Jane Austen in Manhattan (DVD, 2004)

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Director James Ivory brings the intrigue and guile of rival theater companies to life in JANE AUSTEN IN MANHATTAN. At Sotheby's auction house in New York, a theater producer and an ambitious off-Broadway director buy an obscure childhood play written by Jane Austen. Robert Powell stars as Pierre, an avant-garde director who becomes engaged in a heated rivalry with his former mentor and lover, traditionalist director Lilianna Zorska (Anne Baxter). While competing to produce different versions of the Austen play, the two also compete for the loyalties of a young actress, Ariadne (Sean Young in her first screen role). The actual Jane Austen manuscript was sold at Sotheby's in London, and London Weekend Television became interested in producing the play--without reading it first. Merchant Ivory Productions, which had produced a film for LWT's THE SOUTH BANK SHOW two years earlier (HULLABALOO OVER GEORGIE AND BONNIE'S PICTURES), also became interested in filming the sight-unseen manuscript. However, after reading the work, screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala realized that the Austen play was not developed enough to be a film and instead used the acquisition of the text as the seed of an idea that ultimately became JANE AUSTEN IN MANHATTAN.