:49..at the degree of controversy.
0:14:49 > 0:14:54The harsh tactics were employed and are part of that story.
0:14:54 > 0:14:59To have eliminated it would have been a matter of whitewashing history.
0:14:59 > 0:15:02I think it's important to look at some regrettable acts
0:15:02 > 0:15:06that were utilised in the name of finding bin Laden.
0:15:06 > 0:15:09Policies need to be examined and debated.
0:15:09 > 0:15:15And I think the debate about... enhanced interrogation techniques
0:15:15 > 0:15:19is going to be a long and arduous one.
0:15:19 > 0:15:22- Kathryn Bigelow, thank you very much.- Thank you very much.
0:15:23 > 0:15:27Zero Dark 30 is in cinemas on Friday.
0:15:27 > 0:15:31Next tonight, writers Margaret Drabble and Bernadine Bishop
0:15:31 > 0:15:35met when they were students and have been friends ever since.
0:15:35 > 0:15:39Bernadine's latest novel was published last week, and it's already been much admired
0:15:39 > 0:15:43for its tender treatment of lives lived with severe illness.
0:15:43 > 0:15:50Margaret met her old friend to find out how she tackled some of the last taboos of modern life.
0:15:57 > 0:16:01As a student at Cambridge, I pursued my love of literature and books.
0:16:01 > 0:16:05My friend Bernadine and I were both very keen to be writers.
0:16:05 > 0:16:09It was the early '60s and a thrilling time to be a young woman.
0:16:09 > 0:16:13Change was in the air and we felt we had the world at our feet.
0:16:13 > 0:16:16We both published, but while I continued,
0:16:16 > 0:16:19Bernadine's career went in other directions.
0:16:19 > 0:16:21She stopped writing.
0:16:21 > 0:16:2550 years later, a new novel by my friend Bernadine Bishop
0:16:25 > 0:16:27arrived in my inbox.
0:16:27 > 0:16:30Of course, I read it immediately.
0:16:30 > 0:16:35Couldn't stop reading it, and it was so good that I told her she MUST get it published.
0:16:37 > 0:16:42Unexpected Lessons In Love is a funny and moving novel about cancer.
0:16:42 > 0:16:45Cecilia Banks, like Bernadine, is a retired psychotherapist,
0:16:45 > 0:16:49coming to terms with her life-threatening illness.
0:16:49 > 0:16:52Bernadine's lived almost a lifetime between books
0:16:52 > 0:16:58and it took a life-changing event to get my old friend writing fiction again.
0:16:58 > 0:17:01- Maggie!- Hello, Bernadine!
0:17:01 > 0:17:03LAUGHING: Hello!
0:17:05 > 0:17:09- Wonderful!- Cold out?- Cold out. I'll shut the door.- Shut the door.
0:17:09 > 0:17:12- And we can go into the warm. - Yes, exactly.
0:17:14 > 0:17:15Lovely.
0:17:15 > 0:17:19Bernadine, what was it that prompted you to start writing again
0:17:19 > 0:17:22after a lot of time had passed?
0:17:22 > 0:17:25Um... I didn't know I was going to.
0:17:25 > 0:17:27A friend of mine
0:17:27 > 0:17:31had always maintained that when I retired I would write.
0:17:31 > 0:17:34When I was hounded out of the profession by cancer,
0:17:34 > 0:17:37I thought, "Now I'm going to start the novel."
0:17:37 > 0:17:40So it was a cancer-inspired novel.
0:17:40 > 0:17:44It gave you both the, um... the space to write it in...
0:17:44 > 0:17:47- Yes.- ..and also your subject matter. - It did.
0:17:47 > 0:17:53I thought it would be nice for people to hear women talk about it
0:17:53 > 0:17:57in a perfectly ordinary, funny way.
0:17:57 > 0:18:02Why did you create two characters who had exactly the same physical condition -
0:18:02 > 0:18:06the colostomy or, as you call it in the profession, the stoma?
0:18:06 > 0:18:12I think that was partly geared by the fact that I so wanted
0:18:12 > 0:18:15- to have a stoma friend. - But didn't?- And I didn't have one.
