Even after having now 6 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 movies from 1917 and 1918
which I have not seen. As a Swiss born, I only learned about ``little women" when moving to Massachusetts. It is
obligatory of course here to visit not only the Walden Pond cabin of Thoreau and the battle road trail, but also the
orchard house in Concord. It is located also on a route
I skated often 20 years ago.
My personal favorite film installations of "little women" is the 1994 movie
featuring Christian Bale as Laurie. The later (2018/2019) ones experiment a bit too much for my own taste.
The 2019 version is still ok
even so I personally do not like "time-line shuffling" just for the sake of novelty.
There is also a contemporary film adaptation from 2018
places the story even into modern times.
I personally rate that one as the worst from the 4 film versions that I know. Both Box office and review agree with this. In the fashion of that time,
the 2018 adaptation tries to place Joe as a victim of social bias. There is a scene, where her writing is dismissed
by four nasty judges. This is quite the opposite to the original source: the character "Joe" has as a young already be 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" towards the end of the plot. How many young adults have such an opportunity in modern times?
The author of "little women", Louisa May Alcott, was in 1858 already a best seller writing and immensely successful.
Emily Dickinson (an other Massachusetts local) was born a bit earlier and not so lucky.
One must add however that Alcott also wrote under a pen name to publish, but already Jane Austen used "by a lady" as the author name.
Back to the 1949 movie with the clip:
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 written above 7:28::9:? are mysterious to me. Do they refer to a date like July 28?
The figure 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. It could also have been painted or glued into
the film as one can see some reflections indicating that it might have been taped later into the film. Quite awkward.
They tried to emulate that Amy was in the book punished in school by standing in front of the class with a clothespin
clipped to her nose.