Pride & Prejudice

Joe Wright's Pride & Prejudice (2005) was the English director's feature debut, an adaptation of Jane Austen's 1813 novel produced by Working Title and StudioCanal. The much-loved 1995 BBC serial had taken six hours over the story. Wright and the screenwriter Deborah Moggach compressed it into a little over two and went for mud, candlelight and an almost rural, naturalistic texture in place of drawing-room polish. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Keira Knightley plays Elizabeth Bennet, the quick-witted second daughter whose sparring with the proud Mr Darcy (Matthew Macfadyen) drives the plot. Wright surrounds them with a deep bench of British talent: Donald Sutherland and Brenda Blethyn as the Bennet parents, Rosamund Pike, Tom Hollander, and Judi Dench as the imperious Lady Catherine. Roman Osin's roaming camera and Dario Marianelli's piano-led score give the film its swooning, weather-beaten romanticism, and Knightley, then twenty, holds the centre with a performance of real spark.

The film drew four Academy Award nominations, including Best Actress for Knightley, and won Wright the BAFTA for Outstanding Debut. Two decades on, its reputation has only grown. For us it is one of the defining screen romances of its century, an adaptation that wins over newcomers and Austen purists alike, and it is still, by some way, the most loved film in Wright's body of work.