0:18:15 > 0:18:21In a sense, the writing of your novel became your stoma friend.
0:18:21 > 0:18:25- Yes.- This was the place you were able to express your feelings.- Yes.
0:18:25 > 0:18:30- To describe things that perhaps even - I- might not have liked to listen to in such detail.- Yes.
0:18:30 > 0:18:34One friend said, "This is not a novel for the squeamish."
0:18:34 > 0:18:36That had never occurred to me.
0:18:36 > 0:18:39Because, of course, psychotherapists are never...
0:18:39 > 0:18:44If we were ever squeamish, we grow out of it when we're in our first year of training.
0:18:46 > 0:18:48'Bernadine's always been unshockable.
0:18:48 > 0:18:51'That stood her in good stead when, in 1960, she was caught up
0:18:51 > 0:18:54'in the most famous literary court case of the century,
0:18:54 > 0:18:58'which changed the face of publishing for ever.'
0:18:58 > 0:19:01You appeared in the Lady Chatterley trial.
0:19:01 > 0:19:07Since then, the whole area of what's sayable in the novel has changed.
0:19:07 > 0:19:09I think the zeitgeist was there already.
0:19:09 > 0:19:12The Lady Chatterley trial was part of the zeitgeist.
0:19:12 > 0:19:15- Something was beginning to happen? - Yes.
0:19:15 > 0:19:18I do remember at that period, on Woman's Hour,
0:19:18 > 0:19:21you weren't allowed to mention the word "breast" or "cancer".
0:19:21 > 0:19:24- Were you not? - No. They were taken out.
0:19:24 > 0:19:30- Really?- Yes.- But you know, the other day, they let me say "shit" on Woman's Hour.
0:19:31 > 0:19:33"It was a year after her operation
0:19:33 > 0:19:37"that Helen first met someone else with a colostomy.
0:19:37 > 0:19:42"She had learnt that there are 60,000 people in the UK who have one,
0:19:42 > 0:19:47"but she knew, or even knew of, no such fellow sufferer.
0:19:47 > 0:19:51"Of all the versions of cancer that are hearsay among non-medical people,
0:19:51 > 0:19:55"it was the version Helen had always dreaded the most.
0:19:55 > 0:19:58"She was not alone in this
0:19:58 > 0:20:02"and had to watch a mirror image of her own shock and disbelief
0:20:02 > 0:20:05"on friends' faces when she told them."
0:20:05 > 0:20:09You've used the word "joy" about writing your novels.
0:20:09 > 0:20:13It's rather remarkable to have so much joy coming through illness
0:20:13 > 0:20:16- and at the end of one's life.- Yes.
0:20:16 > 0:20:18I'm very fortunate in those respects.
0:20:18 > 0:20:22It sounds to me as though you're on an on-going journey of discovery.
0:20:22 > 0:20:25I think I am. Yes.
0:20:25 > 0:20:30And sometimes, I feel so terrible about dying and death.
0:20:30 > 0:20:35Um... And I just have to lie there on my day bed
0:20:35 > 0:20:38going down, going down, going down,
0:20:38 > 0:20:41until I can go no further.
0:20:41 > 0:20:46And then, at the moment when I can go no further...
0:20:48 > 0:20:51..there's wings underneath me.
0:20:51 > 0:20:55- I don't know where they come from. - A light breaks through the clouds a bit?
0:20:55 > 0:21:00A light breaks through the clouds and I just feel better.
0:21:01 > 0:21:05"What I'm agonising with is the pain of fear of pain.
0:21:05 > 0:21:09"Not the pain of pain itself.
0:21:09 > 0:21:12"And who knows but what it goes on like that each day?
0:21:12 > 0:21:15"Each day, of itself, bearable."
0:21:15 > 0:21:20We know that since you finished Unexpected, you've written two more novels.
0:21:20 > 0:21:23These novels now will make their own way.
0:21:23 > 0:21:25They will live on.
0:21:25 > 0:21:31There's something rather wonderful about that, that they will reach forth into the future.
0:21:31 > 0:21:35- There they will go. - They will go their own way.
0:21:37 > 0:21:41And Unexpected Lessons In Love is out now.
