Previously in our deep dive retrospective into A Room With a View (1986), Cláudio considered Lucy Honeychurch's Florentine summer and the sharp storytelling instincts of one James Ivory in the director's chair. Sensual Italy was viewed with both wonder and suspicion as proper English decorum played constant defence against passion. And, as Mr Emerson might add, played offense with its other sworn enemy "common sense". We also met the classic film's remarkable cast of characters (though there are three key introductions left).
A ROOM WITH A VIEW
(a three part miniseries)
part 2 by Nathaniel R
39:13 After Lucy and George's very decorum-breaking makeout sesh in the countryside, the parties involved have all high-tailed it back to their pensione to retire for the night. Their heads are still spinning from the events of the day. Particularly (poor) Charlotte's. "What is to be done? How do you propose to silence him?" is her four alarm question to Lucy. Lucy, for a delicious beat too long in the shot above, doesn't appear to be listening; we know exactly where her head is at.
Please note that this shot of Lucy comes brilliantly on the heels of a pan up from George running, elated, in the rain into stormy clouds. Cut to this beautiful frame of Helena Bonham Carter, her head still in that passionate storm, her glorious mane as wild as nature itself. Charlotte is brushing it so violently it's like she's trying to tame it...
Don't stand there, dear. You will be seen from the outside.
39:45 Charlotte pisses Lucy off with her word choice about George's kiss. "Exploits?!". Can we talk about the near-camp thunder-strike on that single word in the sound mix? The best Merchant Ivory movies have such strong comic impulses. Lucy saunters to the window wondering why George hasn't returned yet while Charlotte tries to explain "what men can be". This conversation is both a scripted and a performative marvel because it perfectly tracks both Lucy and Charlotte's separate headspaces and experiences (which are not always fully within their spoken lines) while also making room for the character quirks and comedy of manners that are ever present.
40:57 ...at the same time it's also dead serious. For scandal could indeed ruin young girls lives so Charlotte means well. Charlotte wins this round but because she can't help herself, she plays martyr again dispelling any true connection "Oh, I've vexed you. It's true, I'm too old for you. And, too dull" which prompts this defeated reaction shot from Lucy, who slumps against the wall. Her head has been yanked from the dreamy George fog and back to its default mode: Being Annoyed At Charlotte.
We'll both be as silent as the grave.
41:45 Charlotte ends the conversation with a sloppily obvious self-serving ploy, convincing Lucy to not tell her mother (this detail will return) by repeatedly mentioning that she must. "You tell her everything, don't you?" Power move, Charlotte. Power move.
43:15 Time fuzziness. Was George out all night? He returns to the pensione the next morning and his coat is still visibly wet. There's a callback to the physical farce comedy of Charlotte's body awhirl between Lucy and George and hotel rooms that Claudio mentioned but this is its angrier sibling as Charlotte slams the door on Lucy and is about to lecture impulsive George. Principal Charlotte walks her naughty student toward the camera and into darkness.
Cut to: This amazing rush of static narrative images.
43:35 The speed of the plot is really dizzying in this movie. I would like to pause for a brief shout out now to the film's BAFTA nominated editor Humphrey Dixon, here on his sixth (and curiously last) collaboration with James Ivory. He keeps the picture just racing along (just as comedies should). I defy you to find another two hour movie that packs in this much narrative and this many characters and this much atmospheric and craft and thematic detail and never once feels like its rushed. Except when it means to feel rushed which happens to be the case right at this very moment. WHY is Lucy immediately engaged upon her homecoming unless she's running -- make that sprinting -- away from that kiss in Italy?
Lucy's mother (Rosemary Leach), and brother Freddy (Rupert Graves, film debut!), and new fiance Cecil Vyse (Daniel Day-Lewis in his breakout film year) are the last three principal characters we meet and we meet them in a clever way.
