When “the Europeans” arrive unexpectedly to stay at the New England home of their strait-laced cousins, the Wentworth family, the conflicts between European and American values, so often highlighted in the novels of Henry James, are quickly established in this 1979 Merchant-Ivory film. Screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala stays close to the tone, themes, and action of the James novel as she brings to life a strict and pious New England family which is suddenly exposed to a whole new way of life. Felix Young (Tim Woodward), a charming and energetic European artist/actor/traveler, without prospects in Europe, has accompanied his sister Eugenia, Baroness of Munster (Lee Remick), to America while her marriage is being dissolved. Here, where no one knows them, Eugenia believes that “natural relations,” as opposed to the “artificial relations” of Europe will prevail. Young Gertrude Wentworth (Lisa Eichhorn), always the most iconoclastic member of the family, is immediately smitten by Felix, finding him a welcome relief from the earnest but stuffy Rev. Brand (Norman Snow), who has been courting her. (For the full review, click on the title 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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Thomas Keneally’s Booker Prize-winning, fictionalized biography of Oskar Schindler memorializes a member of the Nazi party who endangered his own life for four years, working privately to save Jews from the death camps. A playboy who loved fine wines and foods, he was also a smooth-talking manipulator (and briber) of Nazi officials, as well as a clever entrepreneur, already on his way to stunning financial success by the early days of World War II. Nowhere in Schindler’s background are there any hints that he would one day become the savior of eleven hundred Jewish men and women. While the excellent film of this novel concentrates on the dangers Schindler and “his Jews” faced daily throughout the war, Keneally, well known for his depictions of characters acting under stress, concentrates on the character of Oskar Schindler himself, beginning with his childhood and teen years. As he explores Schindler’s transformation from war profiteer and “passive” Nazi to a man willing to use his fortune to ensure the salvation of his factory workers, Keneally reveals a man of enormous courage and derring-do, a man who thrives by living on the edge. (To see the full review, click on the title of this excerpt)
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Posted in Classic Novel, Literary, Mexico on Jan 11th, 2011
Geoffrey Firmin, the former British consul to Mexico, is a prisoner of alcoholism. A victim of the shakes, he hears voices, talks to people who are not there, and hallucinates, though he is often able to hide the extent of his drinking. “True, he might lie down in the street, but he would never reel.” On The Day of the Dead in 1938, his recently divorced wife Yvonne returns to Quauhnahuac, over which two smoking volcanoes loom, to try to persuade him to reconcile. Despite the depressing subject matter and a frustrating main character who cannot or will not help himself during the novel’s four hundred pages, the novel is breath-taking–elegant both in language and construction. Carefully plotted, filled with unique imagery, and enhanced by symbolism which brings it alive on new levels, it overwhelms the reader with its impact, and approaches classical tragedy as the inevitable, doom-filled events play out. (To see the full review, click on the title of this excerpt.)
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Posted in Classic Novel, Hungary, Literary on Jan 11th, 2011
As full of dramatic tension as anything written by Poe, this masterpiece of character development idealizes the personal values of a lost world, and celebrates the rewards and obligations of friendship. Henrik, a former Austro-Hungarian general and member of the aristocracy, is approaching the end of his life, having lived 75 years according to the “male virtues: silence, solitude, and the inviolability of one’s word.” He is awaiting a visit from Konrad, his former best friend, a man he has not seen or heard from in “41 years and 43 days,” a man he believes betrayed him and upon whom he has yearned for revenge for more than half his life. The simple narrative framework allows Henrik to tell the story through his own meditations and his one-sided conversation with Konrad after his arrival.
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