A Room With A View DVD Review

4th Jun 2012

Included in a re-release of many of Film Four’s successes comes that classic of heritage cinema from Merchant-Ivory, A Room with a View on a special edition DVD with a typically lush screenplay by their long time collaborator Ruth Prawer Jhabvaler. The film opens with some beautifully designed opening credits played to an equally romantic and classy extract from Puccini letting the viewer know they are in for a treat of elegant class. This film became something of a benchmark for heritage cinema in the UK from the ill-fated Goldcrest Productions; what with its Edwardian setting, a cast that includes (a very young looking) Helena Bonham-Carter, Dame Maggie Smith, Dame Judi Dench, Rosemary Leach, Julian Sands, Simon Callow, Denholm Elliott and most impressively Daniel Day Lewis who at the time had a double hit at the cinema with this film and the more controversial My Beautiful Launderette also from Film Four. Merchant and Ivory and Jhabvala had already made their name in India before moving into heritage/costume dramas in the late 1970s. However, A Room with a View was on a bigger scale and set this sub-genre in a league of its own.

Based on a 1908 novel by E.M. Forster of the same name, the film opens in Florence with young Lucy Honeychurch vacationing there with her chaperone Aunt Charlotte (played by Dame Maggie) where they meet fellow English travelers including the mildly eccentric Emersons, a father and son taking in the grand tour. Other English folk at the hotel include an elderly couple, one of whom is an authoress and a rather liberal minded parson (Simon Callow).The aunt is trying to protect Lucy from the passions she witnesses which may erupt between the young Lucy and handsome George Emerson (Sands), what with her getting all stirred up by playing Beethoven. While touring the main piazza in Florence Lucy sees a bloody fight leading her to faint only to be saved by George. Later while the group is on a trip through the Tuscan countryside she finds herself in a passionate romantic kiss and embrace with George only to be broken up by her chaperone. Shocked at this, the pair eventually arrive back home in Surrey. Lucy returns to the bosom of her family where she is already engaged to be married with the quite repressed and bookish Cecil (Day-Lewis). She soon learns through a huge coincidence (these coincidences or fates are a trait of Forster and heritage cinema) that Cecil began talking to the Emerson’s in London and has rented a nearby cottage to them. Needless to say Lucy’s passions for George are once again stirred.

The dialogue is a little too mannered for our modern day sensibilities but the sumptuous look and images in the film are still appealing to the eye. The team (including Dame Maggie and Bonham-Carter) would go on to make the 1992 Howard’s End, which is in many ways a similar kind of film. Like many films of this type it is a genteel attack on the class system and English repression which is beautifully put across. There are many memorable scenes packed in this almost two hour film; perhaps the most memorable and beautiful are those in Florence and the Tuscan countryside, the Honeychurch’s very English tea on their Surrey lawn or the homo-erotic swim in the pond back in Surrey with George, Lucy’s brother (played by Rupert Graves) and Callow’s vicar none the less. The film is a real joy to watch visually and deserves to find a new audience but any new audience may be put off by the stilted dialogue. Always the interesting constant of these heritage films, however, are the class struggles, social mores and etiquette and this would be put to in an even greater test with Howard’s End, also adapted from a Forster novel. But here it is far more genteel and subtle – easy to lose sight of this behind the pristine production values and beauty of the film.

As with other films in this series the results are a little grainy but, available at a very good price it is also packed with plenty of extras including a commentary by James Ivory, Ismail Merchant and Simon Callow as well as some quirky extras such as articles and interviews for breakfast TV as they look at the film, a Film ’96 look at the career of Merchant-Ivory and a tribute to E.M. Forster. Definitely one to have in your collection as an eighties classic or buy as a present for your dear Mum.