Jo March across time

by Cláudio Alves

19192019

Since its original publication, Louisa May Alcott's Little Women has been one of the most beloved works of American Literature. Even beyond the US, Alcott's semiautobiographical novel has had a great impact, becoming many a young girl's beloved book for over a century. Considering such success, it's no wonder that the story of the four March sisters was quick to jump from the page to the big screen. The first cinematic adaptations way back in the silent era in 1917 and 1918.

Unfortunately, those two features have been lost, though we still have four widely available talkies based on the novel. Let's look at those four features after the jump...

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Greenberg's 10th and Gerwig as Muse

by Cláudio Alves 

Once upon a time, long before she was an Academy Award-nominated director and screenwriter, Greta Gerwig was the acting princess of mumblecore. Along with the Duplass brothers and Joe Swanberg, she helped solidify the identity of that often-maligned subgenre, full of naturalistic dialogue and very little in the ways of storytelling. The actress quickly transcended the limitations of mumblecore and became a starlet of the independent American cinema from 2010 to 2016, starring in such gems as Damsels in Distress, Jackie and 20th Century Women. 

Among her more frequent collaborators, Noah Baumbach stood out. She was his muse and he knew how to capture her talents like no other. Or was it the other way around? In any case, their first collaboration marked a turning point in both their careers. We're talking about Greenberg, which celebrates 10 years today…

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The modernity of Little Women's costumes

by Cláudio Alves

Last Sunday, the great Jacqueline Durran became a two-time Academy Award winner thanks to Little Women. As the umpteenth costume designer to tackle Louisa May Alcott's classic tale, Durran had the challenge of dressing these well-known characters in a bold reinterpretation. Eschewing the strict historical accuracy with which Collen Atwood tackled the subject in 1994, Jacqueline Durran evoked the fashions of the 1860s by infusing them with character-specific idiosyncrasies and a general sense of 21st-century modernity.

Her designs are not as bound to their filmmaker's contemporary styles as the Little Women of 1933 or 1949. However, there's no denying that the current iteration of the March sisters is filtered through the sensibilities of artists living in the 2010s… 

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Directing Actors to Oscar Nominations ~ Updated Stats!

by Ben Miller

Power couple Noah and Greta moving up the "Directed Actors to Oscar Nominations" charts

The Oscars are so stat heavy, it’s difficult to keep up with the information. Especially since each season there's yet more of it. One of the stats that gets perpetually lost in the noise is the complex area  of 'acting nominations by director'. If you’ve read my previous piece last year, I am somewhat of an expert in this field, and this year’s set of nominees and winners provides some interesting stats.

First Timers

With nominations for Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson and Laura Dern, Noah Baumbach does what Guillermo Del Toro did with Shape of Water and Martin McDonagh did with Three Billboards, going from zero to three acting nominations from his filmography in one year.  A few directors have gone from zero to four, including but not limited to...

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The Cinematic Redemption of Amy March

by Cláudio Alves

Greta Gerwig's Little Women is a bold adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's beloved classic in more ways than one. Structurally, it shatters the novel's chronology, making past and present, childhood and adulthood, talk to each other in a dialogue of echoes and rhymes. For instance, when Jo loses a sister in the wintery coldness of the present, Gerwig marries the moment to the memory of another kind of sisterly loss, when a wedding in warm colors was a harbinger of future loneliness for the heroine. Another element that makes this new adaptation so radically different from the previous ones is its treatment of Jo's sisters. No longer are Meg, Beth, and Amy March relegated to the periphery of the text. This 19th-century classic is called Little Women, after all, not Little Woman.

When it comes to its portrayal of Amy, the novel's most condemned character, the 2019 film is of particular innovation. We could almost say this Little Women redeems Amy March after centuries of villainizing her…

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