It's through Freddy that we first hear Cecil, as he mocks his self-important way of speaking, essentially giving us two characters intros at once, lighthearted and unrefined Freddy and smug too-refined Cecil. Mrs Honeychurch is (initially) more forgiving of Cecil. She talks a good game but, like Freddy, her true feelings emerge when Cecil opens the door and announces in his overly-enunciated way that Lucy has accepted. Their faces freeze, unsmiling. Uh... welcome to the family, Cecil?
Though Merchant and Ivory were a romantic couple offscreen, in terms of their artistic collaboration it was really a throuple. Screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala was their third. She won two well deserved Oscars writing the pair's movies and always made scalpel precise, insightful cuts and transfer decisions. It's not an easy art to condense entire novels into two hour films but you rarely hear people grouse "The book was better than the movie" about the Merchant & Ivory films, which have the best of both worlds: novelistic intricacy and cinematic flair.
45:15 Mr Beebe visits and makes awkward with Cecil about the engagement, fussing about with tchotkes in the room. "One of Freddy's bones!" (Stop teasing us, Mr Beebe, the naked pond scene hasn't arrived yet!)
Spirits are artificially high. At the engagement party later the characters stop pretending so much.
I don't think I'd like anyone at that pensione of yours. Wasn't there a lady novelist? And a freethinking father and son? [Scoffing laughter]
47:25 Cecil looks down on everyone bragging that he has no profession; Lucy is visibly uncomfortable; And Mrs Honeychurch, despite disliking Cecil's snobbery, reveals that she's the pot calling the kettle black when Lucy brings up the spinster Miss Alans as possible tenants for a nearby villa. Rosemary Leach is wonderful in these tiny glimpses we get into Mrs Honeychurch. It's quite a small detail but she's obviously thought through how many drinks Mrs Honeychurch has had at this party.
That miserable tea party and all those dreadful people. And not being alone with you.
49:40 'Why aren't you talking about Daniel Day-Lewis yet?' I can hear you say, while reading along. We're getting there! I didn't know who he was when I first saw the film though I had seen him twice before in small parts in both Gandhi (1982, his debut) and The Bounty (1984). I saw both of those and A Room With My View with my family; I am the youngest child but we went to the more prestigious "adult" movies quite often since I was always the one suggesting (okay cajoling) the family into those movie trips. I had heard about My Beautiful Laundrette, Daniel Day Lewis's other movie that spring/summer, which had opened the month before in the US. I started reading movie reviews in the local paper and watching Siskel & Ebert on TV before I could drive myself to movies or see the R rated ones. I waited until Laundrette was on VHS and snuck-rent it with a friend due to [whisper] G A Y C O N T E N T. Only then did I fall for Daniel Day Lewis, the actor.
For years I thought Day Lewis was a little hammy and broad in this role but I've come to appreciate that he's intentionally sticking out like a sore thumb which the next scene brilliantly underlines. Lucy has pointed out his "cross" mood and Cecil is trying to adjust but he can't even be sweet without coming off as phony and stilted.
49:48 PLOT POINT CAMEO. The mismatched couple pass the "Cissie Villa" which the characters have been discussing a lot, and it gets this errant shot. Lucy is plotting for the Miss Alans to move there. It's easy to miss this until you're really sitting with the movie and analyzing it, but Lucy is terrible at plot. She is never in control of her own story, despite being its protagonist. Things keep happening to her. Her narrative choice is not so much in taking action but in reaction. How will she react when repeatedly blown off her assumed course?
In one of the funniest in-character gestures in the movie, Cecil shields his eyes from the villa as they pass. Hee!
50:16 The couple walk to 'The Sacred Lake' as Lucy calls it (Cecil thinks it more like a puddle, really). How perfect that Lucy has her veil down in this sequence. One imagines its practical for the bugs but it also disguises her facial expressions. Cecil starts pontificating about how he "belongs" in Italy. Do we detect an eye roll from Miss Honeychurch? Try to imagine Cecil in the first act set in Italy; you can't! He'd be thrice as fussy as Charlotte who, to her credit, will at least go off on adventures, make new friends, and give it a go when asked to inhale foreign smells.
