MovieChat Forums > Jane Eyre (2011) Discussion > Was Mia Wasikowska's corset too tight?

Was Mia Wasikowska's corset too tight?

posted 11 years ago by purple_lemon
11 replies | jump to latest

It seemed to me that at times during the film Mia was walking around rather stiffly and gingerly as though she was in some discomfort. And she also seemed to say some of her lines very quickly and softly as though she didn't have much breath to expend on them. Her figure was so slight she barely needed a corset anyway so if they cinched her hard it was a stupid thing to do.

A good film by the way, but not as good as the 2006 tv mini-series.

"The players of The Game are the scum of the earth"

[–] LifeVsArt 11 years ago

hmmm, interesting theory for a whole thread. You should be a film critic - or else a seamstress.

[–] purple_lemon 10 years ago

Obvious gang-stalker is obvious.

"The players of The Game are the scum of the earth"

[–] LifeVsArt 10 years ago

Here's Mia in between takes. "Oh why must Carey Fukunaga mortify my flesh?"

http://data.whicdn.com/images/48909542/tumblr_mg63otydLu1raewqmo1_500_ large.png

http://images6.fanpop.com/image/photos/34500000/Jane-Eyre-2011-mia-was ikowska-34578692-245-180.gif

http://images6.fanpop.com/image/photos/34500000/Jane-Eyre-2011-mia-was ikowska-34578694-245-180.gif

[–] rizdek 10 years ago

This is an interesting miniclip:

http://www.fanpop.com/clubs/mia-wasikowska/images/34695713/title/mia-f an-art-fanart

Everyone's gonna see different things, but to me she says so much with her eyes.

[–] LifeVsArt 10 years ago

Okay, I don't want to turn this into a Mia Wasikowska fan site (she wouldn't interest me so much if I didn't find most of her films fascinating)... but still. Mia changes appearance about every 15 minutes (on and off the screen), but here are some of the most recent photos I've seen, from the Cannes film festival about two weeks ago. Mia's with David Cronenberg and the cast of "Maps to the Stars" (Julianne Moore, Robert Pattinson, etc.) Next time she appears she'll probably look completely different - with or without a corset.

http://cache2.asset-cache.net/gc/492268765-robert-pattinson-mia-wasiko wska-david-gettyimages.jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=X7WJLa88Cw eo9HktRLaNXhgAJI5jFMu76cGHWsW6ELeTCs5LlswHcZNQivNyK9Vz

http://mapstothestarsfilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/MTTSday02.jpg

http://cdn02.cdn.justjared.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/pattinson-ma psprem/robert-pattinson-maps-to-the-stars-cannes-premiere-18.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/vAIGVYP.jpg

http://www.look.co.uk/sites/default/files/imagecache/node-gallery-disp lay/rexfeatures_3762142v.jpg

[–] rizdek 10 years ago

I found this comment concerning her "corset" wearing in movies:

Did you have to wear a corset as Alice?

Yes—for two scenes, and it was very painful. But now, having done Jane Eyre, I realize the Alice corsets were sissy corsets. The corsets I wore in Jane Eyre were incredibly painful. Ballet hurts, but it’s more like your feet are killing you. With a corset on, you can’t breathe properly.

http://www.wmagazine.com/people/celebrities/2011/04/mia_wasikowska_mic hael_fassbender_jane_eyre

So, it seems they did cinch it up hard. Interesting that I've watched this several times and didn't notice what you commented about. Just goes to show that different folks notice different things. I'll try to notice if I ever decide to watch it again.

I also understand that Wilson also had to wear a tight corset for the 06mini. But a few sites suggest she regularly wears corsets and one even shows a photo of her in her corset. http://www.staylace.com/gallery/gallery09/ruthwilson/index.html

[–] lucy72077 10 years ago

It seems like for a lot of period dramas they automatically put actresses in ridiculously tight corsets whether it is historically correct or not. Corsets became much tighter from the 1850s onwards because that's when steel eyelets started to be used and it became possible - and fashionable - to cinch in your waist to an extreme level, and Jane Eyre is set at least a decade before that. But even so, this style was only really possible for middle and upper class women, it wouldn't have been practical for working women, who obviously needed freedom of movement... not to mention the ability to breathe!! I'm not sure whether Jane would have counted as working or middle class but as a governess, I don't think that she would have been required to follow the extremes of fashion (and those extremely tight corsets *were* a fashion)... plus it kind of goes against her personality to put up with that kind of thing.

