The liberation of Rome during World War II was not a “liberation” to many of its inhabitants after the occupying American and British armies took up residence. The initial joy at the Germans’ departure had faded, six months later, as many Italians began to resent what they regarded as the occupiers’ sense of entitlement and superiority. Perfectly capturing the atmosphere and changing moods of the times, author Alfred Hayes creates a microcosm of Roman life in the home of the Pulcini family on the Via Flaminia. Adele, the mother, needing funds and food, uses her dining room as a small café for a handful of American and British soldiers in the evening, and, if they need “company,” she arranges for them to meet Italian women. Written in 1949 by Alfred Hayes, one of the premier writers of the period, The Girl on the Via Flaminia (recently reprinted by Europa Editions) shows Hayes’s experience as an honored and respected screenwriter. This sensitive and gorgeously wrought study of connections and misconnections contains dialogue that one can only hope will one day be transformed for the stage or screen.
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Set in 1875, this Merchant-Ivory film focuses on the post-Civil War intellectual community of Boston and Cambridge, bringing to life the suffragist movement, which passionately involved many of its women. Verena Tarrant (Madeleine Potter) is a beautiful and charming young woman who draws large, paying crowds to hear her speak about “the just revolution,” which would free women from their second class status. Though Verena describes herself as “only a girl, a simple American girl,” her strength as a speaker quickly brings her to the attention of Olive Chancellor (Vanessa Redgrave), an older woman whose dedication to the movement, and eventually to Verena, is single-minded and all-consuming. When Verena moves in with the overly protective Olive, Olive wants her to promise that she will never marry, but the inevitable happens. Basil Ransom (Christopher Reeve), Olive’s cousin, arrives from the south, and is immediately smitten by Verena. (To see the full review, click on the title at the top of this excerpt.)
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One of Henry James’s earliest novellas, Daisy Miller (1878) follows the activities of a wealthy, and brashly confident, young American woman as she audaciously challenges European society in Vevey, Switzerland, and in Rome, having fun, doing what pleases her, and leaving staid European society gasping in her wake. Daisy Miller, whose father is in the US and whose mother is her ineffectual “chaperone,” is a free spirit in a society bound by unstated but rigid “rules,” determined to do whatever she wants, whenever she wants, with whomever she chooses. Frederick Winterbourne, an expatriate who has spent most of his life in Geneva, is attracted to Daisy, but his bonds with his stuffy aunt, Mrs. Cosgrove, and her friend, Mrs. Walker, both of whom govern ex-patriot society in Europe, leave him ill-equipped to deal with Daisy’s flouting of society’s conventions. When she is obviously attracted to Mr. Giovanelli, a singer/musician of no social standing, and when she is seen with him publicly in places that a “nice” girl would not grace at night, her reputation is threatened, and anyone associated with her is tainted. (To see the full review, click on the title at the top of this excerpt.)
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A magnificent medieval bowl, created from a single perfect crystal, has, despite its appearance, a flaw–a crack which reduces its value. Henry James, author of the novel on which this Ruth Prawer Jhabvala screenplay is based, uses the gilded bowl as a metaphor for love and marriage, focusing on two couples, whose overlapping relationships and marriages prove to be as fragile and damaged as the bowl. Produced by Merchant-Ivory and sumptuously filmed by Tony Pierce-Roberts on locations in Italy and England, the film brings the intensity of the psychological conflicts to life. Italian Prince Amerigo (Jeremy Northam) is the impoverished owner of Palazzo Ugolini near Rome, unable to maintain the palace until, in 1903, he marries Maggie Verver (Kate Beckinsale), daughter of the first American billionaire, Adam Verver (Nick Nolte). The prince has previously had a secret affair with Charlotte Stant (Uma Thurman), a friend of Maggie.
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Posted in 9b-2010 Reviews, England, Italy on Jan 12th, 2011
When Isabel Archer, a bright and independent young American, makes her first trip to Europe in the company of her aunt, Mrs. Touchett, who lives outside of London in a 400-year-old estate, she discovers a totally different world, one which does not encourage her independent thinking or behavior and which is governed by rigid social codes. This contrast between American and European values, vividly dramatized here, is a consistent theme in James’s novels, one based on his own experiences living in the US and England. In prose that is filled with rich observations about places, customs, and attitudes, James portrays Isabel’s European coming-of-age, as she discovers that she must curb her intellect and independence if she is to fit into the social scheme in which she now finds herself. Isabel Archer, one of James’s most fully drawn characters, has postponed a marriage in America for a year of travel abroad, only to discover upon her precipitate and ill-considered marriage to an American living in Florence, that it is her need to be independent that makes her marriage a disaster. (To see the full review, click on the title of this excerpt.)
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