0:21:41 > 0:21:45Next, to one of the great novels of the past, a literary masterpiece
0:21:45 > 0:21:48that's stood the test of time for two centuries -
0:21:48 > 0:21:50Pride And Prejudice.
0:21:50 > 0:21:56Jane Austen aficionado John Mullan explores the novel's many reincarnations on screen.
0:22:00 > 0:22:03"It is a truth universally acknowledged
0:22:03 > 0:22:06"that a single man in possession of a good fortune
0:22:06 > 0:22:08"must be in want of a wife."
0:22:10 > 0:22:15It's exactly 200 years since one of the world's best-loved novels,
0:22:15 > 0:22:18Pride And Prejudice, was first published.
0:22:18 > 0:22:21A best-seller from its first edition in 1813,
0:22:21 > 0:22:25Jane Austen's classic has captivated us ever since -
0:22:25 > 0:22:28on the page, but also on the screen.
0:22:28 > 0:22:34'In fact, our obsession with the love story of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy
0:22:34 > 0:22:40'has led to no fewer than nine major TV and film adaptations.
0:22:40 > 0:22:42'There's even been a Bollywood version,
0:22:42 > 0:22:45'complete with songs and saris.
0:22:45 > 0:22:50'So what is it about Pride And Prejudice that keeps us reinterpreting it?'
0:22:52 > 0:22:56It's often said that it's the novel's big themes -
0:22:56 > 0:23:00love and marriage, property and money - that make it timelessly popular.
0:23:00 > 0:23:04But plenty of novels talk about these.
0:23:04 > 0:23:07I think Pride And Prejudice is special because Austen manages
0:23:07 > 0:23:12to make her characters' concerns about money or hopes for love
0:23:12 > 0:23:15seem just as believable as our own.
0:23:15 > 0:23:20'Each adaptation is a new reading of the book,
0:23:20 > 0:23:22'reflecting its own time.
0:23:22 > 0:23:26'The Bennet sisters have been portrayed as country house genteel,
0:23:26 > 0:23:30'but also impoverished and down-at-heel.
0:23:32 > 0:23:36'While the matriarch, obsessed with her daughters' marriage prospects,
0:23:36 > 0:23:40'has been played as everything from giddy and twittering
0:23:40 > 0:23:42'to downright hysterical.'
0:23:42 > 0:23:44Oh! My poor child!
0:23:44 > 0:23:47Now, all that remains are your other daughters...
0:23:47 > 0:23:51'But in the 1980 adaptation by feminist writer Fay Weldon,
0:23:51 > 0:23:55'we get an altogether tougher, more resilient Mrs Bennet.'
0:23:55 > 0:23:58- No.- It is insupportable.
0:23:58 > 0:24:03You forced me into visiting him last year and promised me that he would marry one of my daughters.
0:24:03 > 0:24:07It ended in nothing and I will not be sent on a fool's errand again!
0:24:07 > 0:24:10- Very well. - I- shall invite Mr Bingley.
0:24:10 > 0:24:16Mrs Bennet is one of the most deliciously foolish humans in all fiction.
0:24:16 > 0:24:20"Invariably silly" is how her author describes her.
0:24:20 > 0:24:25In this version, she's played as more forceful and less hysterical.
0:24:25 > 0:24:29Foolish still, but able to stand up to her husband.
0:24:29 > 0:24:33A Mrs Bennet reimagined for a post-feminist age, if you like.
0:24:33 > 0:24:37'The central figure in Pride And Prejudice
0:24:37 > 0:24:39'is, of course, Elizabeth Bennet.
0:24:39 > 0:24:42'Played as arch and knowing,
0:24:42 > 0:24:44'or rebellious tomboy
0:24:44 > 0:24:48'and as the epitome of Hollywood glamour.
0:24:48 > 0:24:50'Greer Garson opposite Lawrence Olivier
0:24:50 > 0:24:53'in the first film of the book in 1940.
0:24:53 > 0:24:58'For a country at war, this was all about romantic escapism.
0:24:58 > 0:25:02'Here, the Netherfield ball is reimagined as a giant garden party,
0:25:02 > 0:25:07'where Mr Darcy challenges Elizabeth to an archery contest.'
