Even after 5 more installments of the little women, the one from 1949 is still worth watching.
It is probably closest to the spirit of the book. There are silent ones from 1917 and 1918
which I have not seen.
My personal favorite is the 1994 one with Christian Bale as Laurie.
The later ones experiment with "time travel". The 2019 one is still acceptable but I personally
do not like "shuffling of time" just for the sake of novelty. This classical story should be told
in the way it was written. There is a contemporary film adaptation from 2018
which I would clearly rate the worst. (Box office and review confirm this). It is almost comic how
the 2018 adaptation tries to place Joe as a victim of social bias. There is a scene where her writing is dismissed
by 4 dislikable (horrific actually) male judges. This is
quite opposite to the original source: the character "Joe" was early recognized as a successful writer.
Joe could sell her stories in the local newspaper and landed a major hit eventually. She was recognized as a talent by the
"professor". How many young adults have such luck in modern times? Especially now, where creativity is devalued almost
daily by artificial intelligence and the work of artists, writers, musicians, engineers and scientists is siphoned into
large language models and then stolen by folks who have little creativity themselves, often without giving credit.
The author of "little women", Louisa May Alcott, was in 1858 already
a best seller writing and immensely successful, unlike Emily Dickinson who was born a bit earlier and not
so lucky.
The teacher in the scene below from the 1949 installment is a bit off putting. The calculation 197+283+465 = 945 is seen
on the board. The numbers above 7:28::9:? is a bit mysterious. It might refer to a date like July 28?
Amy standing with the board reading "I'm ashamed of myself" seems to be placed in as a
card board. It looks flat and only moves very rigidly. Could also have been painted or glued into
the film. One can see some reflections which also indicate that it might have been taped to the film. Quite awkward.
They tried to be close to the book, where Amy was punished in school
by standing in front of the class with a clothespin clipped to her nose.