A Room With A View (Special Edition) [DVD]

This is a very enjoyable and easy watch with some relatively "young" actors and actresses. Maggie Smith and Judi Dench looking radiant in 1986!The cinematography around Surrey and Florence is beautiful, the casting, acting and script quite superb and the range of characters in this Edwardian love story is quite refreshing.It is a slow and gentle film but it is also ultimately kind and heartwarming. Will Miss Honeychurch choose passion or convention?This is what I would I would call a lovely Sunday afternoon film. The streaming quality is fine but I did have to change my TV down from my preferred vivid setting to standard, in order to cope with the films age and eliminate any unwanted grainy scenes.Recommended drink for viewing - A cup of tea in a bone china cup, with a silver spoon.Recommended snack for viewing - Victoria Sponge.I do not receive any payment or free goods for writing these reviews. I am just happy to share my views on my purchases with fellow like minded Amazonians in the hope that you may find it helpful.

For me, this classic film is a very good example of how bravery and strength of character sprinkled with determination and fortitude against a backdrop of snootiness, pomposity, and pretentiousness will ALWAYS win the day.Here we have an ‘Inner Realism’ film that focuses on ‘the observer within’ and explains that WE are our own OBSERVERS – but we do not know HOW to OBSERVE because we are so addicted to the external now-world that we haven’t mastered the SKILL of observation – and all the brain does is function out of RESPONSE instead of out of RATIONALITY and REASON.Although ‘Inner Realism’ has been used as a sub-text in opera and ballet for centuries to make strong points and deliver lessons in life through emotional turmoil, Chaplin was the very first to use the CINEMATIC medium to explore and exploit the ‘Inner Realism’ idea and you can experience this in ‘The Kid’; ‘City Lights’, and the timeless classic ‘Limelight’ - a style of film making far removed from Chaplin’s ‘The Circus’, ‘Gold Rush’, and the time-honoured satirical classics ‘Modern times’ and ‘The Great Dictator’.ASIDE: ‘Theme from Limelight’ is one of Chaplin’s best loved musical scores and it sits alongside ‘Smile’ from ‘Modern Times’ – sung by thousands and revered by millions.The hit shows ‘Les Miserables’ and ‘Phantom of the Opera’ (both coming up to their thirtieth year in the West End) use the potency of ‘Inner Realism’ - and the emotional ‘roller-coaster’ ride the spectator is taken upon probably explains why these shows are so compulsive and have run for so long.The film introduces us to Miss Lucy Honeychurch – a rich socialite wanting for nothing, displaying her passion for life (which she expresses at the piano), being stifled by Miss Charlotte – Lucy’s dictatorial cousin; nanny; governess; and now chaperone – a sad devious spinster who uses her scheming underhand tactics to enjoy a life of luxury; and uses her prowess to dominate Lucy – including breaking confidences to an ungifted but mercenary ‘pulp fiction’ writer who uses every opportunity to develop a storyline to sell books to the masses – even though her grammar and ability to write is atrocious – as witnessed later in the ‘book reading’ scene in the garden - a scene that is a gamechanger for what follows.On the way we meet Reverend Bebe - a gay vicar who uses his ministerial influence to gain access to Lucy’s gay brother Freddy; Mr Emerson - a wise and gentle, generous working-class man who speaks from the heart with no airs and graces, who graciously gives up his ‘room with a view’ to Lucy and her chaperone; his son George – a lost gentle soul who falls passionately in love with Lucy - and expresses himself with tenderness, compassion, and verve; and Cecil – a pompous useless ‘free-loading’ idiot who lacks strength and vivacity, who is seeking out a wealthy woman – any wealthy woman – whom he can marry so as to gain access to her fortunes and live the life that HE chooses – whom Lucy is set to marry – despite being passionately in love with George.The performances are sublime (Denholm Elliot is on fire and a very young Helen Bonham-Carter delivers a truly stunning performance as Lucy Honeychurch) and there is so much depth to this film.In it we see the deceit of people with hidden agendas and we learn that for the most part, people are wired to victimisation and suffering; people are wired to gloom and misery; and people are wired to stress and despair – and these feelings become their EMOTIONAL AGREEMENTS, and these emotional agreements become the BAROMETER OF THEIR REALITY – because one’s MENTALITY is ‘attuned’ to accepting that THIS IS THE WAY THAT LIFE IS because THAT is all that they know – unless they (we) are willing to CHANGE to bring POSITIVE outcomes to our lives through the DECISIONS we make and the ACTIONS we take!A LOT is said about the importance of having a POSITIVE attitude and treating people fairly to bring about a positive experience as we live our lives by always being BRAVE, facing adversity with positivism; and always remembering to evaluate opinions and situations and to ‘look before you leap’.There are so many fabulous scenes – the scene when Mr Emerson puts cornflowers into the hair of an elderly woman; the scene when George kisses Lucy in the barley field; the scene when Charlotte tries to get out of paying for a taxi; and the touching scene when George kisses his father as George prepares to move to London are just a few of the many many memorable bitter-sweet scenes that await you as the story unfolds.How does it all turn out? Well you will have to watch it to find out!To sum up dear reader: just get this fabulous film and watch it with a big box of tissues at hand!

This movie has always been a favourite. The production is sublime, beautiful and evocative of the novel.Quite a few reviewers seem to have the knives out for Forster, saying that he is a has-been, overrated, irrelevant and so on, or that he was obsessed with the disparity between the classes. Well, I have read that novel at least three times over the years, and I see none of that. I see where they might get that impression, but in my view they are missing the real story and meaning. Forster was not obsessed with class in this novel - he was using it was a device in the plot - an obstacle in the path of true love, which may win through no matter how you fight it. Anyway, that's the novel, this is the movie...The story follows the sexual awakening (or perhaps more accurately romantic awakening) of Lucy. On encountering the free-thinking Mr emerson and his son, George, her view of the world is challenged for the first time. However, the curious brooding and sudden wanton directness of George begins to unlock Lucy's passion - a passion hitherto revealed or vented only in her piano playing.The story continues with the growing love between Lucy and George, which is hindered by Lucy's preconditioning to do, say and be the right thing. Her outward rage at George, and her eventual match with the incapable and conceited snob Cecil Vyse (the exact opposite of Lucy), sets up the conflict for the final part of the story.Daniel Day-Lewis is tremendous as the awful Cecil. Anyone who has read the novel must surely see that Lewis has captured the character exactly. Helena Bonham Carter has received much flack for her acting in this movie, but to me she is utterly brilliant in the role. Her frowning discontent is palpable on the screen, and clearly shows her inner angst. This angst is, of course, at the hub of the story. Without it she is just a pretty girl discovering love. She is Lucy, just as Colin Firth is Mr Darcy. It is Helena's signature role, even if in later years she has tried to shake it off.The homosexual elements, coded in mention of "A Shropshire Lad" and so on, as well as in the more obvious naked cavorting in the pond (the pond itself being a metaphor) give the movie another depth altogether. This is, of course, all in the novel, there to be detected by the knowing reader. This is another mark of the movie's subtelty and sensitivity to Forster's work.If I have any criticism of the movie, it is that it misses out the chapters set in Rome (coming after Florence and before England). It may be that to appreciate the subtelty of the plot and its telling, one must have read the novel. There certainly is an advantage in having read it, but the movie holds up very well on its own terms.