Excellent version
There's never going to be a perfect version of Little Women, but this one deserves to rank very high.
As a film of course it's limited, made on a low budget with hardly any outdoor scenes - even when the young Amy nearly drowns, they could apparently afford water, but not ice :-) The original serial format though meant that the makers could spread themselves, to the advantage of character-development among other things.
And it is a character-driven story, so that goes a long way to make up for anything lacking in filmic beauty.
All the cast are strong. Each of the girls is economically played by one actress only, but they all manage the growing-up process very well - Amy being the least successful of course, but that's less down to the acting than to the fact that the character is supposed to be12 in the opening chapters, her (in this case, non-existent) physical smallness actually being referred to in one scene. A difficult ask, so I suppose that's one weakness.
Of the male characters, I don't think there's one to cause a qualm, which isn't true of any other versions I've seen - in Winona Ryder's for eg the girls are good but the men pretty off-putting in their differing ways, not to mention that self-righteous modern feminist, Marmee. Here even Marmee is actually likeable!! Laurie is perfect, Jo very engaging, and they are all very good at bringing out the humour in their characters. Aunt March is a scream,.. and she has stiff competition.
Maybe a New Englander born would find the accents problematic, but they sound fine to me; the noticeable anomalies are mostly hair-related (plus Beth's halloweeny transformation at the hands of the make-up dept).
Laurie morphs exceptionally convincingly from a floppy-headed 15 year old into a side-whiskered man, and thankfully none of the men look like adverts for male grooming - well, it was filmed more than 40 years ago. Of course Jo doesn't really cut her hair, she could only have had about three inches to sell; and of course Meg's also looks exactly the same both before and after the curling-tongs incident.
But, as you might expect in 1970... all the girls are back-combed to the hilt :-s You can see in the cover pic how Jo's hat is perched on top of the birds' nest, about 6 inches above her actual head. I don't suppose anyone even noticed when it first went out, but It looks awful. you just have to ignore it and concentrate on the story.
Verified purchase: YesCondition: New