The Rambling Writer’s Valentine: “A Room with a View” Film
The perfect viewing for Valentine’s Day is the Merchant Ivory production of “A Room with a View”
If you haven’t seen this absolutely wonderful romantic comedy set at the end of the Edwardian era in England and Italy, stop reading right now and watch it for Valentine’s Day! (There are spoilers coming here.)
I was living on various Caribbean islands, sometimes without electricity or running water, in the mid 1980s when this film version of the E. M. Forster novel came out (1985), so I managed to miss it. Shortly after Thor and I got together in 2007, he was aghast that I hadn’t seen this one of his favorite movies, so we watched it for our first Valentine’s Day together. It’s now one of those special few that we’ve watched many times, and it never fails to delight.
The casting is inspired: Helena Bonham Carter perfect as pouting ingenue Lucy Honeychurch (her breakout role at only 18 years old), Daniel Day-Lewis brilliant as pretentious Cecil Vyse, Maggie Smith fussily prim and martyred as chaperone Charlotte Bartlett, Julian Sands romantically impetuous as George Emerson, Denholm Elliot lovably eccentric as his father the “free thinker” Mr. Emerson, Judi Dench as bossy romance novelist Eleanor Lavish, and Simon Callow tongue-in-cheek as the amiable Reverend Mr. Beebe. The minor characters, as well, ably flesh out the charming ensemble. Those Brits do know how to act!
The plot follows the novel fairly well, though of course condensed and concentrated to good gently-comic effect, with a lighter touch to the social satire of the original. It opens with young Lucy Honeychurch and her aging chaperone Charlotte Bartlett in Florence, Italy, disappointed that their promised “rooms with a view of the Arno” did not materialize. Instead, their windows open onto a bad-smelling alley. In the pensione dining room, the earnest but rough-mannered Mr. Emerson offers to swap his and his son’s rooms that have views, since “men don’t care about a view.” He then pokes himself with his fork in the region of his heart and proclaims, “Here is where the bird sings. Here is where the sky is blue.” Charlotte is deeply offended by the presumption of this stranger, and the others dismiss him as a “free thinker,” but Lucy is intrigued by him and his silent son, who shows her his dinner plate holding peas he has shaped into a question mark.
Mr. Beebe intercedes and persuades the ladies to accept the room changes. In the novel, Lucy wakes up the next day:
“It was pleasant to wake up in Florence, to open the eyes upon a bright bare room, with a floor of red tiles which look clean though they are not; with a painted ceiling whereon pink griffins and blue amorini sport in a forest of yellow violins and bassoons. It was pleasant, too, to fling wide the windows, pinching the fingers in unfamiliar fastenings, to lean out into sunshine with beautiful hills and trees and marble churches opposite, and close below, the Arno, gurgling against the embankment of the road.”
Thor and I travelled in Italy in 2008, a hundred years after the publication of the novel, so I’m including here a few photos of places featured in the film. We stayed in a somewhat similar pensione in Florence…
I’m posting my complete blog entries on my author website at www.sarastamey.com, where you can finish this episode and enjoy all the accompanying photos. Please continue reading by clicking on the link below, then you can return here (use “go back” arrow above) to comment, ask questions, or join a conversation. We love your responses!
https://sarastamey.com/the-rambling-writers-valentine-a-room-with-a-view-film/
*****
You will find The Rambling Writer’s blog posts here every Saturday. Sara’s latest novel from Book View Café is Pause, a First Place winner of the Chanticleer Somerset Award and an International Pulpwood Queens Book Club selection. “A must-read novel about friendship, love, and killer hot flashes.” (Mindy Klasky). It’s also a love letter to the stunning beauty of her native Pacific Northwest wild places. Sign up for her quarterly email newsletter at www.sarastamey.com
3 thoughts on “The Rambling Writer’s Valentine: “A Room with a View” Film”
One of my favorite memories of Florence is of an evening when we were walking through the streets after dinner and came upon a tiny church tucked into the wall with a sign advertising a free concert. We sat down and listened to Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor on the organ. Then the large burly man who had been turning the pages for the organist, launched into a beautiful soprano song. He was a contra tenor!
That was a magical evening, after wandering the Florence lanes and spotting such marvels as taxidermied piglets, in a shop window, dressed in Renaissance finery and feasting at a miniature table. But, seriously, Florence is such a treasure, truly a city of the arts. And the movie captures glorious images.
Oh, what a treat!!!