“Silenzio e Sentimento. Parole, immagini e censura nel romanzo di Jane Austen e in tre adattamenti”

Sense and Sensibility is a novel where reticence often silences words, where allusions take the place of direct references and where long ellipses conceal dramatic episodes or hide the actions of key characters. Austen’s reticence has been analysed from the point of view of a cultural necessity , of a source of stylistic irony , a way to preserve narrative suspense and a moral attitude . However, Austen’s silence, with its many meanings, purposes, and interpretations, has always been a difficult challenge for the cinema. A medium whose inner constitution is characterized by its “total visibility”, as Richardson calls it (1985:73), badly tolerates these “blanks”. It is because of this “oddly superficial” nature (Lothe 2000:11) that film adaptations have often needed to transform, and have done it with different outcomes, Austen’s “extraordinary silence” (Austen 2003: 105) into words and pictures. This paper will propose the analysis of key episodes in the novel and their filmic translations in three transpositions produced and distributed by BBC in 1981 and 2008 and Columbia in 1996. Moreover, sometimes cinema pursues aims which don’t coincide with those of the novelist. The paper will also describe how screenwriters and directors have chosen to silence episodes and speeches in their adaptations of Sense and Sensibility in order to suit their diegetic or dramatic objectives.