Movies

History Doomed to Repeat Itself?

Sixty years after Hollywood messed with the Bronte Sisters, British director Charles Sturridge is going to have another go at it. Surprisingly, American actresses Michelle Williams, Bryce Dallas Howard and Rachel Evan Wood have been cast as novelists Charlotte, Emily and Anne in “Bronte,” which will focus on their literary struggles and their problems with their opium-addicted brother Branwell. Back in 1943, Warner Bros. cast a pair of British stars — Olivia de Havilland and Ida Lupino — along with Yank Nancy Coleman in “Devotion.” The resultant mishmash of a melodrama, co-starring Arthur Kennedy as Branwell, as well as Austrian-born Paul Henreid(!) as the Irish curate that the movie imagines Charlotte and Emily both had a crush on, and Sydney Greestreet as Thackeray, did not hit U.S. theaters until three years later. Jack Warner had wanted Joan Fontaine, Miss DeHavilland’s real-life sister, to play Emily but that didn’t work out because of the sibs’ famous feud, which apparently continues unabated six decades later. “Devotion” is best remembered for its moody score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold and some striking shots of Ida walking her hounds on the Yorkshire Moors.