Cecil speaks aloud that he imagines Lucy feels more comfortable with him in a room than in nature.
"You know I think, you're right. When I do think of you, it is always in a room."
50:35 Note the "do" in that sentence implying that the "when" is only occasionally. It's here when I start to feel for Cecil. He didn't want her to agree with him and for a split second he looks disappointed. You notice these beats in other scenes, too. This man, who so looks down his nose at everyone, registers every social slight directed his way, whether its a crestfallen face as he enters a room, or a conversation like this where he ends up walking right into (private) humiliation. His haughtiness reveals deep insecurity.
The shot where they're separated by the pond (we'll split the difference between lake and puddle) is so beautiful, but rigid and frozen like Cecil. In his presence this looks more like an unreal movie set than an actual place of innocent childhood escape which it clearly is for Lucy who alludes to the fact that she was spotted naked there once while bathing; Even the wild flower next to Cecil stands rigidly straight, behaving in his presence.
(Lucy mentions that Freddy loves to bathe here. Stop teasing us, Lucy, the naked pond scene hasn't arrived yet!)
51:48 Cecil has asked to kiss Lucy, very formally. It's equal parts heartbreaking and funny when he looks side to side for privacy (in the woods, mind you!) like he's doing something forbidden by kissing his bride-to-be. It's the worst first kiss in history, his glasses begin to fall off and he feels horribly undignified; Lucy apologizes though it isn't her fault.
52:48 As they leave the woods, Ivory and his editor only add to Cecil's bad-kisser humiliation. Here they insert the only flashback within the entire movie to something we've actually witnessed before:
...Lucy & George's kiss. It's thunderingly obvious (complete with those thunder claps in the sound mix again!) but absolutely right. The insert even appears to make Lucy wobble but that's surely just her dress and shoes and walking uphill in the woods. Have we mentioned that this movie is perfect?
The direct comparison point between the two love interests hasn't escaped us. Lucy can't escape it, either, as much as she'd like to.
53:40 The Vyses have their own engagement party for the couple. Or something of the sort though we don't get much narrative detail. Lucy is playing the piano for guests but Cecil notes afterwards -- he's quite impressed, actually - that she disagreed with him about the music and chose her own. Though we're told in the title card that this is a "well appointed home" it's claustrophic with furniture and wall decorations and darker than many of the other interiors in the film making the wealth feel suffocating. Kudos to the Oscar winning production design team.
Lucy's becoming wonderful... wonderful! She's purging off that Honeychurch taint. Most excellent Honeychurches, but you know what I mean.
55:00 Cecil's mother is a real piece of work. Her smile is frightening like she's going to eat Lucy (and her son) up. They discuss how Cecil should raise the children and when the couple should marry. One suspects that Lucy would shudder if she overheard or at least roll her eyes at the way Cecil intones Italy and its "subtlety"
56:26 I've always found this brief scene very curious and even after all these years and viewings, I still don't know how I feel about it. Lucy appears to be a bit tipsy and touches Cecil's shirt flirtatiously, removes his glasses, and kisses him again. "So you do love me little thing," he says. It's not quite a question but Lucy doesn't answer but for a brief girlish giggle. Is she testing to see if she can rouse any real feeling from him? Can she magically make him more George-like in the passion department?
58:00 Lucy gets bad news. The villa has been rented but NOT to the Miss Alans as Lucy planned but to the Emersons, a detail she hears from her brother Freddy and his expressive hair (reader, I was so instantly besotted as a baby gay but more on that shortly).
Freddy has no idea what the name means to Lucy. Lucy pretends that it means nothing but she's horrified. Reverend Beebe thinks he's being helpful and also doesn't know quite how much the name "Emerson" means to Lucy.
[To Lucy] We did meet some Emersons in Florence, don't you remember?
[To her mother] The oddest people, Mrs Honeychurch, the queerest people but we rather liked them
[To Lucy] Didn't we?
