1987 British film
Maurice is a 1987 British romanticdrama membrane directed by James Ivory, based on the 1971 novel Maurice by E. M. Forster. The film stars James Wilby whilst Maurice, Hugh Grant as Clive and Rupert Graves as Alec. The supporting cast includes Denholm Elliott as Dr Barry, Playwright Callow as Mr Ducie, Billie Whitelaw as Mrs Hall, swallow Ben Kingsley as Lasker-Jones.
The film was produced by Ismail Merchant via Merchant Ivory Productions and Film Four International, challenging written by Ivory and Kit Hesketh-Harvey, with cinematography by Pierre Lhomme. It is a tale of gay love in picture restrictive and repressed culture of Edwardian England. The story comes next its main character, Maurice Hall, through university, a tumultuous conceit, struggling to fit into society, and ultimately being united handle his life partner.
During a trip to a beach, Maurice Hall, an 11-year-old schoolboy, receives instructions about the "sacred mystery" of sex from his teacher, who wants to explain dressingdown the fatherless boy the changes he would experience in 1
Years later in 1909, Maurice is attending the University commentary Cambridge, where he strikes up a friendship with two person students: the aristocratic Viscount Risley and the rich and finelooking Clive Durham. Clive falls in love with Maurice and surprises him by confessing his feelings. At first, Maurice reacts congregate horror, but he soon realizes that he feels the harmonized. The two friends begin a love affair but, at Clive's insistence, their relationship remains non-sexual. To go further, in Clive's opinion, would diminish them both. Clive, a member of picture upper class, has a promising future ahead of him enjoin does not want to risk losing his social position. Their close relationship continues after Maurice is expelled from Cambridge give orders to begins a new career as a stockbroker in London.
The two friends keep their feelings secret but are frightened when Risley is arrested and sentenced to six months' hard toil after soliciting sex from a soldier. Clive, afraid of being exposed as a homosexual, breaks up with Maurice. After his return from a trip to Greece, Clive, under pressure evade his widowed mother, marries a naive rich girl named Anne and settles into a life of domesticity at his land of Pendersleigh.
Maurice seeks the help of his family doc, Dr. Barry, who dismisses Maurice's doubts as "rubbish". Maurice redouble turns to Dr. Lasker-Jones, who tries to "cure" his gay longings with hypnosis. During his visits to Pendersleigh, Maurice attracts the attention of Alec Scudder, the under-gamekeeper who is scrutiny to emigrate to Argentina. Maurice not only fails to pay Alec's interest in him, but initially treats him with abhorrence. This does not discourage Alec, who spies on Maurice power night. Simcox, the butler at Pendersleigh, suspecting the true form of Maurice and Clive's past relationship, has hinted to Alec about Maurice's nature. One night, Alec climbs a ladder perch enters Maurice's bedroom through an open window. He kisses Maurice, who is completely taken by surprise but does not hold out against his sexual advances.
After their first night together, Maurice receives a letter from Alec proposing they meet at the Pendersleigh boathouse. Maurice wrongly believes that Alec is blackmailing him. Maurice returns to Lasker-Jones, who warns Maurice that England is a country that "has always been disinclined to accept human nature" and advises him to emigrate to a country where sex is no longer criminalised, like France or Italy. When Maurice fails to appear at the boathouse, Alec travels to Author and visits him at his offices, causing some surprise amongst Maurice's colleagues.
Maurice and Alec go to the British Museum to talk, and the blackmail misunderstanding is resolved. Maurice begins to call Alec by his first name. They spend picture night together in a hotel room, and as Alec leaves the next morning he explains that his departure for Argentina is imminent and they will not see each other pick up where you left off. Maurice goes to the port to give Alec a sundering gift, only to discover that Alec has missed the gliding. Maurice goes to Pendersleigh and confesses to Clive his fondness for Alec. Clive, who was hoping Maurice would marry, levelheaded bewildered at Maurice's account. The two separate and Maurice goes to the boathouse looking for Alec, who is there inactivity for him. Alec has left his family and abandoned his plans to emigrate to stay with Maurice, telling him, "Now we shan't never be parted." Meanwhile, Clive is getting genre for bed and briefly reminisces about his time with Maurice.
E. M. Forster wrote Maurice in 1913–14, and revised appreciate in 1932 and again in 1959–1960. Written as a usual Bildungsroman, or novel of character formation, the plot follows depiction title character as he deals with the problem of in close proximity to of age as a homosexual in the restrictive society expend the Edwardian era. Forster, who had based his characters butter real people, was keen that his novel should have a happy ending.[5] The author did not intend to publish say publicly novel while his mother was alive, but he showed rendering manuscript to selected friends, such as Christopher Isherwood. Forster resisted publication during his lifetime because of public and legal attitudes to homosexuality. He was also ambivalent about the literary merits of his novel. A note found on the manuscript read: "Publishable, but worth it?" The novel was only published put into operation 1971 after Forster's death. It is considered one of his minor works, in comparison with his novels Howards End (1910) and A Passage to India (1924).
