A classic model for the virtuous rich

If it is true that there are only four stories, then Pride and Prejudice must be one of them. Poor but proud woman spurns and loves rich, humourless man. Women consistently vote for Pride and Prejudice as their favourite novel, ever. Mr Darcy remains the most romantic figure created, ever.
 
In recent years, this appeal of Mr Darcy has been put down to Colin Firth. The joke of Firth playing Mark Darcy in the Bridget Jones films in homage to his role as Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice managed to double his sex appeal.

In September, Working Title, the company that made the Bridget Jones films, will release a new version of Pride and Prejudice. Mr Darcy is played by Matthew Macfadyen. Working Title makes various claims for this film. First, it is not Merchant Ivory. The costumes look as if they are designed by Marni, the tempo is energetic rather than languid. Second, the film stars Keira Knightley (how could a film not?).

"So what did you think of Keira?" asked the producer after the screening. Doesn't the camera follow her face? Isn't she loveable, affecting, profound, flat-chested (my addition, forgive me, but there is only so much Keiramania a woman can take)?

What did I think of Elizabeth Bennet? That she is very, very lucky. Because she lands Darcy. I was not watching her but him.

If it is quirky to cast Knightley, a slouchy laddette who appears to be wearing Doc Martens beneath her empire dresses, as Elizabeth Bennet, then what of Macfadyen as Firth-slayer? Even his admirers must admit he has the head of the Mekon and the body of Wayne Rooney. There is nothing graceful about Macfadyen, but neither does his misshapen form have the magnetism of a Gérard Depardieu.

I do not know why he is so handsome, but he is entrancingly so. In this film, one falls in love with him at the same pace as Elizabeth does. That is to say in leaps and bounds, particularly once she has clocked that Darcy lives at Pemberley.

The scriptwriters say they have been faithful to Jane Austen; and the author's witty realism survives all but the last scene, in which Macfadyen, dressed as Adam Ant with his Minotaur physique filling the screen, kisses his new wife by flaming torchlight on the steps to the house. Part of Working Title's commercial genius is packaging Englishness for Americans. But the English audience I was part of rebelled at this.

Working Title is best known for romantic comedies. Indeed, these are the only films the English seem to know how to make. What is pleasing about Pride and Prejudice is that it does not try to mix the romance with the comedy. Nothing embarrassing happens to Darcy or Elizabeth. The misunderstandings are full of anguish.

When she tells him she likes to laugh, it is thrilling that Darcy regards her with incomprehension. The home life of the Bennets is full of gaiety and teasing. That is why it is hard for Mrs Bennet to get her daughters off her hands. The scene in which the excited girls hide behind the door reminded me of the first time the Olympic rower James Cracknell paid a visit to the Telegraph office. The female staff were hanging over walls and windows, giggling and blushing. Cracknell was quite unaware of it.

Dignity is perhaps the most important thing in a romantic hero, which is why Hugh Grant was always going to lose out to Firth. The greatest fantasy figures - Mr Rochester, Maxim de Winter, Heathcliff - are all grumpy.

They are also, I am afraid to say, men of means. Women can run off with the poor and light-hearted (and usually artistic) - as Dorothea Brooke did when she chose Will Ladislaw, but it was not really very satisfactory, was it? I am still suspicious when women describe their menfolk as "supportive". It usually means economically unsupportive, and they tumble down the romantic league table.

The fanning of Elizabeth Bennet's ardour as she walks around Pemberley is funny, but it is also romantically plausible. Keira's open lips swell all the more when she discovers that the cash is not all bound up in property and trusts. She tells her father, played by Donald Sutherland, how Darcy won her heart: it was the discovery that he had bailed out her sister. This is not a matter merely of kindness. It is about having the means to be kind.

Working Title is proud of its contemporary Elizabeth Bennet in Keira Knightley. No bodices and bonnets here. You would not be surprised to see Lizzy rolling a cigarette on the kitchen table. By contrast, Matthew Macfadyen is resolutely period, with a deep voice and breeches.

Yet the virtuous rich are a contemporary invention. I was brought up on the biblical warning about camels and needles. In the Eighties, no one's wealth could be discussed without the prefix "fat cat". Harry Enfield's loadsamoney was the symbol of the age.

It has been a characteristic of Brownism to be respectful of the rich and compassionate towards the very poor. Gordon Brown is strangely feudal for a socialist. The people who fail to interest him are all those in the middle. And, these days, the ladder is far more difficult to climb.

It was an electioneering cliché that the grandest urban houses had "Vote Labour" stickers. If you are part of an international business, or a pop star or a film producer, you will feel happy with Brown. An investment banker made the point to me that since the Bank of England became independent, the City has been pretty well immune to the effects of government - so it is happy to cosy up to the New Labour establishment.

The Brownite rich have it all. They have gracious houses, children at the best private schools, swanky holidays, good-looking wives and they run charities. Not that they are out shaking boxes for the lifeboat men on high-street corners. Localism is a Tory concept. New Labour charity is about continents.

You will see a lot of the virtuous rich over the next month with the Make Poverty History campaign. Working Title is full of the virtuous rich and Freud Associates are the VR of public relations. Price and Prejudice may turn out to be the VR film of the year. Darcy's time has come.

Sarah Sands's new novel, Hothouse, is published by Macmillan, price £6.99.

sarah.sands@telegraph.co.uk