A ROOM WITH A VIEW: Blu-ray (Merchant-Ivory, Goldcrest, BBC 1985) Criterion Home Video
There are
moments in the picture-making business capable of producing little jabs of
pleasure for which only the artistry of cinema is intimately acquainted. Two
that immediately come to mind derive from James Ivory’s richly absorbing A Room with a View (1985); the sight of
an almost orgasmic, George Emerson (Julian Sands), usually brooding, impetuous
– and sexually frustrated – toppling out
of an olive tree while declaring his creed (‘Beauty! Joy! Love!’) to the entire Arno Valley; the other, an
equally as ebullient George, in his less articulate, though no less potent,
declaration of virulent youth, prancing about Sacred Lake with his berries and
twig exposed. The former scene is preceded by a rhapsodic carriage ride through
the Florentine countryside, its untamed summer foliage lazily swaying against
the stifling noonday sun. George, as his father (Denholm Elliott) before him,
epitomizes this sultrily satisfying wild abandonment; an affront to the socially
repressed Edwardian upper crust noblesse oblige left behind in England. Yet, even upon
their return to Kent, George cannot entirely shed the life-altering experiences
of Florence; invested in a Neolithic testament to defy the modern British
gentleman, stripped bare and splashing about along with Freddie Honeychurch
(Rupert Graves) and clergyman, Mr. Beebe (Simon Callow). Alas, the revelers are
found out, much to the cultured, Lucy Honeychurch’s (Helena Bonham-Carter)
general amusement, but very much distasteful to her fiancée, the priggish, Cecil
Vyes’ (Daniel Day-Lewis). The Emersons are an anathema to Cecil and Charlotte
Bartlett (Maggie Smith); the crusty but benign Aunt, sent to Florence as
chaperone for the sexually repressed, but about to burgeon, Lucy.
A Room with a View is, of course, Merchant-Ivory’s
glowing tribute to E.M. Forster’s celebrated novel, the first of three
cinematic excursions exploring the English caste system to peel back universal
points of interest; young love, its surrender to lust, and, marital alliances
made out of time-honored propriety. Florence challenges and changes Lucy. It
also forces her Aunt Charlotte to question these rigid social etiquettes. Charlotte’s
muse is Miss Lavish (Judy Dench), the authoress of erotically charged romance
novels at a time when women are expected to maintain their equilibrium as
decorous appendages to their male counterparts. Withstanding, or even
questioning, the ridiculousness of these mores, dictating not only behavior,
but also the future prospects for proper young ladies of substance is frankly discouraged,
especially by the Reverend Mr. Eager (Patrick Godfrey), who cannot abide even a
Florentine coachman’s innocent amours in his presence.
A Room with a View is perhaps, Merchant-Ivory’s
most perfect ‘first’ bite at the Forsterian apple, what, with its heterogeneous
themes loosely dedicated to a sensual reawakening, by far Forster’s most
optimistic view of love, coupled with a highly humorous critique of the entrenched
beliefs destined to ruin a young girl, or at the very least, her chance at
happiness. All evidence to the contrary, as Charlotte – intent on hearing the
rest of Miss Lavish’s lurid tale about one such lass spoilt by her fiery
rendezvous with a foreigner – inadvertently encourages Lucy to go in search of
Mr. Beebe and the Emersons. Charlotte, of course, cannot fathom, at least
momentarily, how she will have set these fates to conspire anew in a most
ardent, but ultimately failed flagrante delicto between Lucy and George. It
seems only the sight of Lucy can divert George from his preposterous
questioning of the ‘everlasting why’ amidst a field of waist-high grain,
majestically swaying in the breeze; Lucy, in her virginal white bonnet and floor-length
gown, stirring primal urges from within that manifest in an assault on her
person with a barrage of fanatical caresses; placing his lips full upon hers.
Later, Lucy will coax her betrothed, Cecil Vyes to pursue a similar path to her
heart near Sacred Lake. Yet, her expectations, already satisfied by George, are
cruelly denied when Cecil politely asks for the kiss, then fumbles this already
dwindled eroticism by allowing his pince-nez to get in the way.
