Little Women

United States

1994

115 Min

Black and White

English, German

Currently 3.1/5 Stars.
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PROD Denise De Novi, Robin Swicord, Warren Carr

SCR Louisa May Alcott, Robin Swicord

CAST Winona Ryder, Gabriel Byrne, Christian Bale, Trini Alvarado, Claire Danes, Kirsten Dunst, Samantha Mathis, Eric Stoltz, John Neville, Mary Wickes, Susan Sarandon

With their father away fighting in the Civil War, Joe, Meg, Beth and Amy grow up with their mother in somewhat reduced circumstances. They are a close family who inevitably have their squabbles and tragedies. But the bond holds even when, later, men friends start to become a part of the household. The sisters put on plays that Beth writes. When Laurie and Amy come back married, Jo leaves home to become a governess. Jo meets Mr. Laurence a teacher who falls in love with her. Jo has to return home when her sister’s dying. Mr. Laurence follows her later to give her the book she wrote and he had publish for her. —Viewpoints.com

Director

Gillian Armstrong

A technical theatre student at Swinburne College, Gillian Armstrong studied filmmaking at the Melbourne and Australian Film and Television School, paying her tuition by working as a waitress. She functioned in several secondary technical capacities in the Australian film industry, then she made her mainstream directorial bow with the 1977 short The Singer and the Dancer, a soft-pedaled feminist tract which won an award at the Sydney Festival. Her first feature was My Brilliant Career (1979), which combined a modern sensibility concerning male/female relationships with the glossy romanticism of a 19th-century novel. Featuring a star-making turn by Judy Davis, My Brilliant Career garnered seven Australian Film Institute awards, firmly securing Armstrong’s reputation and future in her native country.

Armstrong’s next major feature, the American-financed Mrs. Soffel (1984), starred Diane Keaton and Mel Gibson. The real-life tale of a scandalous love affair between a prison warden’s… read more

A technical theatre student at Swinburne College, Gillian Armstrong studied filmmaking at the Melbourne and Australian Film and Television School, paying her tuition by working as a waitress. She functioned in several secondary technical capacities in the Australian film industry, then she made her mainstream directorial bow with the 1977 short The Singer and the Dancer, a soft-pedaled feminist tract which won an award at the Sydney Festival. Her first feature was My Brilliant Career (1979), which combined a modern sensibility concerning male/female relationships with the glossy romanticism of a 19th-century novel. Featuring a star-making turn by Judy Davis, My Brilliant Career garnered seven Australian Film Institute awards, firmly securing Armstrong’s reputation and future in her native country.

Armstrong’s next major feature, the American-financed Mrs. Soffel (1984), starred Diane Keaton and Mel Gibson. The real-life tale of a scandalous love affair between a prison warden’s wife and a prisoner, it was moderately well-received. After directing two concert documentaries, Armstrong returned to Australia to make High Tide (1987), a drama about a woman (Judy Davis) struggling to reconcile herself with both her past and the daughter she abandoned at birth. Both that film and Armstrong’s next major feature, the critically-acclaimed The Last Days of Chez Nous (1992), went largely unknown outside of her native country.

It was with her 1994 adaptation of Little Women that Armstrong earned a substantial degree of international recognition; featuring strong performances by the likes of Susan Sarandon, Winona Ryder, and Claire Danes, the film became one of the most popular of the year. Armstrong followed this success three years later with Oscar and Lucinda, an adaptation of the Peter Carey novel of the same name. Starring Ralph Fiennes and a then-relatively unknown Cate Blanchett as two misfits who fall in love in 19th-century Australia, the film was a model of strong production values and stellar performances, but received a mixed reception on both sides of the Pacific. —allmovie guide

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