Henry James on Film

Inspired by rewatching The Wings of the Dove yesterday and being mightily impressed by the compression, Ian Softley's visual imagination, and the three central performances (and Elizabeth McGovern and Charlotte Rampling in smaller ones).

6 days to read 6 books and watch 10 films...

have seen 8, love Portrait and Innocents best. Campion in a squeaker.

maybe haven't seen Europeans too, so 7

I've only seen The Innocents, but it's fantastic.

the Merchant Ivory adaptations and Washington Square are the worst. My rankings:

Thte Heiress
Portrait
The Wings of the Dove
The Innocents

Still think that Portrait's banal opening, erotic dream sequence and Malkovich's hammy performance all travesty James, and the novel, and fatally undermine the good things in the adaptation (like Isobel's foreign tour rendered as a silent movie escapade, and the performances of Richard E Grant and especially Barbara Hershey).

Voted the Innocents, which is very nearly a perfect film.

I agreed, Ward, until I watched it again three years ago. I still can't erase Malkovich's miscasting, but the rest of the film is such an imaginative recreation of the book that I can't dismiss it.

travesty of a classic can be a good alternative

Bostonians is the one i like least

now THAT'S a travesty. The opposite of Portrait: one great performance surrounded by illiteracy.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

There are also the two time-travel films based on The Sense of the Past, Berkeley Square and The House in the Square (with Tyrone Power!) – never seen 'em, though.

Also missing - Celine and Julie Go Boating (partly adapted from James' short story 'The Romance of Certain Old Clothes') and four versions of 'The Aspern Papers', none of which I've seen - The Lost Moment (1947), Aspern (1985 - with Bulle Ogier, directed by Eduardo de Gregorio, who also contributed to the screenplay of C & J), Els Papers d'Aspern (1991) and The Aspern Papers (2010, which relocates the story to Venezuela).

Plus, a number of BBC TV versions, including an earlier Portrait and The Spoils of Poynton.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Only one I've seen is the Innocents. Only one I haven't read is the Golden Bowl — which I have a copy of, but time and whatnot, you know.

i will get to see this Aspern Papers version, perhaps

http://metrograph.com/film/film/1029/the-lost-moment

a forthcoming NY retro of note

https://quadcinema.com/program/pictures-of-polite-society-henry-james-at-the-movies/

The two De Gregorios are the must-sees here - jealous!

well they're likely the rarest, as i'd never heard of them before.

Also missing - Celine and Julie Go Boating (partly adapted from James' short story 'The Romance of Certain Old Clothes') and four versions of 'The Aspern Papers', none of which I've seen - The Lost Moment (1947), Aspern (1985 - with Bulle Ogier, directed by Eduardo de Gregorio, who also contributed to the screenplay of C & J), Els Papers d'Aspern (1991) and The Aspern Papers (2010, which relocates the story to Venezuela).

Plus, a number of BBC TV versions, including an earlier Portrait and The Spoils of Poynton.

― sʌxihɔːl (Ward Fowler), Tuesday, 13 October 2015 08:14 (three years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Is The Others with Nicole Kidman a version of the Innocents?

Nope

I've changed my mind about Campion's Portrait.

again? or you mean your previous upgrade?

I don't think the rest of the posters were aware that I like it now.

Right, not the Innocents it's the Turn of the Screw that it's part based on. Thought I remembered something along those lines from when it came out.

There’s a adaptation of The Beast in the Jungle coming that looks like it will be either interesting or unbearable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8m90oAmCok

not the Innocents it's the Turn of the Screw that it's part based on

now i'm confused... The Innocents is an adap of Turn of the Screw. The Others clearly owes something to the James story and the Clayton film, though it's "original."

In The Cage could be made into an interesting film.

xp I was getting 2 Henry James stories confused. I thought it was the Innocents because of a plot point that I don't want to give away.
Turns out it was Turn of The Screw

Right it wasn't 2 James stories it was 2 versions of the same thing.
I was remembering reading that it was based on a James story which i thought was the innocents. So now I see that that is a version of his earlier story. & like i thought this is a further variation.

Turn of the Screw = 1898 novella (or "beautiful and blessed nouvelle") by Henry James. James described it as "a trap for the unwary". Edmund Wilson was the first critic to suggest (in 1934, in a essay entitled 'The Ambiguity of Henry James') that the whole business is a "neurotic case of sex repression". The Oxford University Press edition of Turn of the Screw and Other Stories has an excellent introduction by T.J. Lustig that explores in some depth the usefulness and limits of this 'theory' - recommended reading.

The Innocents - derived at first from a stage version of The Turn of the Screw (not to be confused with Benjamin Britten's 1954 operatic version) by William Archibald, final screenplay by Archibald, Truman Capote (a tortoise called Gerald could only be his contribution) with additional dialogue by John Mortimer. The film treats the ghosts as 'real'. Quint, the 'monster' in the Turn of the Screw, is here played by Peter Wyngarde. Marlon Brando (!) plays Quint in Michael Winner's prequel to Turn of the Screw, The Nightcomers. I would also recommend Christopher Frayling's commentary track on the BFI DVD of The Innocents (he is good for example on the fabulous opening 'folk song' contributed by Paul Dehn, who amongst other things wrote film criticism, and the screenplays for Goldfinger and some of the Planet of the Apes movies. Really interesting guy - his partner was James Bernard, who wrote the music for lots of Hammer films.)

As Morbs sez, The Others is clearly indebted to The Innocents (and also to things like Robert Wise's The Haunting, which again has some of the same general atmos, but is instead based on a Shirley Jackson novel rather the Henry James) but is nominally an 'original' (and has iircc some significant differences to Turn of the Screw.)

The Others is more indebted to film adaptations of James than James, I'd say.

Pretty insulting to James to see it otherwise

I've also read 'The Romance of Certain Old Clothes' an earlier and much more straightforward supernatural story by James, one of the sources for Rivette's Celine and Julie Go Boating (hence its inclusion in this season - in fact, the film only vamps very lightly on the James story in the 'dream' sequences with Bulle Ogier).

ghastly reviews for this new one

https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-aspern-papers

woaoow!