Lucy is mildly
amused by Cecil’s awkwardness, though increasingly she comes to regard it as an
offense to her brief ardor with George. This, she repeatedly denies, lying to
everyone, though chiefly to herself about the importance of the physical in a
relationship, particularly in a time and culture where, presumably, more
cerebral thoughts are meant to dominate and dictate the future. Forster’s contrast between these dynamic and
static characters reveals his own dissatisfaction with the artifice of polite
society. Published in 1908, A Room with
a View so obviously chafes against England’s conservative present and medieval
past, Forster adopting a proto-renaissance world view that tugs at the yoke of
England’s already decaying morality. Despite her initial misgivings, Lucy
Honeychurch will yield to the present, discarding the past, and pointing the
way to the future; becoming the personification of this new, if as yet
impressionable generation of young women, buoyed by a burgeoning self-awareness
that stands apart from centuries of patriarchal antiquity. Manifesting a desire
to rid England of its straight-jacketed ethics, Forster concludes A Room with a View by having Lucy
choose for herself. She picks George, at intervals, lying to Cecil, Aunt
Charlotte, her own mother (Rosemary Leach) and even, Mr. Beebe (arguably, the
most tolerant of the progressives), to procure and perpetuate this scrap of
satisfaction.
As with the
novel, the cinematic incarnation of A
Room with a View is inspired by contrasts; faithfully adhered to by
screenwriter, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, and, more concretely visualized in Brian
Ackland-Snow/Gianni Quaranta’s production design, majestically photographed by
cinematographer, Tony Pierce-Roberts. “As
is always the case with pictures of quality,” producer, Ismail Merchant
would later muse, “It was difficult to
get funding for such a project”, the backers, cajoled, manipulated and/or
coaxed from their initial apprehensions by Merchant’s own luxuriating self-confidence;
also his ability to make promises to maintain an impeccable level of artistic
integrity, hard-pressed to discover elsewhere in the film-making business. As a
youth, director, James Ivory had come very near to crossing paths with Forster;
his elation turned to nervous anticipation, and finally relegated to the dust
bins of disappointment when, at the very last moment, Forster’s failing health
forced a cancellation of their prearranged luncheon appointment. “I was relieved in a way,” Ivory would
later admit, “What would I have said to
him…really, what could I have added?”
A Room with a View is undeniably the recipient of
both Merchant and Ivory’s absolute devotion to Forster’s novel – not, slavishly
so, however, as no novel enriched by such lofty ideals can ever faithfully be
brought to the screen unaltered and/or unscathed by the concreteness of its
visual design. Yet, Merchant’s zest for robust elegance and Ivory’s subtle
approach to both the humor and pathos of the piece have yielded an immaculate
incarnation of both the novel and the period, extoling both its strengths and
its vices. Pre-production on A Room with
A View began with scouting locations; finding most, though not all of the
requirements to satisfy amidst the rustic and sunbaked villas of Italy, and
later, the cultured gardens of Foxwold, a large, many-gabled house built in
1883 for the London solicitor, Horace Pym. If nothing else, A Room with a View would already be a
living testament to Foxwold in all its glory; the estate decimated by a hurricane
in 1991 and stripped clean of the heavily forested hundred-year-old trees. Sacred
Lake, man-made for the movie, has not since survived the years either; its
uneven basin punctured by the storm, drained and lying dormant as an ‘elephant
graveyard’ of uprooted tree stumps. “We
had been promised the water would be heated,” Simon Callow would later
recall, “And indeed, a pump and heater
had been brought in. But when we dove in, the shock of those decidedly
Icelandic currents was enough to startle even the bravest of free spirits. We
didn’t playfully hop about to play the scene. We leapt in a frantic succession
of volleys to distract ourselves from the extreme cold.”
A Room with a View is a veritable feast and a celebration
of contrasting imagery; the stark and shadowy, tightly woven, stone-lined
streets of Florence, occasionally giving way to sunlit expansive courtyards in
the Piazza della Signoria or cavernous interiors of the church of Santa Croce.
These monuments to the Renaissance are pitted against the stately, yet more
reserved English Tudor landscapes; stuffy drawing rooms, cluttered in Edwardian
bric-a-brac, festooned with heavy drapes to blot out the already anemic sun.
