In ``Jane Eyre'' can be found all of the elements of the modernGothic romance novel, which fills paperback racks with countless versions of thesame story. The covers give the game away: In the foreground, a wide- eyedheroine, hair flying, bodice torn, flees from a forbidding Gothic manor. In themanor, a light shines in one window, high in a tower. In the background, a dark,sinister man glowers enigmatically. Additional elements, such as horses,children, dogs, governesses, willow trees and tombstones, are optional. What made ``Jane Eyre'' work so well as a novel by Charlotte Bronte,and in three previous film versions, is the classic purity of the two centralcharacters. Jane (played here by Charlotte Gainsbourg) is plain, severe anddressed in somber clothes, an unwanted orphan whose unhappy days at boardingschool have been followed by employment at the forbidding Thornfield Hall. AndMr. Rochester (William Hurt), the master of the hall, is tall, dark, handsome,glowering, deep-voiced and enigmatic. These two anchors--the uncertain younggirl and the distant, potentially threatening older man--can be found in almostevery Gothic story, and it doesn't take a Freud to plunder the subtext. The new ``Jane Eyre'' has been directed and co-written by FrancoZeffirelli, the Italian director of films and opera who is drawn to Englishliterature; he made the Taylor-Burton ``Taming of the Shrew'' in 1967, a classic``Romeo and Juliet'' in 1968, and Mel Gibson's 1990 ``Hamlet.'' The first twoof those films were bursting with life and color, but ``Hamlet'' had a gloomier,damper texture, and with ``Jane Eyre,'' Zeffirelli has banished brightness andcreated a cold, gray world where, as the dialogue has it, ``The shadows are asimportant as the light.'' This is the right approach. Jane Eyre's world must seem an ominousand forbidding place, charged with implied sexuality. In a sense, Jane'senvironment is sexuality--which surrounds her, misunderstood and unacknowledged.

The movie creates the right visual atmosphere, of deep shadows and gloomyinteriors; the cinematographer, David Watkin, who also shot Zeffirelli's``Hamlet,'' makes Thornfield Hall into a place where Jane's bedchamber is sunnyand bright, but the spaces controlled by Rochester are ominous. As played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, Jane's wide mouth and deep-seteyes make her look in the mirror with despair. After her unhappy childhood andadolescence, she has come to Thornfield to teach a young girl who is Rochester'sward, and she is a prim, dark figure in the background at his fancy-dress balls.

As Blanche (Elle Macpherson), Rochester's snobby blond fiancee, observes, ``Youcan always tell a governess at first glance. They're plain--in a very specialway.'' For Jane Eyre, Thornfield is a happy place, despite Rochester'senigmatic comings and goings. As a young orphan (played by Anna Paquin, theOscar winner from ``The Piano''), Jane was hated by her aunt (``I have done whatI could for the girl, but she has a willful, obstinate nature'') and sent to astrict, cruel school. But there her spirit is not broken. When the headmasterlabels her a liar and asks if she knows how to avoid going to hell, she replies:``Keep well and not die, sir.'' At Thornfield Hall, the household is ruled by the kindly Mrs.

Fairfax (Joan Plowright), and Jane's duty is to be governess for Adele Varens(Josephine Serre), whose relationship to Rochester is unexplained. There isanother employee at the hall, Grace Poole (Billie Whitelaw), whose duties aremysterious but are perhaps connected to the disturbing screams that aresometimes heard in the middle of the night, from a locked room in a far wing. The key to the story is Jane's romantic attraction to Rochester--whom shefears to approach. Does he like her? Dislike her? Notice her? Rochester, sooften away, does not explain himself. (One of his rare sallies: ``You are notnaturally austere any more than I am naturally vicious.'') But one night whenJane saves him from a mysterious fire and is soaked in the process, he gives herhis cloak to wrap herself in, and as she pulls it around herself, they bothrealize a divide has been crossed. What I liked about this version is that Zeffirelli is true to thecharacters. Rochester never really melts, and Jane Eyre is spared the obligatoryglamor shot when she takes her hair down and we realize she was really beautifulall along (as when Joan Fontaine starred in the 1944 version, opposite OrsonWelles' Rochester). This is a romance between two troubled, wounded people, andby playing it that way Zeffirelli makes it touching, when it could have beenrecycled Gothic Lite. Note: Jean Rhys wrote a novel called Wide Sargasso Sea that dealtwith Rochester's life in Jamaica, and the first Mrs. Rochester. In 1993 it wasmade into a good film, erotic and atmospheric, by John Duigan.