0:25:11 > 0:25:13Bull's-eye!
0:25:13 > 0:25:16'The archery contest is an invented scene,
0:25:16 > 0:25:19'but it does play on the very thing that makes Elizabeth Bennet
0:25:19 > 0:25:22'the best-loved heroine in English fiction.'
0:25:22 > 0:25:25And another bull's-eye.
0:25:25 > 0:25:30What's so clever about the book is that whilst Elizabeth says and thinks that she dislikes Mr Darcy,
0:25:30 > 0:25:34we the readers are allowed to suspect otherwise.
0:25:34 > 0:25:37They may not shoot arrows against each other in the book,
0:25:37 > 0:25:41but they duel in another way - with words.
0:25:41 > 0:25:44It's by observing how they compete together as equals
0:25:44 > 0:25:48that we come to realise that Elizabeth and Mr Darcy
0:25:48 > 0:25:51are meant for each other.
0:25:51 > 0:25:56'Modern adaptations have played up the mounting sexual tension.
0:25:57 > 0:25:59'In the 1995 TV series,
0:25:59 > 0:26:04'Colin Firth sent a generation of women into raptures
0:26:04 > 0:26:07'over his portrayal of a seductive hero.'
0:26:08 > 0:26:10Mr Darcy!
0:26:11 > 0:26:17What people don't always realise is that Pride And Prejudice is actually full of sex,
0:26:17 > 0:26:20it's just that allusions to it are quite subtle.
0:26:20 > 0:26:25The encounter at Pemberley is actually quite physical in the book.
0:26:25 > 0:26:28It's the only time in all Jane Austen's fiction
0:26:28 > 0:26:31when a woman and a man are said to blush together.
0:26:31 > 0:26:35'The wet shirt scene is the adapter's way of showing
0:26:35 > 0:26:37'what the reader can glimpse -'
0:26:37 > 0:26:42That Mr Darcy is not so buttoned-up after all,
0:26:42 > 0:26:45that there is a sensualist underneath.
0:26:45 > 0:26:48'As for the ending,
0:26:48 > 0:26:50'you don't get THIS in the book.
0:26:50 > 0:26:55'But on screen, it has to be sealed with a kiss.'
0:26:55 > 0:27:00It's no wonder that Pride And Prejudice has been re-made so many times.
0:27:00 > 0:27:03Consummately well written, it has a beautiful plot,
0:27:03 > 0:27:08crackling dialogue and characters with a matchless range of absurdities.
0:27:08 > 0:27:14Each generation has interpreted the book to suit their own age,
0:27:14 > 0:27:17confident that Austen could reflect their own ideals,
0:27:17 > 0:27:20their values and even their prejudices.
0:27:20 > 0:27:25We've had wartime escapism and 1980s feminism,
0:27:25 > 0:27:28gritty realism and colourful Bollywood.
0:27:28 > 0:27:31And now, this perfect novel
0:27:31 > 0:27:36patiently awaits the next adaptation to come along.
0:27:40 > 0:27:46That's it for tonight. We'll be back next week with Tom Dyckhoff hosting a design special,
0:27:46 > 0:27:49featuring futurology, football and fashion.
0:27:49 > 0:27:53But to play us out, here's some photography by the ground-breaking Juergen Teller,
0:27:53 > 0:27:59whose major solo exhibition opened at the Institute of Contemporary Arts today. Good night.
0:28:14 > 0:28:16# I turn my camera on
0:28:16 > 0:28:19# I cut my fingers on the way
0:28:20 > 0:28:24# On the way The way I'm slipping away
0:28:24 > 0:28:26# I turn my feelings off
0:28:26 > 0:28:29# You made me untouchable for life
0:28:30 > 0:28:32# Yeah
0:28:32 > 0:28:34# And you wasn't polite
0:28:41 > 0:28:43# Hit me like a tom
0:28:46 > 0:28:48# You hit me like a tom
0:28:51 > 0:28:53# You hit me like a tom... #
0:28:53 > 0:28:56Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
0:28:56 > 0:28:58E-mail subtitling@BBC.co.uk