Italy becomes the burgeoning wonderland where all sexual repressions are
exiled. But it is also an inferno where jealousy between swarthy male suitors
transgresses quite unexpectedly from passion into murder. Lucy’s introduction
to this exhilaratingly unpredictable furnace of humanity is both cruel yet
defining. Before Florence, Lucy might have found a reasonable facsimile of definable
contentment with Cecil, if only he knew exactly where to place his awkward
hands. After Florence, Cecil’s mawkish and preening contempt for those he
considers as underlings has no place in which to warm, or even stir Lucy’s
heart. Hence, Lucy’s arrival in England after George’s unanswered kiss in the
fields does not equate to a return to her former self, only a growing dissatisfaction
with the demure woman she once believed herself to be, but now finds quite
unsuitable to settle for anything less than raw passion in her life.
In the novel, Forster
makes much of discussing the difference between ‘rooms’ and ‘views’; the former,
symbolic of the cloistered and conservative, the latter, denoting a more
liberated cast of social misfits. The Emersons are, in fact, unlike most any
other family the Honeychurches have known, except, perhaps the Honeychurches themselves.
George’s free-spiritedness even hints at one-sided homoeroticism for Lucy’s
brother, Freddie, the uninhibited instigator of their nude bathing at Sacred
Lake. Luring Mr. Beebe into their playtime adds a false air of overt masculine
‘respectability’ to their impetuousness, as Beebe, with or without his clothes
on, undeniably remains the saintly cleric, if only momentarily chagrined in his
compunction to partake in their adolescent dalliance. And yet, there is a
distinct androgyny to George’s good nature, simply inferred by Julian Sands’
sly-eyed performance, a more insinuate pleasure. Even when George grips and
gropes Lucy with impromptu familiarity – first, in Florence, then again at her
familial home, Windy Corners – even then, his expressive ardor is more dictated
by the primal urge all healthy young men arguably feel, and even more
remarkably, bravely – stupidly ambitious – in all its defiance to be expressed
just a few feet away from where, at any moment, George might easily be
discovered by Cecil, Aunt Charlotte or even Mrs. Honeychurch.
After a
magnificent main title, set to opera diva, Kiri Te Kanawa’s rendition of
‘O mio babbino
caro’ – heard several times elsewhere – the movie begins with the first of
eight titles cards designed by artist, Chris Allies and based on actual frescoes
and artwork in Florence. Each introduces us to a pivotal chapter in the lives
of our protagonists. Although several reviewers at the time were quick to
criticize Merchant-Ivory for these inserts, suggesting they took viewers out of
the story, the title cards actually pays homage to chapter headings in
Forster’s novel and are employed in the film more for concision than
demarcation, skillfully advancing the narrative timeline. At the start, we meet
Lucy Honeychurch, a lissome girl on holiday from Surrey with her much older
Aunt Charlotte Bartlett as her chaperone. Charlotte is conventionally ‘English’;
or, that is to say, incredibly rigid and incapable of relating to others more
passionate than she. Her greatest weapon against the changing social mores of
the early 20th century is her manipulative good nature, seemingly
accommodating, but in fact, highly purposeful in employing a modicum of guilt
to get others to see things her way.
Because the
Honeychurches are more laissez faire in their world view than most, Lucy has
fewer inhibitions than Charlotte and mildly detests her Aunt’s frequent
interventions in their plans and burgeoning friendships. The ladies register at
a small pensione where they have been promised ‘a room with a view’.
Regrettably, their windows overlook a cluttered byway of red roofs and clothes
lines. Lucy is pleasantly surprised to see the Reverend Beebe, who is also on
holiday and staying at their pensione. At dinner, Charlotte and Lucy meet the
two Miss Alans, Catherine (Fabia Drake) and Teresa (Joan Henley); spinsters
who, interestingly, lack Charlotte’s stiff moral backbone and are more
receptive to the pleasures that surround. Also at table are the author, Miss
Eleanor Lavish and the nonconformists, Mr. Emerson and his fine-looking,
philosophical son, George. Charlotte is mildly appalled by Mr. Emerson’s gregarious
nature; the elder offering Charlotte and Lucy the rooms they currently occupy,
precisely because they do come with a breath-taking view of the city. The
Emersons are indicative of a new forward-thinking principle, most eager to
abandon the middle-class prudery associated with the Victorian age. This
concept is foreign to Lucy, at first. But it remains utterly abhorrent to
Charlotte who views the Emersons’ progressive mantras as the epitome of uncouth
behavior, most unbecoming of English gentlemen.