There are always multiple jokes simultaneously in these scenes. A Room With a View is a multi-tasker. We've got the mix up comedy of the rented villa "I knew there'd be a muddle, I'm always right!" the mother boasts. We've got the character comedy of Freddy imitating other men again (this time the villa landlord) and Lucy's temper flaring up again as she stomps off to confront Cecil. There's the bedroom farce (without the bedrooms) since nobody knows that Lucy is already in love with George Emerson (including Lucy) and then there are physical gags like Reverend Beebe's niece Minnie who is strenuously playing tennis by herself this whole time in the background while Beebe stomps all over Lucy's heart in the foreground, cheerfully and unknowingly.
59:13 In narrated flashback (the only other flashback in the film) we learn that Cecil met the Emersons in London and told them about the Cissie Villa. He considers them moving to the Villa a "victory for the comic muse" but Lucy lets him have it. "I consider it very disloyal of you."
The most beautiful detail of this scene is the way Mr Emerson (Denholm Elliott) reacts with such uninhibited joy when he hears that about the Villa. "Summer Street. I've dreamt of Summer Street!!!" Cecil obviously finds uninhibited joy embarrassing but George puts his arm around his too-loud father, a gentle gesture to calm him. The Emersons may be "odd" but they sure are a beautiful movie-movie example of a loving father/son relationship.
1:01:45 Reverend Beebe and Freddy visit the new neighbors at the villa. Simon Callow (truly wonderful in this movie) again with the actorly business. This time he's leafing through books and commenting on them. "Byron... exactly! 'A Shropshire Lad' never heard of it. "The Way of All Flesh'? never heard of it." He gives each line so much color and personality, even when it's a throwaway between proper scenes.
And he's always laughing about Freddy, too. This time to his face when the young man excitedly asks George to come bathe with him. "That's the best conversational opening i've ever heard. 'How do you do? Come and have a bathe.'"
1:02:40 Ensemble acting is bliss, example 2,000,531. I've said this before on the site and I'll keep saying it till I die but it's so depressing that today's directors are relentlessly obsessed with shooting entire movies in one-character closeups, even for scenes like this that don't at all need that kind of intimate focus. It's a joy to watch actors work together in a frame. Group acting isn't just for the stage. You can also see it in movies -- good movies at least. Note all the sudden downward glances in the shot above since it's the exact moment that Mr Emerson mentions Lucy's engagement; nobody is happy about this wedding!
Yours is glorious country, Honeychurch!
1:03:20 I've never noticed this detail before but Mr Emerson's awkward arm-waving proclamation as his son leaves with Beebe and Freddy is a mirror of Cecil's non-sequitor pronouncements with arms aloft that's happened at least twice earlier. It's a funhouse mirror in that Cecil would find this reflection very distorted and grotesque. The key difference is that Mr Emerson's awkward arm flailings and ridiculous pronouncements spring organically from his happy soul and never from self-regard.
It is fate but call it Italy if it pleases you, vicar.
1:03:30 On the way to have their bathe, Beebe and George argue semantics about the previous summer in Italy and how they were all destined to meet. Note how bored Freddy is with conversation... he just wants to get naked! (Yes, we've finally arrived at the pond scene)
1:04:05 I don't know what I was expecting the first time I saw A Room With a View -- probably an immediate cut to the next scene or a tasteful long distance shot of the men diving in. But I didn't expect the movie to have a completely nude three and a half minute comic setpiece at its center.
Are you bathing, Mr Beebe? Don't be shy. Oh it's wonderful. Simply ripping.
...but seeing it with my mother was both mortifying and awesome. I sank in my chair as the men got naked, we were both very embarrassed but then we began to laugh heartily along with the crowd at The Maple Theater in Michigan from the funniest, most joyful, and innocent nude scene in film.
The long scene has more comic movements than those layers of clothing instantly shed.
01:05:30 It begins with the men just horsing around. But as they get sillier and sillier grabbing at branches, wrestling and splashing, and making crazy noises, the freeballing joy becomes infectious for the audience, too.
