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Composer Dario Marianelli Reflects On The 20th Anniversary Of ‘Pride & Prejudice'
Poster for the 20th anniversary of 'Pride & Prejudice'
2025 is what we could call a perfect year for Jane Austen fans. Not only is it the 250th birth anniversary of one of the greatest and most influential writers of all time, but it is also the 20th anniversary of one of the most beloved adaptation of her most famous novel, Joe Wright's 2005 Pride & Prejudice.
The movie's lasting triumph is mostly due to a stellar cast which includes Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennet and Matthew Macfadyen as and some iconic scenes that have made their entrance into the pantheon of the greatest scenes of all time -yes, I'm talking about a certain hand flex and Mr. Darcy walking through the dawn mist- of course.
But these scenes wouldn't be quite as perfect if it wasn't for Joe Wright's director of photography Roman Osin, and music composer Dario Marianelli.
Marianelli's work on Pride & Prejudice truly gave another dimension to Wright's already incredible work. Some of his themes like Liz On Top of The World, Dawn, Your Hands Are Cold, or The Living Statues of Pemberley, quickly became some of the most memorable pieces of music ever written for a period drama.
I had the privilege of speaking with Marianelli about his work on Pride & Prejudice, as he reflects on 20 years of the movie, his collaboration with French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet and English director Joe Wright.
During our interview, the Italian composer is sitting in what looks like his office, filled with records and paintings on the walls. He said, ''20 years of Pride & Prejudice, we made it!"
As I was showing him my 2005 Pride & Prejudice phone background, he said, ''Thats's my favorite moment of the film, Liz on top of the cliff!''
Surprisingly, Marianelli isn't too much aware of the impact that his score had over the years, not just for the fans of this adaptation, but also for the period drama genre in general. The composer is not on social media and only has seen some covers on Youtube.
'Pride & Prejudice' 2005
After discussing how hard the theme Liz on Top of the World is to play, Marianelli asked me if I played any instrument. He then said, '' You know, the beginning of Dawn was written for Keira Knightley who had never played the piano in her life. So it's especially written as a sort of 18th century small piece, so that she could learn to play with two fingers. The piece is really designed so that if the camera was looking at her hands for the first 30 seconds of the piece, she could actually play it, and it was written like that.''
In Pride & Prejudice, there are a couple of moments where you can hear Marianelli's own music being played by the characters themselves. Two of the most obvious examples are when Lady Catherine de Bourg, played by the one and only Judie Dench, asks Lizzie to play the piano even though she says she can't play. The other one is when Darcy's little sister Georgiana plays a theme written by Marianelli as well. I asked him how he made the decision to use his own pieces of music in those particular scenes, instead of music that already existed from this time period.
He said, ''That was the very first conversation I had with Joe. What are we going to do with it? Are we going to use music from the time? Or shall we write our own? And we ended up with this idea that if we had our own themes, it would have been much easier to try to move away at some point from the music of this time period, and gradually turn this theme into something more modern. So I first wrote it with the kind of music language that would be plausible for say, the late 18th century.''
He added: ''So we started thinking about the young Jane Austen, who was 19 or 20 when she wrote her first draft, she would probably listen to what would be the groundbreaking music at that time, so I tried to write something that would be appropriate for that. But the idea was that eventually we would probably move away from that and the same themes would become more modern.''
Keira Knightley and director Joe Wright on set of 'Pride & Prejudice'
So how come Lizzie can't play the piano if Keira Knightley had specifically learned to play Dawn?
''Joe wanted just the piano at first and I thought 'It's gonna be a bit reductive but let's try that.' So I wrote the Georgiana piece, and Dawn which should have been played by Keira Knightley as it is, so well, not played badly. And when he shot the scene, Joe thought it'd be funnier if Lizzie was a bit hopeless and couldn't play it very well. So in spite of Keira Knightley having practiced a lot, she could play it very well, we made her look like she was playing badly, which she was only half happy about.''
The only non orignal piece of music used in the film is played during Lizzie and first mesmerizing dance scene. The two characters passionately look into each other's eyes, and the rest of the ballroom disappear. We can hear a piece of music from 17th century composer, Henry Purcell, called A Postcard to Henry Purcell.
