ITV's A Room With A View lacks sparkle

It was a piece of inspired programming from FilmFour surely, to broadcast the 1985 Merchant Ivory version of EM Forster's A Room With A View, just hours before ITV unveiled its own, new adaptation of the much-loved tale, featuring the sensual awakening of young Edwardian Lucy Honeychurch amidst the lush glories of Italy. However, FilmFour's scheduling decision was a poor one for ITV, serving only to highlight the stark difference between the two films. The Merchant Ivory version, which virtually epitomises 1980s Heritage Cinema as a nostalgic, sunkissed fest of chocolate-box prettiness, is rendered an exquisite jewel beside this latest ITV offering, which sadly comes across as bland and depressing, despite some strenuous efforts to inject fresh relevancy and context.

First and foremost, this latest adaptation has been shot in a darker palette compared to the brilliant hues of its Merchant Ivory predecessor. This clearly ensures a more sombre, even melancholy tone, which pervades this production, further encapsulated by an invented framing device, offering us a flash-forwards to 1922 when Lucy Honeychurch returns, solo, to the pensione where she first met her future husband George Emerson. This device moves full-circle, bar a few intrusions into the main narrative, closing the film with Lucy revisiting the cornfield where she and George first kissed, accompanied by - of all people - the Italian coach-driver who first steered the young Lucy towards her lover.

Oddly, Lucy and driver picnic together, hand in hand, reminiscing, although there is an unexpected, even unwelcome romantic frisson between the two, rendered all the more peculiar by the scenes preceding this moment, fading Lucy and George's frenetic honeymoon lovemaking into a ghastly still of George, lifeless on the battlefields of WWI.

In this sense, screenwriter Andrew Davies has certainly wrought a clearcut change between the frothy but warm Merchant Ivory picture and this new version. It has been hailed in the press previews as closer to Forster's intent, but is in itself a deviation from the source. Forster made it clear in an afterword to his novel, that George was a conscientious objector in the war - itself a clear political message if one was genuinely being sought here by the ITV producers. As it stands, George's death seems strangely tacked-on and unnecessarily gloomy, even though, it is obvious that Davies and Nicholas Renton (the tele-film's director) are making a clear statement about the transient nature of the Edwardian fin-de-siecle period - the bucolic calm before the ghastly storm which was soon to embroil Europe, destroying life after life, cruelly ending a multiplicity of love affairs.

This ITV production also chose to make Reverend Mr Beebe's homosexuality a little more explicit by way of a snippet of a scene where Lucy spies Mr Beebe talking to a couple of Italian guys in a shady Florence alleyway - inferring that he is trying to pick them up. Although this scene is subtly rendered and certainly adds to Mr Beebe's characterisation, the moment is slightly ruined by Lucy's clear, though unspoken recognition of the significance of Mr Beebe's actions, as she then appears a lot more worldly wise than would have been the case.

In one other crucial way, the ITV production also differs from the Merchant Ivory film, in that the Emersons - George especially - are shown to be thoroughly lower in class and standing than the Honeychurchs and their ilk. This is an important distinction to make, because Lucy is concerned by her attraction to George, in large part because, in comparison to herself and her class, he is 'common' and works as a clerk for the railways. In the Merchant Ivory production, Julian Sands, while determinedly wooden in his acting abilities, certainly glowed with physical prowess and gilded good looks - appearing every inch the patrician, a far cry from Rafe Spall's cockney characterisation in the ITV production.

But yet again, despite ITV's best attempts to offer us some kind of veracity, a real insight into Lucy's fear of George, Spall's George is uninspiring and altogether charmless. This is a very real shame. In BBC 4's Wide Sargasso Sea, Rafe Spall made for a hugely charismatic young Rochester, but his appeal falters badly here. And as A Room With A View is, foremost, a love story, this failing is particularly affecting.