01:05:43 The second major surprise after the initial shock that this won't be a five second fade-out scene viewed from a fuzzy distance, is when they opt to leave the water, and suddenly running around the wild pond, like hyper children or wild animals. Yes, the same Lake/Puddle that looked like a fake movie set in the Lucy/Cecil scene. The men's laughter, comic nonsense gruntings and singing, are the best score the movie could have in this scene, but there's also a very mellow underscore; elevator music for a forest. Its raison d'etre will soon become apparent.
[As annoying as this is to note -- the MPAA is so useless -- A Room With a View was released unrated in the US since this very innocent scene would have made it an automatic "R". You can't be seeing penises onscreen even though half of the human race has them!]
01:06:20 When the men jump back into the water, their peels of laughter still going strong, we get a hilariously bucolic insert of Lucy, Cecil, and Mrs Honeychurch on a leisurely afternoon stroll. Guess where they're going? Suddenly the light underscore becomes yet more comic, like a clueless tune being hummed while disaster approaches. This walking party don't know what a shock they're in for!
01:06:35 The men have gotten even wilder and are now tossing each other's clothes into the pond. "I've got a boot" shouts Mr Beebe before flinging it at Freddy. Um, you'll need those later. And once again they're up and out of the water running...
01:07:01 The comic collision as visual punchline! Lucy throwing up her parasol like a shield is such a perfect sight gag.
You might feel this is projecting because a) I love naked men and b) I love acting but props to Julian Sands and Rupert Graves who are always in character even when fully naked. Freddy instinctively covers up and then gets sheepish 'moooom' style embarrassed in the next shot but continues giggling (he's a lighthearted lad) while George takes a millisecond to clock that Lucy is looking at him and goes all Me Tarzan You Jane with a final whooping yell and leaps out of frame.
"Whoever were those unfortunate people?!? Oh dear, look away!!!"
01:07:09 The scene gets a second spoken punchline via Mrs Honeychurch.
1:07:23 Lucy's shock finally fades to giggles when Mr Beebe makes an awkward attempt at hiding himself. And then the women trip over Freddy, their own. A post-punchline punchline, returning us to the movie's grandeur at wringing laughs from decorum conversations.
-Why not have a comfortable bath at home, dear, with hot and cold laid on?
-Mother!
-You are in no position to argue, Freddy.
1:07:45 The scene ends on this lingering three second shot of Freddy, elated and dripping.
Did I already know I was gay before seeing A Room With a View? Sort of, if not in those exact words but every shot of Rupert Graves falling bangs before the pond scene and every second of the pond scene and then this shot, the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen up until 1986... well, I was done for.
How wonderful it was to see this movie referenced in the modern gay classic Weekend (2011) as a touchstone queer film for this very reason.
01:08:13 How on earth to follow up an unforgettably lively visual joke centerpiece? A Room With A View is smart to return to its best running verbal gag "poor poor Charlotte" immediately thereafter. It's a good transition back to the the more conventional (but still ridiculously enjoyable) proceedings. The Honeychurches are sitting by the piano and they've just received a letter from Charlotte. They argue about whether to invite her to stay.
Hear hear. we vote no Miss Bartlett.
1:08:47 Cecil is trying to be sympatico with Lucy and Freddy here, but he's still a jerk. Maggie Smith is A Room With a View's MVP and she's been gone from the movie for far too long. Now that the men are clothed again, it's high time for her return. Cecil, annoyed by Freddy's piano playing, leaves the room.
1:10:00 This before and after shot is too good not to note. Freddy and his mother singing silly songs at the piano, laughing. They look out the window (insert longshot of Cecil and Lucy on the lawn) and their faces fall.
Mrs Honeychurch has had enough and tells Lucy in her bedroom "Must he sneer?". Lucy feebly tries to make excuses for her killjoy fiance and mopes down the hallway where she runs into her brother in a very different mood.