[–] supergran 10 years ago

Interesting post, lucy.

I found this picture of a corset circa 1825 to 1835 from the V&A collection:

http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O138890/corset-unknown/

It was probably similar to the sort of corset that Jane would have worn - do you agree?

Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass, it's about learning to dance in the rain.

[–] LifeVsArt 10 years ago

Here are some words directly from the horse's mouth.

"Michael O'Connor, 'Jane Eyre' Costume Designer, On Mia Wasikowska's Corset And The Oscars".

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/22/michael-oconnor-jane-eyre_n_1 292229.html

I also found this.

O’Connor reports, "In addition to the script, I’d go through the book, constantly marking up pages mentioning anything to do with types of material or clothes and branching out to how people lived, if there’s something to do with the setting or the style; the detail of a shop front, or the cover of a bed."

Calculating the dates when Jane’s story takes place has remained open to interpretation, so O’Connor had to pinpoint them. He muses, "The book was published in 1847, but Brontë seems to be writing of the 1830s and there is a spirit of an age even slightly earlier. Cary was quite tempted to go for the Regency period [1795 to 1837], when there was much social chronicling. We decided on the early 1830s for the young Jane, and the early 1840s for the teenaged Jane, which was noteworthy because that was when photography started. Up until then, there were images of people painted in costume.

"We looked at the work of painters like Franz Winterhalter and, in particular, a wonderful untrained British illustrator named Mary Ellen Best. Their works are romantic and beautiful. Then you would see a photograph around the same date showing the real clothes and think, ‘That looks like it doesn't fit quite so well as in the painting…’"

Fukunaga, as part of the contemporary perspective being applied to the conception and telling of the story, introduced O’Connor to the work of American photographer Alec Soth, as well as that of Dutch photographer Hellen van Meene, as a reference template for desired moods and tones.

The director reports, "With all creative departments, I normally use photographic references rather than ones from film or other mediums. I find that a photograph can very quickly communicate all that we are trying to accomplish in one frozen moment, and Van Meene’s photos were particularly relevant to what we were trying to accomplish visually with our movie."

"They’re incredibly beautiful shots," marvels O’Connor. "These are really clean images with strong colors; in some cases they are washed-out, yet with one strong color. Stylistically, they translated for parts of the movie; I kept them up on a wall to refer to.

"We also examined original costumes of the 1830s and 1840s to see how they were manufactured. This was before the sewing machine, so everything was still being made by hand."

All of the costumes for the principals on Jane Eyre were also made from scratch. O’Connor notes, "When you’re fitting an ornate costume and wig in a studio in Central London, you have to be aware of the reality of recreating that operation in the field. I’ve learned that from previous jobs."

O’Connor’s field experience has served him well; honored with an Oscar for his work on The Duchess, he knows that "in making the costume for the actors, you are forming part of their character.

http://www.focusfeatures.com/article/a_classic_novel___a_passionate_ad aptation__the_production_of__?film=jane_eyre

[–] lucy72077 10 years ago

@LifeVsArt: Thanks for posting that, it was a really interesting read :) I remember reading that Cary Fukunaga decided to set JE11 in the 1840s because he hated the fashions of the 1830s... and I can't say that I blame him, the 1830s were a pretty bad time for fashion!! The 1840s silhouette is so much cleaner, simpler and more flattering. It's interesting what was said about the difference between the way that people looked in early photographs and in paintings... I suppose it would be like people from 200 years into the future looking through a copy of vogue and thinking everyone looked like that.

[–] lucy72077 10 years ago

@supergran: Yes, I think so. I think that prior to the 1850s, corsets were more about providing support and creating an even silhouette like modern-day spandex, rather than actually changing the shape of the body in an unnatural way. I found this interesting blog which includes photos of the Bronte's own clothing from the Parsonage museum, including a corset which may have been Charlotte Bronte's:

https://hathawaysofhaworth.wordpress.com/2012/09/20/the-brontes-undres sed/