Merchant, Ivory, and Forster

There was a time in the late eighties and early nineties when the names Merchant Ivory meant something, albeit different things to different people. Producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory (and frequently writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala) teamed to make immaculate, tasteful art films, usually adapted from classic fiction. To some, myself included, these films are brilliantly rendered, from the acting to the photography to the seamless scripts. To others, often a kind of reverse snob, they are examples of a high falutin' kind of drawing room aesthetic. They contain no shootings, no explosions, and are full of period sets and costumes and characters having tea.

The best of the Merchant Ivory films are the two adaptations of E. M. Forster novels, A Room With a View in 1986 and Howards End in 1992 (they also adapted Forster's novel Maurice, but I found that film not nearly as interesting as the other two). Howards End was my favorite film of that year, even over Unforgiven, and A Room With a View was a pure joy when I saw it way back when. I watched both films again this week for the first time since seeing them in theaters, and neither has lost their lustre.

Seeing them again got me thinking--has their been any other novelist who has so been well-served by movies than E.M. Forster? Considering these two films along with David Lean's A Passage to India (my favorite film of 1984) creates a trio that is hard to beat. Maurice is not a bad film by any means. I haven't seen Where Angels Fear to Tread, but I have it in my Netflix queue. I'd love to hear more possibilities. Perhaps Raymond Chandler, who has two fine adaptations of Farewell, My Lovely; The Big Sleep; and The Long Goodbye. It's an interesting question.

Both films are set in Edwardian England. A Room With a View is much more light-hearted, but both concern the fragile British class system. In Room, Helena Bonham Carter stars as Lucy Honeychurch, a young girl on holiday in Florence, escorted by her overbearing cousin, Maggie Smith. They are dismayed when their pensione rooms do not have views, but a father and son (Denholm Elliot and Julian Sands) offer to exchange theirs. Smith is scandalized, but Carter, with the help of a vicar (Simon Callow) sees that they are only being kind and the switch is made.

Carter is engaged to Cecil Vyse, hilariously played by Daniel Day-Lewis, an insufferable prig of a man. But she is drawn to Sands, who impulsively kisses her in an Italian meadow. Carter is a very proper young English rose, but when she plays Beethoven on the piano she allows herself to let in all hang out. Eventually, of course, she follows her heart and ends up with the right man.

This film is delightfully droll, with title-cards that earn laugh lines and the perfect acting styles by the company. While Smith and Day-Lewis hammer home the inane rules of society, Elliott, Sands and Judi Dench as a female novelist supply the increased emotion of Bohemia. There is a requirement of keen suspension of disbelief, as there are two whopping coincidences, but they are easily forgiven.

Howards End is far darker an examination of class differences. We see three different strata: The Wilcoxes (Anthony Hopkins and Vanessa Redgrave), who are upper-crust; the Schlegel sisters (Carter and Emma Thompson), who are middle-class, and Leonard Bast (Samuel West), a lowly clerk. These three levels will intermingle with tragic results, all stemming from Carter accidentally taking West's umbrella after a music lecture.

This film is so intricate, so magnificently constructed, that it's almost breathtaking to behold. The core is Thompson's performance, which deservedly won an Oscar. She is the linchpin between all three families. She befriends Redgrave, who is sickly and values almost above all else her ancestral country home, called Howards End. On her deathbed she writes a note to Hopkins that she wishes Thompson to have the house, but he and his children decide that Redgrave was not in her right mind and throws the note into the fire. Circumstances, however, come full circle when Hopkins and Thompson marry.

Meanwhile, Carter and Thompson try to help their new friend West. Hopkins makes an off-hand remark about the insurance company where West works, and the sisters tell him he should find another position. He does, a lower paying one, and then he loses that. Feeling guilty, Carter tries to help him, embarking upon some sort of crusade. She is told by Hopkins, though, not to feel sentimental about the poor.

There are some soap-opera-ish turns, especially a coincidence involving Hopkins previously being the lover of West's wife, and the story takes a nasty turn. In the end, though, through the level-headedness of Thompson, things are restored to something of an equilibrium, and she ends up with the house that Redgrave wanted her to have all along.

The title of this film, as well as the book, is quite fitting (and unfortunately sounds like a gay porno film). The house is the central theme, and it stands a metaphor for an England that really no longer exists, even as of the first decade of the twentieth century. Redgrave loves the house, knows every bit of the land (even about pig's teeth inserted into a chestnut tree) while Hopkins and his children don't really care about it. They care enough about it not to want it seen outside the family, though. They don't want to live in it, but they don't want the riff-raff to have it, and Hopkins is adamant in denying Thompson's request that a pregnant, unmarried woman stay the night there.

Merchant and Ivory continued to make films, mostly period films, and aside from Remains of the Day in 1994 never really reached this level. Merchant died in 2005, but Ivory, in his 80s, still directs.