Anne Of Green Gables -1985- Apr 2026

The film’s greatest strength is its pacing across four hours (originally two two-hour episodes). It allows Montgomery’s episodic narrative room to breathe: the wrong cake, the puffed sleeves, the haunted wood, the amethyst brooch. Each set piece is lovingly staged. The screenwriting wisely keeps much of Montgomery’s dialogue, and when it invents, it invents well (the extended scene of Anne and Diana swearing blood-oaths is a delight).

If there is a weakness, it is the slightly dated production value in a few minor scenes (some rear-projection carriage rides look stagey), and a few transitional edits feel abrupt. Also, purists may note the omission of certain minor characters or subplots (the story of Mr. Harrison and his parrot is entirely gone). But these are quibbles. The emotional beats that matter—the lost brooch, the cracked slate, the lily maid, the scholarship, and the final act of self-sacrifice—are handled with devastating grace. Anne of Green Gables -1985-

The production design and cinematography are quietly stunning. Sullivan and his team chose Prince Edward Island’s real landscapes, and the result is a Green Gables that feels lived-in: white farmhouse, barn-red outbuildings, fields sloping toward the “Lake of Shining Waters” (a real pond, now iconic). The costumes are period-accurate without feeling stuffy, and the score—a lilting, folk-inflected theme by Hagood Hardy—has become inseparable from the mental image of Anne racing through a wildflower meadow. The film’s greatest strength is its pacing across

★★★★½ (4.5/5) Recommended for: Fans of classic literature, period dramas, and anyone who has ever felt like an orphan in their own life. Harrison and his parrot is entirely gone)

Any review of this film must begin and end with Megan Follows. Casting Anne Shirley is a high-wire act: she must be irritating yet endearing, dramatic yet authentic, a chatterbox with a wounded core. Follows doesn’t just play Anne; she inhabits her. From the moment she delivers the famous line, “I’m in the depths of despair,” with a theatrical sigh that somehow feels utterly sincere, you are hers. She captures the novel’s central tension—Anne’s desperate need for love versus her fierce pride—with astonishing nuance. Watch her face during the raspberry cordial incident or the broken slate scene: you see the flicker from defiance to shame to resilience. It’s a performance of rare, radiant empathy.

In a world of gritty reboots and deconstructionist takes, the 1985 Anne of Green Gables remains defiantly, beautifully sincere. It is, as Anne would say, a “bundle of sunshine” — and it has never gone out of style.