It doesn't seem fair to draw too many comparisons with the 1985 film in terms of actor choice per role - after all, each new adaptation should be taken as a fresh reading, a novel interpretation of the source material. But the Merchant Ivory film is so powerful a picture, comparisons are inevitable. On just about every level, the ITV tele-film falls short.

Sophie Thompson, for example, is a fine actress, but here, her take on Charlotte Bartlett, when compared to the inimitable Maggie Smith in 1985, is woeful. She stammers and giggles, a cross between her own version of Miss Bates in the 1996 Miramax adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma, and her comedic (and hugely successful) Mary Musgrove in the BBC's 1995 Persuasion (also Austen). As a consequence, her Charlotte Bartlett feels ill-defined and ineffectual.

Timothy Spall is another marvelous actor, but his Mr Emerson feels workmanlike and laboured when compared to Denholm Elliott. Judy Dench in 1985 also made for a better Miss Lavish, the breathlessly excited romantic novelist, compared to Sinead Cusack in 2007. And what was Elizabeth McGovern doing? She might as well have faxed in her performance in the role of Mrs Honeychurch.

For me, the greatest absence was Daniel Day-Lewis as Cecil Vyse - one of my favourite comic acting performances of all time. Sure, he was a parodic figure of fun, and Laurence Fox's latest version offers, arguably, more of a genuine romantic choice for Lucy. But, boy, was Day-Lewis missed! I could hardly bear to watch Fox. Rather than an effete, book-loving smarm, Fox came across as someone desperate to play a 'lad', and bore the air of someone who was injured, and therefore unable to play tennis with Freddie, rather than someone who would rather immerse himself in a book.

As for Lucy herself. Elaine Cassidy was absolutely fine in the role. She lacked the arch sweetness of Helena Bonham-Carter, but she acted rather than pouted, which could only be a good thing. Except ... I have actually grown a lot fonder of Bonham-Carter's stilted performance over the years - and now respect her acting talents too - but Cassidy certainly brought more innate drama to Miss Honeychurch. And yet I still missed the 1985 Lucy - buttoned-up and wide-eyed with surprise at the unexpected emotions roiling through her. In the ITV production, Cassidy was a little too shrewish, too sharp and far too knowing - especially sexually, as made evident by the blatant ogling between Lucy and George.

Nicholas Renton tried to demonstrate Lucy's rejection of overt sensuality in alternative ways. There is a prolonged sequence where she gawps at the naked forms of the classical statues thronging Florence's piazzas. The scene, which seems to be a direct smash and grab from Joe Wright's 2005 Pride and Prejudice, where Elizabeth Bennet finally confronts her erotic nature and her attraction to Darcy while gazing at naked statues, is intended to signify Lucy's own sensual awakening, which she then markedly rejects when she refuses to buy a postcard depicting the familiar naked form of Michelangelo's 'David'.

Overall, direction was perfectly serviceable, and there were a couple of noteworthy performances, in addition to Cassidy herself. Timothy West's pompous Reverend Eager was spot-on and Mark Williams was fine as Reverend Mr Beebe - a less hearty and rather more serious portrayal compared to Simon Callow's brash buffoonery in 1985, although there was a gently wrought sensitivity hovering just beneath the surface of Callow's Beebe which was enormously endearing.

Italy made for a lovely location of course, although this was a shadowy Florence and Santa Croce was remarkably devoid of crowds. Summer Street was a pleasantly pastoral English locale, and we lost London altogether, meaning we lost the delightful irony of Cecil smugly enticing the Emersons to Summer Street himself, after encountering them in the Italian art section of the National Gallery. We gained Rome, however, when Lucy and Charlotte visit the Vyses.

The 1985 film placed greater emphasis, it seemed, on the aesthetic qualities of Forster's work - both in a filmic, visual sense and also through its interpretation of the novel, stressing the difference between those characters that languished indoors - by extension more inward-looking, bookish and repressed - and those who ventured more outdoors, indicating a more forward, progressive nature, thrusting towards modernity rather than the past and tradition. The Emersons, Freddy and Lucy are shown to revel in the outdoors, and Lucy is peeved that propriety has cooped her inside more than she would like.

