Finally getting round to replying...
'
Jude the Obscure', haven't seen it myself but if the link takes you the the 6 part BBC series I found at IMDB, it's not as bad as you think, all 50 min chunks, so you don't really have to opt for the marathon sitting.
I do like classics but maybe not necessarily filmed in classical style or adaptations. Let me explain.
I saw 'Titus Andronicus' performed at the Barbican in London quite a few years back, great play, great actors but at the end of the day I found that the original text did leave me a little flabberghasted. Some years later I accidentally stumbled upon Julie Taymore's '
Titus', with Sir Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lange. I am unsure if you are going to like it but in my opinion it is the finest filmed adaptation of Shakespeare's play out there. It is packed with symbolism and the characters have great depth, though the visual aspects may take a little getting used to. Unfortunately, the trailer on IMDB isn't much good. 41 seconds inc. titlescreens and such don't leave much time to make a statement for a 160 minute movie. What makes matters worse is that you may have to watch it several times to a) get over the initial shock of the screenplay and b) take in all the aspects of its depth, yet as far as I am concerned, time well spent, though certainly not instant gratification. Try it, comes highly recommended.
When it comes to the classical adaptation you are most likely referring to, I tend to be a little wary. Too many of the movies or TV series focus on a very British problem, marketing of the nations history, which more often then not ends up portraying a lifestyle or social settings that are frequently so tainted with quaint depictions of a nation that as portrayed in films never existed. Dickens's '
Bleak House' just to name one and the worst obviously being the dross produced by the Bronte sisters. One more adaptation of '
Wuthering Heights' and I'm going to throw the TV out the window. LOL
So, classical literature adaptations are a bit of a mixed bag for me.
But there are other classics out there, maybe not as highly regarded but still.
Fritz Lang's '
Frau im Mond' (Girl in the Moon) of 1929, now there's one that I have enjoyed everytime I watched it. Same goes for his 1927 masterpiece '
Metropolis'. There are also a number of Russian movies that I like a lot. '
Aelita: Queen of Mars' by director Yakov Protazanov, actually predating the Fritz Lang movies by a few years I thought was quite a milestone for its time.
Sergej Eisenstein's '
Battleship Potemkim', allthough heavily tainted by political indoctrination of the time, is still one of the great works of art. The movie is available legally from archive.org here:
http://archive.org/details/BattleshipPotemkin
There are more, lots more in fact and a fair few of them are actually available on
www.archive.org, at least once the copyright has expired or the copyright holder made in publically available. That site is always a great source of legally downloadable material, just in case you are worried about that aspect.