More than 100 years have passed since Louisa May Alcott’s autobiographical 1860s novel was first adapted for the screen.

There was a silent version in 1917, and there’s been another one just about every generation since.

With Katharine Hepburn, June Allyson and Winona Ryder among those breathing life into Alcott’s spirited alter ego, Jo March.

But it will be a brave filmmaker who has another go at it, now that we have writer-director Greta Gerwig’s supremely clever and enormously engaging adaptation.

A proper family treat for Christmas, this time with Saoirse Ronan as Jo, and Emma Watson, Florence Pugh and Eliza Scanlen playing her sisters Meg, Amy and Beth.

It is a quirk of the casting, by the way, that the four young women at the heart of this quintessentially American coming-of-age tale.

About a genteelly impoverished New England family during and shortly after the US Civil War, are played by two actresses from old England, one from Ireland and one from Australia. Another Brit, James Norton, pops up as John Brooke, the kind but hard-up tutor who marries Meg.

Still, North America is well enough represented, with Meryl Streep on fine form as wealthy, waspish spinster Aunt March, dropping her one-liners – ‘I may not always be right, but I’m never wrong’ – just as acidly, but with the same tiny hint that her heart might not be made entirely of stone, as Dame Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey.

Laura Dern, too, is pitch-perfect as the girls’ warm-hearted mother. For anyone who recoiled from her character’s bitchiness in TV drama Big Little Lies, or quailed before her cut-throat divorce lawyer in Marriage Story, it’s uplifting to see Dern playing such a paragon of goodness.

Little Women is by definition a feminine story, with men only in supporting roles, but Timothee Chalamet is exactly right as ‘Laurie’ Laurence, whose love for the March sisters, his dearest childhood friends, turns to romantic longing.

I seem alone in thinking him miscast as Henry V in the recent Netflix production The King, but he’s on much firmer ground here. Chris Cooper, Tracy Letts and Bob Odenkirk bring further touches of class, the latter two in little more than cameo parts.

So the performances are terrific across the board, and that includes Watson (who reportedly replaced Emma Stone). She’s a limited actress magicked by Hermione Granger’s wand into better roles than her talent deserves, but she’s perfectly lovely as Meg, the eldest sister.

But this is Gerwig’s show. She has ingeniously tinkered with the book’s simple chronology, daring to move its cherished Christmas Day opening and constantly whisking us forward and backward in time.

This helps us to understand how the sisters evolve as they do through the many episodes chronicling their deep love for one another, their personal desires, petty jealousies, occasional downright antagonism and solidarity in the face of illness and death.

The first time this happens, we are guided by a ‘seven years earlier’ caption. After that, we’re on our own, which feels like a nod of respect from the director for her audience. It’s artfully done. If the film does have a stand-out star, it’s Ronan, who glittered two years ago in Gerwig’s acclaimed directorial debut, Lady Bird. She’s just wonderful as fiercely independent and impulsive Jo, an aspiring novelist, whose ambitions and accomplishments as a writer very aptly book-end the film.

Without it ever feeling forced or anachronistic, there’s something unmistakably modern about her character. She’s an 1860s heroine exactly in tune with MeToo sensibilities. If this makes the film sound like a feminist tract, don’t be alarmed. It’s not.

What it is, is a joy from start to finish, a ravishingly-shot, exquisitely acted emotional rollercoaster that at times, I don’t mind admitting, didn’t just activate my tear ducts but had me gurning wildly to stop myself from blubbing audibly. Alongside me, my wife was going through similar contortions. Don’t say you haven’t been warned. 

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