The 2007 version seemed to place less emphasis on this particular binary, focusing, laudably it should be said, on the class differences between the Emersons and the remaining cast (except the Italian coach-driver, although his inflated role only serves to enhance the theme of inter-class reconciliation). There is one particular scene where Miss Lavish and Charlotte Bartlett hoot with disdainful laughter at George Emerson's professional association with the railways. Their snobbery is unseemly, and Lucy herself is disgusted.

It is a shame that with so much wanting to be 'said' in this production, the sum of its parts is a letdown; a bland, slightly miserable potage. There is a melancholy mood throughout, which does little to engage the viewer, most especially as this sobriety isn't even juxtaposed with sunny, sensual warmth, which would have served to enhance the narrative's poignancy. The musical scoring from Gabriel Yared has been much-praised in reviews, but the plaintive piano pieces only added to the uneasy sense of melancholia in a way that depressed rather than enlightened.

It is unnerving that the sparkling technicolour Merchant Ivory production, glorying in its sentimentality and featuring the thrilling, resonating strains of Puccini's 'Chi Bel Sogno' from La Rondine as the lovers first kiss, is ultimately more poignant for me than ITV's darker, one-note production, which strives far too hard to emphasise that the much-fabled halycon pre-war days of Edwardian England were soon to draw to a horrific and shocking close with WWI. The glowing lustre of the Merchant Ivory production expressed this in less stark terms and without the unnecessary addition of George's staring corpse, abandoned in no-man's land, because the beauty that film captures is unreal, removed and wistful. Forever lost, because we know the 20th century was a brutal place, a cruel time, and that the sharp pangs of nostalgia we experience are ultimately for something that was never really there.

A Room With A View to air on ITV on Nov 4th

ITV's adaptation of EM Forster's A Room With A View is set to air November 4th, on ITV1 at 9.00pm. The trailer looks promising enough - lots of high drama and high octane kissing action, but definitely darker than the famous 1985 Merchant Ivory version, which launched Helena Bonham-Carter's acting career. I loved the earlier film, despite its being a piece of frothy, nostalgic whimsy, set in sun-soaked Edwardian England and a gloriously luminous Italy, and even with an abysmal Julian Sands as Lucy Honeychurch's young love interest, George Emerson - the eponymous Merchant Ivory 'heritage' film. Almost defining a genre unto itself.

I'm looking forward to Elaine Cassidy in the main role. She is a very fine actress, if a little older than I would have hoped for the youthful Lucy. I especially loved her work in the BBC adaptation of Sarah Walter's Fingersmith. Rafe Spall should make for an interesting George Emerson, and I look forward to seeing his real-life father Timothy Spall playing his fictional father too. I particularly welcome Sophie Thompson, a splendid actress, in the role of Aunt Charlotte. (Although she has a lot to do to face off the wonderful Maggie Smith).

In truth, this version really needs to give it some welly to face off the 1985 version, which never fails to delight.

The ITV production has Andrew Davies as the screenwriter (no surprises there) and Nicholas Renton directing.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: REVIEW

Finally … a long overdue review of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (‘Phoenix’), directed by David Yates, which was released mid-July.

This was yet another resounding commercial success for Warner Brothers, although there didn’t seem to be the same ‘buzz’ for this movie as others in the series – partly perhaps because publishers were poised to release the final long-awaited installment of JK Rowling’s septology, and partly I think because Phoenix was one in a long line of what has felt like chronic sequelitis this Summer.

I enjoyed this particular outing of the Harry Potter franchise more than any other movie in the series bar one – Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, directed by Alfonso Cuaron, which remains the high point of the series and is an outstanding movie in its own right.