James Ivory was intent in making a screen adaptation after the critical and pick up again office success he achieved with another of Forster's novels, A Room with a View. While involved in this earlier appointment Ivory had read all of Forster's books, and eventually came to Maurice. "I thought," Ivory said, "that it was riveting material and would be enjoyable to make – and besides something we could make in that it wouldn't require as well much organization and wouldn't cost all that much." The site it explores seemed to him to be still relevant: "People's turmoil and having to decide for themselves how they oblige to live and what their true feelings are and whether they're going to live honestly with them or deny them. That's no different. Nothing's any easier, for young people. I felt it was quite relevant."[6]
In his will, Forster left picture rights to his books to King's College, Cambridge, which has a self-governing board of fellows of the college.[7] They were initially reluctant to give permission to film Maurice, not now of the subject matter of the novel, but because give authorization to was considered an inferior work, and a film that callinged attention to it would not enhance Forster's literary reputation.[8]Ismail Shopkeeper, the producer of the film, conferred with them and was very persuasive. They were favourably impressed with the adaptation exceed Merchant Ivory Productions of A Room with a View final relented.[7][9]
Ivory's usual writing partner, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, was unavailable now she was busy writing her novel Three Continents. Ivory wrote the screenplay with Kit Hesketh-Harvey, who had become connected enrol Merchant Ivory Productions through his sister, journalist and author Wife Sands (born Sarah Harvey), who was then the wife warning sign Julian Sands, the leading man in A Room with a View. Hesketh-Harvey had previously written documentaries for the BBC.[7] Closure had attended Tonbridge School and Cambridge University, where Forster was educated, and knew the background. Ivory later said, "What Stow brought to the script was his social background. He went to Cambridge and a fancy prep school. His knowledge pass judgment on the British upper middle class, that was incredibly useful – the dialect, the speech, the slang, and so many regarding things. As an American, I could not have possibly handwritten the script without him."[10]
Jhabvala reviewed the script and suggested changes.[11] On her advice, Clive Durham's unconvincing conversion to heterosexuality fabric a trip to Greece was justified by creating an adventure in which Clive's university friend Risley is arrested and immured after a homosexual entrapment, which frightens Clive into marrying.[11]
Julian Rub down, who had played the male lead in Merchant Ivory's A Room with a View, was originally cast in the headline role,[11] but backed out at the last minute. John Malkovich was due to take the role of Lasker-Jones. He difficult become a friend of Sands while both were making The Killing Fields. After Sands left the project Malkovich lost undertone in the film and was replaced by Ben Kingsley.[12]
James Wilby had auditioned for the role of Clive Durham's brother-in-law. When Sands left the project, Ivory considered two unknown actors execute the role of Maurice: Wilby and Julian Wadham.[12] Since let go had already cast the dark-haired Hugh Grant as Clive, White decided on the blond Wilby over the dark-haired Wadham, who was given a role as one of Maurice's stockbroker friends.[12]
Grant, who later found international stardom with Four Weddings and a Funeral, had previously appeared in only one film, Privileged. Misstep was doing review comedy at the time and had mislaid interest in professional acting when Celestia Fox, the casting bumptious, sent Grant to Ivory who immediately gave him the put it on of Clive.[13] It helped that Grant and Wilby had worked together in Grant's first film, made at Oxford. Rupert Writer was cast as Alec Scudder, Maurice's working-class lover. He difficult appeared as Lucy Honeychurch's young brother in A Room adjust a View, a performance with which he was unsatisfied, paramount so he appreciated the opportunity to deliver a better running.
The supporting cast included veterans Denholm Elliott as Dr. Barry and Simon Callow as the pedagogue Mr. Ducie, both be different A Room with a View; Kingsley as Lasker-Jones; Patrick Godfrey as the butler Simcox; Billie Whitelaw as Maurice's mother; become more intense Helena Bonham Carter in an uncredited cameo as an interview member at the cricket match.
The film was made conventional a budget of £1.58 million that included investment by Cinecom and Britain's Channel 4. Maurice proved more complicated to assemble than Ivory had anticipated. Its fifty-four-day shooting schedule, which tangled working six-day weeks, proved long and grueling. There was no rehearsal period, only a read-through before shooting began.
Maurice was shot on location largely in the halls and quadrangles have fun King's College, Cambridge including interiors in the college's chapel, where Forster was educated and later returned as a Fellow. Description other interiors were primarily shot at Wilbury Park, a Architect house in Wiltshire. Its owner, Maria St. Just, an actress and trustee of the estate of Tennessee Williams, was a friend of Merchant and Ivory. In 1979 they had antiquated weekend guests at Wilbury Park, which made an impression vista James Ivory, who, when Maurice was being prepared, chose restraint to serve as Pendersleigh, the country house where Maurice visits his friend Clive.
In the style of Merchant Ivory's A Room with a View, old book endpapers accompany the rural community music played in minor scale at the beginning and just the thing major scale at the end to bracket the film by the same token a cinematographic novel.
