A Room With a View Pt 2: Sacred puddles and stuffy engagements

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...

Click to read more ...

Showbiz History: 12 Years a Slave, Mama Rose, and More...

5 random things that happened on this day, January 4th, in history...

1853 New York born Solomon Northup regains his freedom after abduction and enslavery in 1841 in Washington DC. The abolitionist thankfully recorded his life story in the memoir 12 Years a Slave which became an instant best-seller. Over a century and a half later, the film version by the British auteur Steve McQueen deservedly won the 2013 Best Picture Oscar. 

1903 A horrific end to a story of animal cruelty and a shameful event in the then nascent film-industry, too. Topsy, a 27 or so year-old elephant, who was ripped from her family as a baby in Southeast Asia and never adjusted well to life in the America circus, is famously electrocuted in Coney Island...

Click to read more ...

Beauty Break: Ten Sexiest Witches in Movies

HAPPY HALLOWEEN 👻🎃

Julian Sands in Warlock (1989) though, alas, we haven't seen it.

In the absence of writing time today, how about a visual list. Have you ever wondered why there are so few male witches (or warlocks if you will) in cinema? They're far more common on television. And when warlocks or sorcerers are portrayed in cinema they're usually asexual (sorry but Doctor Strange is the least sexy Avenger!) or old men and are just as likely to be good as evil.

Witches on the other hand are often sexual and usually beautiful... though the beauty is often an illusion. Many of those most glamorous witches are hiding a hideous side -- like they're secretly an old decrepit crone or something less than human (think of Anjelica Huston in The Witches... which we often do). Or maybe they are beautiful but their favourite disguise is something hideous (think Snow White's Queen). This frightening dichotomy and their dangerous sexuality surely has got heaps to do with cinema's male gaze. (This is a way of saying that we hoped for some gender parity in this holiday list of "Sexy Witches!" but it's almost all women.)

AFTER THE JUMP - TEN SEXIEST MOVIE WITCHES...

Click to read more ...

Valentine's - A Room With a View

Team Experience is celebrating Valentines Day with favorite love scenes. Here's Lynn Lee on an 80s classic

Great Moments in Screen Kisses #20, Julian Sands and Helena Bonham CarterEveryone who loves this film remembers The Kiss.  It’s the moment proper Edwardian girl Lucy Honeychurch (a very young Helena Bonham-Carter), vacationing in Italy, discovers romantic passion for the first time.  She doesn’t know it yet, but the odd free-thinking young man she’s only recently met (Julian Sands) is her soulmate.  He knows it, though.

Besides being (literally) storybook-romantic—a sun-drenched poppy field in Italy! lush soprano aria in the background!—the kiss is also wreathed in comedy, as the film cuts back and forth between Lucy, wending her way uncertainly towards George, and her fussy chaperone Charlotte (Maggie Smith) bonding with another fellow tourist, a hacky romance novelist (Judi Dench), over scandalous love stories before she starts to worry about Lucy.  Meanwhile, the Italian driver who led Lucy to George looks on in amusement at what he has wrought.  He knows what’s up, his own public display of affection having been previously smacked down by these uptight Brits.  But the Kiss will not be denied.

It’s also the kiss that keeps on giving for the rest of the movie.  Its memory haunts Lucy during her utter failure of a first kiss with her fiancé, Cecil (Daniel Day-Lewis, vying for comic MVP with Maggie Smith), in England.  It reappears again at a critical and exquisitely awkward moment as a passage in a terrible romance novel, penned by none other than Charlotte’s novelist friend, that the clueless Cecil just happens to read out loud to none other than Lucy and George.  The tension that was simmering since George’s reentry into Lucy’s life then comes to full boil, precipitating a chain of events that eventually forces out in the open what Lucy’s been denying for too long: she and George belong together. 

All thanks to one glorious kiss.

Our Valentine's Series
Shakespeare in Love (1998)
Before Sunset (2004)
The Painted Veil (2006)
Love Songs (2007)
(500) Days of Summer (2009)
Beyond the Lights (2014)