Phoenix’s director David Yates has a hugely respectable career in TV. Indeed, State of Play (2003) and the Trollope adaptation, The Way We Live Now (2001), are, to my mind, two of the best televisual experiences of the decade. Warner Brothers gambled, to some extent, on Yates. Phoenix is his first major Hollywood movie – and boy, what a baptism of fire, taking on one of the world’s best-known and best-loved heroes (Harry), orchestrating the cream of Britain’s acting talent, and handling a blockbuster budget.

Yates copes admirably well, truly rising to the challenge. Phoenix is a superbly crafted film, darkly atmospheric, successfully relaying the often convoluted narrative of Rowling’s rather bloated source with concision and style.

Indeed, Michael Goldenberg, the screenwriter in this instance, deserves kudos for tackling Rowling’s rather over-stuffed novel, adapting it into a manageable 138 minutes, without us losing any of the substance or flavour of the original.

In many respects, this novel out of all of Rowling’s Potter instalments, was probably the most suited to Yates’s talents. There are strong political overtones resonant throughout, as the Ministry of Magic exerts quasi-fascistic controls over the wizarding world, most especially at Hogwarts, the school of magic attended by Harry Potter and his cohorts.

The primary focal point for this statist repression is Dolores Umbridge – to my mind Rowling’s most fearsome villain barring none. She is the classic everyday baddie who dogs everyone’s day to day lives, using the rulebook as an excuse for exercising excessive power. Indeed, she revels in wielding power for its own sake.

In Phoenix, Umbridge is portrayed with supreme nastiness by Imelda Staunton – one of Britain’s finest actresses. She sports cuddly pink cardigans and her office wall is festooned with meowing decorative plates featuring cuddly little kittens. But she is a vile, inhumane creature, prepared to torture Harry – who is notably still a minor – with a punishing quill, which etches whatever is written into the writer’s skin. Harry is subjected to an eye-watering detention where he must write one hundred lines using this same pen. It is a chilling scene, well portrayed in this movie, representing what is in fact a more prolonged period of torture in Rowling’s novel.

However, in Phoenix it is Voldemort, played here by Ralph Fiennes, who emerges as the scariest villain of all. This was an interesting reversal on the novel. Indeed, Voldemort, in my opinion, is one of the weakest links in Rowling’s series. But in Yates’s film he takes on a new and frightening dimension, most especially in one invented scene, where Harry is convinced he sees him, in ‘Muggle’ clothing, watching him at Kings Cross Station.

Credit must surely go to Fiennes too. He often plays smooth gentlemanly types, and it is all too easy to forget his star turn as the psychopathic Nazi Amon Goeth in Schindler’s List, where he emanated real, stomach-churning evil. He carries this same sinister sense into Voldemort – although notably not in the Mike Newell-directed Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which was a real mess of a film.

Similarly impressive in the baddie department was Jason Isaacs, playing the wondrously unctuous and pernicious Lucius Malfoy. Sadly we only get a brief outing of Isaacs’s considerable talents during a climactic Ministry of Magic sequence, when Harry and his loyal troupe of teenie friends (known here as Dumbledore’s Army) are forced into a terrifying confrontation with Voldemort’s ‘Deatheaters’ – masked enforcers of his dark magic and strong proponents of his racist drive for ‘pureblood’ supremacy in the wizarding world.

Meanwhile Helena Bonham-Carter makes for a delightfully insane Bellatrix Lestrange. Her wild Gothicism is such a far cry from the demure English miss of 1980s heritage cinema. She truly has become one of Britain’s cinematic treasures.

As for the remaining cast. Much has been made of Daniel Radcliffe’s improved acting skills in the role of Harry Potter (most particularly since his famous debut on the London stage in Peter Schaffer’s Equus), and there is much to be said here for how Radcliffe carries Potter’s intense psychological journey in Phoenix with considerable aplomb.

His supporting star and best mate in the narrative, Ron Weasley, is played again by Rupert Grint. I have harboured doubts over Grint’s acting abilities. I positively loathed his constant mugging and jaw-dropped gawps in the earlier films, but he has matured splendidly.