Lucy is most
enthusiastic to explore the city without Charlotte’s influence. While playing
the piano in the parlor, Lucy is confronted by Mr. Emerson who hints that she
might take an interest in George. “If
Miss Honeychurch ever takes to live as she plays,” Rev. Beebe speculates, “…it will be very exciting – both for us and
for her.” Later, as Lucy visits the church of Santa Croce, she again
encounters Mr. Emerson who, more directly, suggests George desperately needs a
good woman to free his mind from its melancholia. Lucy is mildly put off by Mr.
Emerson’s obvious match-making. But later, she is mildly amused when George,
who is assailed by the same impertinent ‘guide’ (Mirio Guidelli) she could
barely rid herself of only after many protestations, suddenly drops to his
knees, professing to be deep in prayer; a simple solution that discourages the
guide from continuing his boorish inquiries. Leaving church, Lucy ventures into
the Piazza della Signoria, entranced by its sexually suggestive statuary.
There, she witnesses a confrontation between two male suitors, obviously
fighting for the affections of a peasant girl. When one of the men (Luigi di
Fiori) is stabbed to death before her very eyes, the resultant chaos and sight
of his spilt blood causes Lucy to faint. She is spared the embarrassment of a complete
collapse by George, who gallantly carries her to relative safety. She is
grateful, but, remembering Mr. Emerson’s imposition, eager to get away from
George at the earliest possible convenience. George calls her bluff, however,
and Lucy is momentarily shamed for thinking less of him because of what his
father has said. The two share an afternoon stroll and get to know one another
better. Lucy finds George attractive, only now for much more than just his
physical attributes.
Meanwhile,
Charlotte and Miss Lavish fast form a bond, mostly predicated on Charlotte’s
repressed fascination with this epicurean’s profession as an author of sensual
romance novels; also, eager to glean even more shocking gossip from her
traveling companion while they go on a walking tour. The Rev. Eager arranges for
a carriage ride through the Tuscan countryside; Lucy, Charlotte, Miss Lavish,
Mr. Beebe, and, the Emersons partaking in the journey to a remote villa.
However, the button-downed Eager is frankly appalled by the coachman’s (Peter
Munt) amorous affections toward his traveling companion, a comely peasant girl
(Isabella Celani), whom he makes the coachman abandon on the side of the road.
At the villa, the group separates; George, his father and Mr. Beebe wandering
off towards an olive grove where an ecstatic George climbs a tree and shouts
his creed into the heavens, before losing his footing and tumbling to the
ground. Meanwhile, Charlotte, Lucy and Miss Lavish take a picnic lunch in the
clearing near the forest. When Miss Lavish pauses in telling her explicit tale
of a young girl fallen from grace, Charlotte employs her wily charm to shoo the
Lucy away, suggesting she go in search of the others. Lucy is no fool, but
obliges Charlotte, making her inquiries to the coachman. In turn, either
intentionally or ‘un’, the coachman takes Lucy to George, who is brooding in a
field of waist-high grain; her sudden appearance causing him to launch into an
unanticipated, and rather aggressive seduction, thwarted at the last possible
moment by Charlotte, who has come in search of her charge.
Believing
Lucy’s mother will blame her for allowing the ‘incident’ to occur, as a kiss
from any young man is usually a prelude to a proposal of marriage, in order to
preserve the young lady’s reputation, Charlotte uses guilt to swear Lucy into
silence. However, a short while later, an account of their moment together
winds up in Miss Lavish’s latest romance novel, clearly illustrating that while
Lucy has kept her promise to Charlotte, Charlotte has had absolutely no
compunction about gossiping it away to Miss Lavish. Although the names have
been changed, Lucy clearly recognizes the event in Miss Lavish’s novel as her
own story. But by now, she has accepted a proposal of marriage from Cecil Vyes;
a man of excellent breeding, but alas, possessing no spark of romantic
chemistry with which to woo a fine young girl like Lucy. She finds Cecil’s lack
of amorous experience somewhat charming – at first. He cannot even kiss her
properly without fumbling his pince-nez. But gradually, Cecil begins to reveal
himself as a terrible prig; opinionated and devious - even going over Lucy’s
head after she has already written to the Miss Allens of an available vacancy in
town, encouraging the Emersons to let the house instead. Worse, Lucy’s brother,
Freddie, has decided to befriend George; inviting him to bathe at Sacred Lake –
a secluded spot off the beaten path. The pair is accompanied by Mr. Beebe; all
three electing to strip bare and partake in a liberating splash. Unhappy
circumstance, Cecil has decided to take Mrs. Honeychurch and Lucy for a stroll
into the forest; the trio coming upon George, Freddie and Mr. Beebe in all
their stark nakedness.