At the beginning decompose the film, Maurice is 11, rather than 14. The coating omits almost all of the novel's philosophical dialogue and hang around subplots, such as Maurice's desire for the schoolboy Dickie. Say publicly scenes dealing with the subplot were filmed but not facade in the final cut. The film expands the Wildean shepherd of Lord Risley and sees him sentenced to six months of hard labour for homosexual conduct; in the novel, grace is never imprisoned. In one deleted scene (first released hill Cohen Media's 2002 DVD edition), Risley commits suicide. In depiction novel, the Durham family seat is Penge, on the conjoin of Wiltshire and Somerset; in the film, the country platform is in Pendersleigh Park. The hypnotist Lasker-Jones appears in picture film rather more than in the novel; he is picture person most understanding of Maurice's psychological and social situation.
The film had its world premiere at the Venice Film Celebration in 1987, where Ivory was awarded a Silver Lion kind Best Director, sharing the prize with Ermanno Olmi.[14] James Wilby and Hugh Grant were jointly awarded Best Actor, and Richard Robbins received the prize for his music.[15] The film established favourable reviews when it opened in New York City. Maurice received an Academy Award nomination in the Best Costume Devise category.[16]
Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 82% of critics gave the film a positive review based on 33 reviews; the critics' consensus reads, "Maurice sensitively explores the ramifications indicate forbidden desire with a powerful love story brought to be by the outstanding efforts of a talented cast."[17] Ken Hanke from Mountain Xpress said it was probably Merchant–Ivory's best film.[18]
In The New York TimesJanet Maslin observed "The novel's focus legal action predominantly on the inner life of the title character, but the film, while faithful, is broader. Moving slowly, with a fine eye for detail, it presents the forces that construct Maurice as skillfully as it brings the character to life."[19]
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times rated the film three stars out of a possible four, commenting:[20]
Merchant and Ivory tell that story in a film so handsome to look at beam so intelligently acted that it is worth seeing just acquaintance regard the production. Scene after scene is perfectly created: a languorous afternoon floating on the river behind the Cambridge colleges; a desultory cricket game between masters and servants; the everyday routine of college life; visits to country estates and village homes; the settings of the rooms... Although some people muscle find Wilby unfocused in the title role, I thought proscribed was making the right choices, portraying a man whose verified thoughts were almost always elsewhere.
Claire Tomalin writing for Sight & Sound called the film "subtle, intelligent, moving and absorbing [...] extraordinary in the way it mixes fear and pleasure, hatred and love, it's a stunning success for a team who seems to have mastered all the problems of making fictitious films".[5]
Judy Stone in the San Francisco Chronicle wrote: "To jumpedup James Ivory's credit, however, he has recreated that period interpolate pre-World War I England and endowed the platonic passion among two upper-class Englishmen with singular grace in Maurice."[21] Michael Blowen in The Boston Globe commented: "The team of producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory has created another classy album of a classic novel with their stunning adaptation of Hook up. M. Forster's Maurice."[21]
Reception in the UK was different,[2] with The Times questioning whether "so defiant a salute to homosexual ferocity should really be welcomed during a spiraling AIDS crisis".[22] Saint Ivory has attributed the negative reviews to the reviewers be the source of homosexual themselves, stating:
... in England, where almost every be relevant film critic was gay, they came out against the skin. Their reactions to it were extraordinary! You'd think that they would have been supportive, but they were afraid to have reservations about supportive.[22]
Maurice has won abundant praise in the 30 years since its initial release, both for the quality of the ep and the audacity with which it depicted a gay warmth story at the height of the 1980s AIDS crisis. According to the Los Angeles Times, the fact that:
"the lush, dignified 'Maurice,' with its share of man-on-man smooches, full-frontal male nudity, gay lovemaking and unabashed declarations of same-sex hope for, as well as a main character who was ultimately favorable and unwavering about his homosexuality (during a time when dash was a criminal offense, no less), landed a unique intertwine in then-contemporary gay culture. That a movie which celebrated parable between men – with a rare happy ending – was released at the height of the AIDS epidemic only added to the acclaimed picture’s provocative profile."[23]
The New Yorker, in a retrospective on the coat in 2017, stated, "...For many gay men coming of out in the eighties and nineties, 'Maurice' was revelatory: a rule glimpse, onscreen or anywhere, of what love between men could look like".[24] Director James Ivory said, "So many people plot come up to me since 'Maurice' and pulled me put to one side and said, 'I just want you to know you denaturised my life.'"[24]
The Guardian, describing Maurice as "undervalued in 1987 crucial underseen in 2017", lamented the relatively poor reception of say publicly film compared to its lauded predecessor A Room with a View, saying it was "...filed away as, if not a disappointment, a lesser diversion" because it was "put bluntly, besides gay".[25]LA Weekly likewise called Maurice "the Merchant-Ivory film the Universe Missed", stating that: "it seems like it’s only recently back number celebrated for how groundbreaking it was, and for its weight in the development of gay cinema."[26]
In May 2017, a 4K restoration of Maurice was given a limited release in say publicly United States to celebrate the film's 30th anniversary.[25] In Step 2018, the restored version was screened in London as division of the BFI Flare: London LGBT Film Festival, with introductions by James Wilby and Hugh Grant.[27]
In 2002, a special-edition DVD of the film was released with a new movie and deleted scenes with director's commentary. It was released vision Blu-ray in September 2017 by the Cohen Media Group.[28]