Plot
The plot is generally faithful to that of the novel, though some of the events have been reordered chronologically. The film also introduces some new material, particularly relating to Anne's interactions with Gilbert Blythe.
Unlike Montgomery’s novel, Sullivan’s film opens with the 13 year old orphan Anne Shirley living in servitude with the cruel Hammond Family in Nova Scotia. However, when Mr. Hammond dies, Anne is sent to an orphanage where she eventually receives the wonderful news that she has been adopted by a couple on Prince Edward Island. Upon arriving on P.E.I, Anne is met at the train station by the elderly Matthew Cuthbert who is surprised to find a girl there instead of a boy. Matthew and his sister Marilla had requested a boy to help them with the farm chores but he couldn’t very well just leave the girl at the train station. Matthew decides to take Anne to meet Marilla and on the buggy ride home becomes completely smitten with the red haired orphan girl.
When Anne Shirley arrives at the Cuthbert’s farm called “Green Gables”, she is a precocious, romantic child desperate to be loved and highly sensitive about her red hair and homely looks. In her own unique headstrong manner, Anne manages to insult the town gossip, Rachel Lynde in a dispute over her looks; smash her slate over Gilbert Blythe’s head when he calls her “Carrots” on her first day of school; and accidentally dyes her hair green in an effort to turn her red hair black and salvage her wounded pride.
Marilla Cuthbert is shocked and beside herself to know how she will ever cope with this sensitive, headstrong child so desperate to fit in. But shy, gentle Matthew is always there to defend Anne and hold her up on a pedestal.
It seems like Anne is destined to cultivate disaster. She becomes “bosom” friends with Diana Barry from across the pond and succeeds in getting Diana drunk by accidentally serving Currant Wine instead of Raspberry Cordial at a tea party. Diana’s mother and Rachel Lynde turn on Marilla for making wine in the first place. Hence Anne moves from one mishap to the next as her wild imagination and far-fetched antics combine to constantly bring trouble onto her shoulders.
Anne finds her element in the academic world, ultimately competing neck and neck with Gilbert Blythe who becomes her arch opponent. Anne and Gilbert go on to win the highest academic accolades, constantly vying for honors at every level. Eventually their fierce rivalry turns to a secret affection, which blossoms into love. Marilla tries to prevent Anne from seeing Gilbert because Anne is still quite young and Marilla wants Anne to continue her education. In the end, however, when Matthew dies and forces Marilla into considering selling Green Gables, Gilbert gives Anne his teaching post in nearby Avonlea so she can stay at Green Gables and continue to support Marilla.
One is left with the impression that Gilbert’s and Anne’s lives will henceforth become intertwined. Anne has overcome the trials and tribulations of her difficult youth and finally found the home, family and love that she always longed for.
Read more about this topic: Anne Of Green Gables (1985 film)
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
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“There comes a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”
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