Once again thrust
in close proximity with the man she so evidently finds the more desirable, Lucy
embarks upon a series of lies to discourage George’s advances and keep Cecil’s
suspicions at bay. However, she is unsuccessful at remaining clear-headed about
George. At Freddie’s behest, George becomes a frequent guest to their Tudor
home, thus creating even more sexual friction Lucy finds increasingly
intolerable. As George has wisely deduced he cannot go on merely pretending to
be Lucy’s friend, when he desires so much more, and has as shrewdly deduced she
imparts similar affections towards him, he eventually confronts Lucy in the
presence of her mother, plainly stating his position. “Cecil is the sort who can't know anyone intimately, least of all a
woman. He doesn't know what a woman is. He wants you for a possession,
something to look at, like a painting or an ivory box. Something to own and to
display. He doesn't want you to be real, and to think and to live. He doesn't
love you. But I love you. I want you to have your own thoughts and ideas and
feelings, even when I hold you in my arms.”
Lucy breaks
off her engagement to Cecil. But she also refuses George, instead making plans
to rejoin the Miss Allans in Athens. Determined to seek out his own peace of
mind, George also makes plans to go abroad. As the Emersons begin to pack up
their house, Lucy makes a stopover at Mr. Beebe’s. She is surprised to discover
Mr. Emerson there, ailing from an undisclosed malady. He implores Lucy to
reconsider her journey. She is leaving England, not because her engagement to
Cecil is at an end, but to mask and hopefully forget her truer feelings for
George. Mr. Emerson will not allow her to run away without pleading his son’s
case and Lucy, tearful and repentant, suddenly realizes she cannot set aside
her feelings for George any longer. She loves him – desperately, deeply and,
for the first time, much more than even she had anticipated possible. Racing to
her mother’s carriage outside, Lucy confesses the truth. We dissolve to a scene
in which Charlotte reads a letter from Lucy in Florence; she and George,
staying at the same pensione as marrieds on their honeymoon, encountering the
same ‘types’ of English tourists seated around the dinner table. The movie ends
with Lucy and George locked in a passionate embrace, their love for one another
obscuring their room with a view, overlooking the Belvedere.
A Room with a View is an exquisitely lush and romantic
movie, as fragrant as a cask of fresh wine sampled off the Tuscan vineyards and
as satisfying as that delicious stimulant imbued with Forsterian principles; a vivid
and deepening showcase for the pitfalls and paths to true love, despite the
many roadblocks that persist. The cast is superb, particularly Helena
Bonham-Carter as the burgeoning ingénue. At only the age of 19, Bonham-Carter
reveals a startling articulateness, perfectly in keeping with her character. We
can sense the wheels of Lucy’s mind at work behind those oddly expressive eyes,
at once capable of piercing, as daggers, the balloons of hypocrisy or with
equal dollops of tenderness, beckoning a lover into her embrace. There is a
profound self-awareness to the actress that spills over into her
characterization. Alas, in the pivotal moment in which Mr. Emerson makes his
final plea for Lucy to love his son, Bonham-Carter was incapable of tears – at first;
Ismail Merchant later recalling how it took more than a few takes and some
preparation to get the actress into the mood. In hindsight, Lucy is the key to A Room with a View’s believability. A
lesser actress and the film simply falls apart, lost in a closeted array of
mores and manners but without a genuine soul to guide the audience through this
caste system.
