Count me among the camp who did not find Timothy Dalton a good Rochester. The recent PBS was also not great, but I liked the Jane. How I wish that Alan Rickman (thump thump) played Rochester, even only reading it, I'd be swooning all over the place.
The 1944 film is also so memorable to me for the moody lighting/cinematography and the effective and evocative score by Bernard Hermann I feel so much the same about the later film, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. A very terrifying Grace Poole, much more effective here than in any other Jane Eyre I can recall. Houseman's screenplay is also wonderful if not 100% true to the book. it works for me.
It is one of the few films in which I find Fontaine palatable. In musing on the Fox stable of actresses at the time, I can't think of anyone in 1944 in their roster who could have done justice to the film.
The rest of the casting is terrific, including the always wonderful Agnes Moorhead as Mrs. Reed. The only casting I can't take is Margaret O'Brien as Adele. She's, I guess, perfect, but I find her appearences so jarring and out of step with the moodiness, it takes me out of the film. Peggy Ann Garner is wonderful as the young Jane and Elizabeth Taylor as the impossibly beautiful Helen is spellbinding.
I would absolutely LOVE to hear the radio broadcast with Welles and Moorhead.
To derail to Agnes, I always felt she was underused, but I will watch anything, even the dreckiest Sirkian opus just to enjoy her.