I asked Marianelli why he chose to use a theme that already existed instead of one of his own for this scene. He said, ''All the dances are original tunes, that's the exception. We went searching for the kind of dance music that was popular at that time, we had arrangements of those, and that includes the Purcell tune, which was very popular at that time, and we decided it would be interesting to leave that tune alone, without the orchestra, just on one violin.''
'Pride & Prejudice' directed by Joe Wright
He added: ''Then there is an orchestra that starts coming in, but it's not the orchestra in the room, there's something new at that point that comes into the story between the two of them. This music is drifting into the room, from someplace very far away, maybe they hear it, maybe they don't, who knows?''
If you ask any fan of the film what their favorite moment is, more often than not, the answer will be when Mr. Darcy walks out of the morning mist in the field. This scene is gorgeously shot and paced, and it is a perfect combination of the breathtaking photography, Mr. Darcy's love confession and Marianelli's theme Your Hands Are Cold which is a higher, more epic reprise of Liz on Top of the World.
Marianelli said, ''That particular scene when he is coming through the mist, that moment of butterflies in the stomach and the excitement, at some point it has to calm down. And they're in front of each other, eventually they will be holding hands, you know it's very British, there's actually no kiss, it's proper, they can't kiss.''
He added: ''I remember we were recording the music, I was in the control room of the studio with Joe, and Benjamin Wallfish was conducting the music, and I had to tell him 'You have to cool it down, you can't be too emotional now, if you overdo it, they're gonna kiss and we can't do that' which was a bit surreal because obviously the movie was already shot, they couldn't kiss even if they wanted to. But it felt like the music shouldn't push them too hard, it should be suspended, really, and make you feel like you weren't sure which way it was going to go.''
Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennet
No, there is no kiss between Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet at the end, at least not in the original version. However, an alternative ending was shot for the U.S. audience, where the two main characters kiss -which is not something one could have found in a Jane Austen novel.-
''I think we really recorded two different versions, I vaguely remember both versions to score, I mean they were very similar, I can't remember the details but the one with the kiss was probably a bit longer. There was always that moment of release at the end where we could go back to the music that opened the movie. At the beginning it doesn't go that high, at the end it goes higher. But in my mind that was the release, the piano piece at the beginning should also come when the film ends.''
He added: ''But it's funny, I think the British audience wouldn't have been happy with a kiss.''
Marianelli declared that his main goal was to write a score that would feel fresh and modern. He said, ''Liz on Top of the World is no longer in that kind of late 18th century music language, it becomes more modern.''
So what was the first image that was on Marianelli's mind when he got the call for the job some 21 years ago, and what kind of atmosphere did he want to convey through his music?
He said, ''You just reminded me about the atmosphere, the first time I went to see the film when it was shot, something really rare happened, which is that Joe convinced everybody to see the movie without any music at all. Usually when we go watch it for the first time, they put music on top of it, classical music from the time, and instead, he projected the film without anything. And that was the most beautiful thing, because it was a really gorgeous movie, so beautiful, and also you coud get a sense of the atmosphere of the scenes, before anybody made you try to feel something with the music. So, there were these empty spaces to go in and fill up with my ideas. That was quite beautiful, it happens so rarely. Actually it's only with Joe, that I'm able to watch the film without any music that had been put there as a temporary soundtrack.''
Composer Dario Marianelli won his first Oscar for 'Atonement' directed by Joe Wright
Joe Wright and Dario Marianelli have worked together on four occasions, Pride & Prejudice, then Atonement, which won the composer his first Oscar, Anna Karenina, all three movies starred Keira Knightley and finally The Darkest Hour.
The 20th anniversary of Pride & Prejudice is truly an event, the film was recently re-released in theaters and Marianelli's score got a special deluxe vinyl edition on top of all the merchandise released for the occasion, which is a testament of how timeless and beloved this film and Marianelli's score are.
''I'm sure that the scores that I have written and attracted the most attention were all the scores I have written for Joe, and it's his fault! He's just very precise about the space that he leaves in the films for the music. He doesn't make the film, and then calls the composer to paint it over, to decorate. It's absolutely the opposite of decoration, he's already thinking what the music is going to do before he even shoots the scene.''
