Little Women

Reading together from magazine serials, using their adopted performance names, in what they consider the “March Family Theater,” sisters Jo, Meg, Beth and Amy (Winona Ryder, Trini Alvarado, Claire Danes and Kirsten Dunst) speculate about the future and their new neighbor (Christian Bale), in Little Women, 1994.

Evading a less interesting beau, Winona Ryder as Jo March at a society party in Civil War-era Concord, Mass., bumps (as will be her habit) into Christian Bale, as “Laurie,” the handsome, mysterious and affluent new neighbor who has fascinated her and her sisters, including Meg (Trini Alvarado), in director Gillian Armstrong’s Little Women, 1994.

With Winona Ryder narrating as Jo March, and language, including from young Amy (Kirsten Dunst), straight from the Louisa May Alcott novel, director Gillian Armstrong begins her widely praised adaptation, with Trini Alvarado as Meg, Claire Danes as Meg, and Susan Sarandon as Marmee, in Little Women, 1994.

Now working as a governess in New York and fresh off another publisher’s rejection of her stories, Jo March (Winona Ryder) collides with fellow boarding-house resident, Gabriel Byrne as German immigrant philosopher Friedrich Bhaer, a propitious moment, as in the Louisa May Alcott novel, in Little Women, 1994.