1985 British romance film by James Ivory
A Room with a View is a 1985 British romance film directed by James Ivory and produced by Ismail Merchant. It is written by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, who adapted E. M. Forster's 1908 novel A Room with a View. Set in England and Italy, it is about a young woman named Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter) in the final throes of the restrictive and repressed culture of Edwardian England and her developing love for a free-spirited young man, George Emerson (Julian Sands). Maggie Smith, Denholm Elliott, Daniel Day-Lewis, Judi Dench and Simon Callow feature in supporting roles. The film closely follows the novel by the use of chapter titles to distinguish thematic segments.
A Room with a View received universal critical acclaim and was a box-office success. At the 59th Academy Awards it was nominated for eight Academy Awards (including Best Picture) and won three: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design. It also won five British Academy Film Awards and a Golden Globe. In 1999 the British Film Institute placed A Room with a View 73rd on its list of the top 100 British films.
Plot
In 1907 a young Englishwoman, Lucy Honeychurch, and her cousin and chaperone, Charlotte Bartlett, stay at the Pensione Bertolini while on holiday in Florence. They are disappointed their rooms lack a view of the River Arno as promised. At dinner they meet other English guests: the Reverend Mr Beebe; two elderly spinster sisters, the Misses Alan; romance author Eleanor Lavish; the freethinking Mr Emerson; and his quiet, handsome son George.
Learning about Charlotte and Lucy's disappointment at not having a view of the river, Mr Emerson and George offer to exchange rooms, though Charlotte considers the suggestion indelicate. Mr Beebe mediates and the switch is made. While touring the Piazza della Signoria the next day Lucy witnesses a local man being brutally stabbed and killed. She faints but George Emerson appears and comes to her aid. When Lucy has recovered the two have a brief but unchaperoned discussion before returning to the pensione.
Later Charlotte, Lucy and the Emersons join other British tourists for a day trip to the Fiesole countryside. On the way the carriage driver canoodles with his girlfriend sitting beside him, which upsets Reverend Eager. The girlfriend is asked to get off the carriage in the middle of the countryside to avoid further canoodling. Wishing to engage in gossip unsuitable for Lucy, Charlotte Bartlett and Miss Lavish encourage her to go for a walk and Lucy goes looking for Mr Beebe. The Italian driver, possibly misunderstanding Lucy's awkward Italian, instead leads her to where George Emerson is admiring the view from a hillside. Seeing Lucy across a poppy field, he suddenly embraces and passionately kisses her. Charlotte appears and intervenes. Worried that Lucy's mother will consider her an inadequate chaperone, Charlotte swears Lucy to secrecy and cuts their trip short.
Upon returning to Surrey in England Lucy says nothing to her mother about the incident and pretends to forget it. She is soon engaged to Cecil Vyse, a wealthy and socially prominent man who is cold, snobbish and pretentious. Cecil loves Lucy but he and his mother consider the Honeychurch family their social inferiors, which offends Mrs Honeychurch. Lucy soon learns that Mr Emerson is moving into Sir Harry Otway's rental cottage, with George visiting at weekends. Lucy intended the two Misses Alan to live there and is cross with Cecil on learning that through a chance meeting with the Emersons in London Cecil recommended the cottage to them. He proclaims his motive was to annoy Sir Harry, whom Cecil considers a snob; he assumes Harry will find the Emersons “too common".
George's presence upends Lucy's life and her suppressed feelings for him surface. Meanwhile Lucy's brother, Freddy, becomes friends with George. Freddy invites George to play tennis at Windy Corner, the Honeychurch home, during which Cecil mockingly reads aloud from Miss Lavish's latest novel set in Italy. Cecil, still reading, is oblivious when George passionately kisses Lucy in the garden. As Cecil continues reading aloud, Lucy recognizes a scene as being identical to her encounter with George in Fiesole. She confronts Charlotte, who admits to telling Miss Lavish about the kiss in the poppy field, who then used it in her story. Lucy orders George to leave Windy Corner and never return. He says that Cecil sees her only as a possession and will never love her for herself, as he would. Lucy seems unmoved but soon after ends her engagement to Cecil, saying they are incompatible. To escape the ensuing fallout she arranges to travel to Greece with the Misses Alan. George, unable to be around Lucy, arranges for his father to move to London, unaware that Lucy is no longer engaged. When Lucy calls at Mr Beebe's home to fetch Charlotte, she is confronted by Mr Emerson, who happens to be there. She finally realizes and admits her true feelings for George. At the end, newlyweds George and Lucy honeymoon at the Italian pensione where they met, in the room with a view, overlooking Florence's Duomo.