Julian Sands
and Daniel Day-Lewis, both appearing for the first time on celluloid, are
superb romantic foils for our Lucy Honeychurch; the former, making up for his
apparent lack of social graces with a defiant and volatile sexuality; the
latter, seemingly incapable of even quantifying – much less, expressing – any
concept of desire beyond the evidence gleaned from Miss Lavish’s latest novel,
thereafter pompously dismissed and later, condemned as unsatisfactory tripe. Interestingly,
and upon going deeper than mere surface appeal, neither fellow is ideally the
man for Lucy, though E.M. Forster, and indeed, Merchant and Ivory’s compasses
are pointed in their preference toward George Emerson over Cecil Vyes. And yet,
Lucy is, apart from her own stubborn will (which is considerable) and mind
(equally as prepossessing), a lady of quality. George introduces her to passion
– ergo, sex. But will this earthy pursuit alone be enough to satisfy once Lucy’s
realm of experiences in the amorous arts has been sufficiently broadened? Can a
life together truly be built upon such a shaky and ephemeral foundation? Fair enough,
Forster’s novel – as the movie – is disinterested with what happens next in
Miss Honeychurch’s evolution into a woman. But the question mark remains, as
critical as George’s ‘everlasting why?’ even as we fade out on George and Lucy
locked in each other’s arms.
Virtually all
of the actors appearing in A Room with a
View would go on to have very lucrative movie careers afterward, a testament
to Merchant-Ivory’s prowess in expertly casting their production with rising
talent destined to make a splash. Viewed today, A Room with a View is somewhat eclipsed by the later studio product
from this ‘little independent that could’;
Howards End (1992), The Remains of the Day (1993) and the,
as yet, inexplicably MIA on home video, Maurice
(1987) – a shockingly progressive study in homosexual love, doomed to implode
under the rigid social conventions of the times. Indeed, the novel, Maurice, written by Forster in 1914 was
considered so salacious it was suppressed from publication until after the
author’s death in 1970. It seems kismet has also denied the movie version its’
place of recognition. Given Criterion Home Video’s penchant for revisiting Howards End in hi-def and now, its
reissue of A Room with a View
(previously made available in a deplorably lacking 1080i transfer from BBC Home
Video), one can perhaps, or at least, sincerely hope Maurice too will resurface on home video and be recognized as a
work of fine-wrought movie art.
For now, we
turn our attentions to A Room with a
View from Criterion; a very impressive 4K remaster, utilizing every
available bit of space on this Blu-ray disc to bring forth cinematographer,
Tony Pierce-Roberts’ subtly nuanced visuals with a vibrancy and clarity as yet
unseen. I had sincerely forgotten the gorgeousness of this movie; having only
seen A Room with a View theatrically
once and long ago. Prepare to be amazed by this disc’s color density. Likewise,
contrast is bang on, the image sufficiently scrubbed of its age-related
anomalies, while preserving the original patina of grain essential to creating
a very film-like home viewing presentation. Fine detail is startling in hair,
flesh and fabrics, particularly in close-up. It’s as though the television
screen suddenly becomes a window into this other world of beautiful, joy and
love. Better still is this Blu-ray’s DTS-HD 2.0 stereo, subtly improved and
positively glowing with the strains of Richard Robbins underscore – also, the
classic arias interpolated throughout.
Last, but not
least, there are the extras to reconsider and cherish. Criterion gives us two
new documentaries produced by them; the 22 min. Thought and Passion with
recollections from James Ivory and Tony Pierce-Roberts, also costume-designer,
John Bright; the second, The Eternal Yes with Helena Bonham
Carter, Simon Callow, and Julian Sands, running just a little over a half hour.
We lose the audio commentary from Ismail Merchant, James Ivory and Simon Callow
that accompanied the European release of A
Room with a View, presumably due to a rights issue; also, absent are the
BBC interviews with Daniel Day-Lewis and Simon Callow, although these were
heavily truncated on the BBC Blu-ray as well. But Criterion has retained the
all too brief and superfluous ‘news’ story covering the film’s American success,
first broadcast in 1987 on NBC Nightly News. Finally, we get the original
theatrical trailer and an essay by movie critic, John Pymh. Bottom line: a must
have! Very highly recommended!
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)
5
VIDEO/AUDIO
5
EXTRAS
3
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