When the atomic bomb dropped at 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, Hiroshima was a thriving city of two hundred forty-five thousand people. By 8:20, one hundred thousand of those people were dead. Combining the broad perspective of the absolute devastation of the city with the tiniest details of six individual lives, John Hersey provides a powerful closeup of a few survivors of the atomic attack on Hiroshima, giving the carnage a human perspective. The victims become human, and their concerns become universal, as Hersey shows them digging themselves out and helping their neighbors, filled with an “elated community spirit” in the days and weeks after the bombing. (To see the entire review, click on the title of this excerpt.)
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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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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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