The same cannot be said, however, for Emma Watson, who plays Hermione Granger, who seems to closely adhere to the Keira Knightley ‘Wooden’ school of acting; forced, shrill, over-emotional, ridiculously posh, emitting this strange little panting sob whenever she is required to emote, or indeed, act – it was most disturbing. This is such a pity, because to my mind, in Cuaron’s Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Watson was the finest of the trio, by some distance. I genuinely thought she had the acting chops to outshine her co-stars. But both here, and in the immediately preceeding Potter film, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Newell, 2005), she has faltered badly.

The remaining cast turn in solid performances, however fleeting, which is so often the case with these action-packed films, seemingly over-stuffed with characters. However, mention must be made of Evanna Lynch, the young Irish actress who has taken on the role of loopy Luna Lovegood. Her scenes with Harry are intensely touching, the emotional highlights of the film, excepting a moving collage of flashbacks experienced by Harry, when he fights off Voldemort in the Ministry of Magic, and all seems lost.

The film itself boasts strong cinematography, retaining the darker palette now commonly associated with the Potter franchise. The opening sequences are particularly impressive, depicting a Dementor attack on Harry and his obnoxious cousin Dudley. I always relish the times in Potter movies when the magic world intrudes upon the ‘muggle’ world, and this is no exception. Yates excels at this spot of grim social realism – in this case a gloomy, graffitied underpass – and this, as a consequence, is the strongest section of the entire film.

I also enjoyed the scenes set in the Ministry of Magic, although the final duel between Voldemort and Dumbledore was a little too focused on close-ups, and could have fared well with wider visual exposition. Also, the emphatic moment when Sirius falls through the ‘veil’ was a little underwhelming.

Similarly, the CGi inclusion of Hagrid’s giant brother Grawp in the Forbidden Forest, adds little to proceedings.

We also see 12, Grimmaud Place, Sirius’s home and the headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix. It is a grimy, miserable old house, and the inclusion of Sirius’s mean-spirited house elf Kreacher, adds a little bit of black humour to proceedings. However, the film omits the shrieking, abusive portrait of Mrs Black, Sirius’s long-dead mother, which was something of a loss I felt in terms of her potential comic value.

Despite these failings, this is the second best film in the Potter franchise to date, offering a strong, coherent plot and Yates notably deploys some neat little cinematic touches: a flashback montage and the use of the Daily Prophet as a transition device.

Even so, it lacks the soul and magic, the cinematic artistry, of Cuaron’s earlier film, but it is a strong calling card for Yates’s obvious directorial talents.

Having said that, I am a little disappointed that Yates is taking on the sixth novel in the series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. This is partly because I rather like the idea of each film being directed by someone different, bringing their own ideas and personality to the mix. However, I am also unconvinced that the plot material will suit Yates’s more politicised sensibilities.

To my mind, the sixth novel is the weakest in the series, (I also dislike Book Four). Sure, it has a dark underpinning – Dumbledore’s death and Voldemort/Riddle’s back-story – but it is the frothiest, most hormonal of all the novels, and this, I think, will not fare well in Yates’s hands. The romantic histrionics will also lead to even more egregious acting from Emma Watson I fear. And I am also concerned that the strong focus on Draco Malfoy, will mean an abundance of Tom Felton, who is not the strongest actor in the series, in my opinion.

Perhaps Yates will coax career-best performances from his bright, young stars – I certainly hope so, especially in Felton’s case, as Draco’s subplot was to my mind the most gripping and emotional aspect of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Draco was rendered a truly intriguing character, with plentiful room for further development, and I was hugely disappointed that Draco’s role was not substantially enhanced in the final book in the series.

In sum, Yates’s directorial handling here is slick and competent, ensuring an enjoyable if slightly uninspiring film. For certain Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix has not lodged in my mind as particularly memorable, unlike the glorious third movie in the franchise from Alfonso Cuaron. But this was definitely one of the highlights of the Summer blockbuster season, although bested with effortless ease by Paul Greengrass’s high octane thriller The Bourne Ultimatum.