• The first of three Henry James adaptations from the Merchant Ivory team
  • Opens with these gorgeous titles—sketchings and drawings set to classical music- it is both exquisite, and exquisitely Merchant/Ivory- haha (always refinement and taste)
  • Set in (and shot in) New England in the fall and it is beautiful- Ivory dotes on the foliage
  • A well-deserved costume design Oscar nom- a long proud tradition for Merchant Ivory as well.
  • A standout set – a stark yellow drawling room with wood floor
  • It is about two European cousins, potential charlatans and seducers disrupting puritanical New England family—pleasure vs. propriety – certainly a running theme in Ivory’s work
  • A few strong compositions—using the trees to obstruct the frame in one case, six characters jammed in the frame at 43 minutes placed at different depths and places in the frame— another one at the 54 minute mark as Ivory moves the camera around a lantern on the desk and shoots Lee Remick (the only actor I recognize in the film) obstructed by the lantern and chair
  • Recommend but not in the top 10 of 1979