Cast
Background
E. M. Forster began to write A Room with a View during a trip to Italy in the winter of 1901–02 when he was twenty-two. It was the first novel he worked on; however, he put it away before returning to it a few years later. Forster finished first two other novels: Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905) and then The Longest Journey (1907). A Room with a View was finally published in 1908. Set in Italy and England, A Room with a View follows Lucy Honeychurch, a proper young Englishwoman who discovers passion while on a trip to Italy. At her return to the restrained culture of Edwardian-era England, she must choose between two opposite men: the free-thinking George Emerson and the repressed aesthete Cecil Vyse. The story is both a romance and a humorous critique of English society at the beginning of the 20th century. The novel, Forster's third, was very well received, better than his previous two, but it is considered lighter than his two best-regarded later works Howards End (1910) and A Passage to India (1924). In Forster's own appreciation "A Room with a View, may not be his best, but may very well be his nicest".[4]
In 1946, 20th Century Fox offered $25,000 for the film rights to A Room with a View, but Forster did not hold cinema in high regard and refused although the studio was willing to pay him even more.[5] Following Forster's death in 1970, the board of fellows of King's College, Cambridge, inherited the rights to his books.[6] However, Donald A Parry, chief executor, turned down all approaches. Ten years later, the film rights for Forster's novels became available when the film enthusiast Professor Bernard Williams became chief executor.[7]
The trustees of Forster's estate invited producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory to Cambridge to discuss filming Forster.[7]
Casting
The role of Lucy Honeychurch was Helena Bonham Carter's breakthrough as a film actress.[8] She was nineteen at the time and had just finished the art-house film Lady Jane (1986).[9] Ivory gave her the role as he found "she was very quick, very smart, and very beautiful".[8] She fitted Forster's description of Lucy as "a young lady with a quantity of dark hair and a very pretty, pale, undeveloped face" .
Rupert Everett auditioned for the role of Cecil Vyse. He would rather have played George Emerson, but Ivory thought that he was not quite right for it. It was Julian Sands who was cast as the male lead. Sands had gained notice as the British photographer in The Killing Fields (1984).[8]
Daniel Day-Lewis came to the attention of Ivory through his role in the play Another Country as the gay student Guy Bennet.[10] Given the choice of either George Emerson or Cecil Vyse, he took on the more challenging role of Cecil.[11]
The role of Freddy Honeychurch, Lucy's brother, went to Rupert Graves, in his film debut.[11] He had had a minor role as one of the schoolboys in the play Another Country.[11]
Simon Callow had been Ivory's original choice for the character of Harry Hamilton-Paul, the friend of the Nawab, in the Merchant Ivory film Heat and Dust, but had committed to a play in London's West End.[8] He had created the role of Mozart in the original London stage production of Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus (1979) and made his film debut in a small role in the film adaptation.[8] In A Room with a View, he was cast as the vicar Mr. Beebe.[12]
The supporting cast included veteran performers: Five years earlier, Maggie Smith had worked in another Merchant Ivory film, Quartet.[13] With a prominent theatre career, Judi Dench had made her film debut in 1964, but she took the supporting role of Eleanor Lavish. Dench and Ivory had disagreements during the filming of A Room with a View because, among other things, he suggested that she play her character as a Scot.[14]
Filming
The film was made on a budget of $3 million that included investment by Cinecom in the U.S, and from Goldcrest Films, The National Finance Corporation, and Curzon Film Distributors in Great Britain.[15] A Room with a View was shot extensively on location in Florence, where Merchant Ivory had the Piazza della Signoria cleared for filming.[16] Pensione Quisisana served as the Pensione Bertolini, also Vila Maiano in some interiors.[17] From its decoration of the walls they asked a painter to do a series of decorative artworks called grotesques that were used for titles between sections of the film, like chapter headings, following chapter titles in Forster's novel.[18]
Other scenes were filmed in London and around the town of Sevenoaks in Kent where they borrowed the Kent family estate of film critic John Pym for their country scenes. Lucy's engagement party was filmed in the grounds of Emmetts Garden.[19] Foxwold House near Chiddingstone was used for the Honeychurch house and an artificial pond was built in the forest of the property to use as the Sacred Lake. Two years later, the Great Storm of 1987 would tear through the area and destroy the gardens and almost 80 acres of the surrounding forest.[20] In London, the Linley Sambourne House in South Kensington was used for Cecil's house and the Estonian Legation on Queensway was used for the boarding house where the Miss Alans live.[21] In all, A Room with a View was shot in ten weeks: four in Italy and six in England.[22] The film includes a notable scene of full frontal male nudity in which George, Freddy, and Mr Beebe go skinnydipping in a pond.[23][24][25]
Reception
Critical reception
The film received positive reviews from critics, holding a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 35 reviews, with a weighted average of 8.40/10. The site's consensus reads: "The hard edges of E.M Forster’s novel may be sanded off, but what we get with A Room with a View is an eminently entertaining comedy with an intellectual approach to love".[26] According to Metacritic, which sampled the opinions of 21 critics and calculated a score of 83 out of 100, the film received "universal acclaim".[27] Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars, writing: "It is an intellectual film, but intellectual about emotions: It encourages us to think about how we feel, instead of simply acting on our feelings."[28] A Room With a View appeared on 61 critics' ten-best lists in 1986, making it one of the most acclaimed films of the year.[29]
Box office
The film made $4.4 million at the US box office in the first 12 weeks of release.[3] After six months on release, it returned a distributor’s gross of £2,026,304 in Britain. It made US $14 million from North America.[30] Goldcrest Films invested £460,000 in the film and earned £1,901,000 meaning they made a profit of £1,441,000.[31]
Accolades