"Oh he's topping. He's spiffing! George Emerson is simply ripping!
1:10:31 Lucy tries to persuade him otherwise but Freddy is really excited about asking his new nude playmate George Emerson over for tennis. He grabs Lucy and dances her around until they crash into furniture. It's interesting that this scene plays like it's under a proscenium given the curtained hallway. A servant girl walks into the frame, practiced at slinking by Freddy and Lucy's wildness. Cecil even walks into frame and backs into a separate doorway to avoid the dancing. Some might call filmmaking like this particular scene "stagey", but I'd argue it's much livelier and more cinematic than the routine frequent cutting around closeups where you never get a sense of shared space or group movement and in this case, a house that has become too crowded. That's exactly what Lucy is using as her excuse to ask Freddy not to invite George.
1:12:10 Their mother breaks up the party and we linger on Freddy who, as Lucy has said, always takes it 'too far' when he plays. Dear readers: Do you think Freddy is gay or merely homosocial in that Edwardian way? Or is it merely that the camera is in love with him? Maybe the filmmakers had a little crush on their new actor find? (Maurice, their follow up picture, gives Rupert an even bigger and far more sexual role, so... maybe?) Or perhaps we're projecting since we've been madly in love with Freddy since 1986?
Just after this shot, Lucy caves about inviting Charlotte and we cut to Charlotte on a train about to arrive. Again, this movie wastes no time. Merciless editing for the win!
1:14:00 Charlotte gets a rude awakening at the train station when she runs into George (having no idea the Emerson's have moved into the Honeychurch's 'hood). He bikes behind her carriage, teasing her.
1:14:52 Charlotte arrives at the Honeychurch estate, immediately spreading her stress around. Lucy is all welcoming smiles at the carriage until Charlotte speaks and immediately drops the George bomb. "Oh my poor Lucia" she says and Lucy's face returns to its pissed-off, eye-rolling With-Charlotte state. It will never not be funny that Lucy hates it when anyone peppers their British with Italian pronunciations (Note: only Cecil and Charlotte do this)
01:15:20 Charlotte greets the party and another lengthy comic setpiece begins as she attempts to pay Freddy back for paying her carriage driver. "We all have our little foibles... and mine is the prompt settling of accounts." She doesn't have the right change and chaos ensues as everyone starts doing the math differently and making change or offering help as to how to divvy up what Charlotte owes. She's horrified that Floyd (Freddy's friend) and Freddy are so cavalier about "flipping for it" to make change and even Cecil gets roped in (what do you suppose he lent Freddy money for?). Until finally it's settled.
But wait...
I shall never see why Miss-Whats-Her-Name shouldn't pay the bob for the driver?
01:16:17 My hero Minnie Beebe, sticking it to (poor) Charlotte that she's full of it after her emphatic proclamation of settling accounts!
01:16:42 Lucy steps in to the rescue, heading to the servant for help "I'll get Mary to change it," she begins and then switches into a sing song voice as if speaking to a child "and we shall start form the beginning". Mrs Honeychurch gives the full minute-long accounting scene a crying snort of laughter as punctuation; like the audience watching, she also can't believe this scene is not yet over.
This movie's confidence about when to rush through events and when to overstay in uncomfortable moments is a source of satisfying ever-fresh laughs no matter how many times you've seen it.
01:17:30 Charlotte and Lucy find a moment alone. "Have you told him about him" Charlotte says with unnecessarily clandestine drama, referencing Cecil and George. As the women argue, Lucy shares (in a well-judged line reading from Helena Bonham Carter) that she has not spoken to George, only seen him. [Aside: A lot of him at the Sacred Lake, ba-dum-dum]. She reminds her nosey chaperone that she hasn't told anyone about the kiss as they agreed and George would never so how would anyone ever find out?
Really Charlotte, calm down! I mean, what other source could there be?
In the final chapter of our retrospective Lynn Lee listens to lots of lying but, like everyone else onscreen, sees right through it.