There was a darkness behind the film’s frivolity – Merchant Ivory and the making of A Room with a View

It starred the late Julian Sands as the dashing George Emerson, sparked the career of an 18-year old Helena Bonham Carter and was derided for being ‘Laura Ashley cinema’. What, asks Geoffrey Macnab, is it about the romantic comedy of manners ‘A Room with a View’ that still resonates so strongly with audiences?

Julian Sands and Helena Bonham Carter in ‘A Room with a View’ (Merchant Ivory/Goldcrest/Kobal/Shutterstock)

There is a moment early on in Merchant Ivory’s comedy of manners A Room with a View that has an obvious added poignance when you watch it today. The 1985 film, adapted from the EM Forster novel, opens in the summer of 1907. We are deep in the Italian countryside. The dashing, freethinking George Emerson (Julian Sands), on holiday in Florence with his retired journalist father (Denholm Elliott), has just impulsively kissed Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter) in a field.

Director James Ivory shoots the scene in a deliberately overblown fashion. Romantic opera music blasts away on the soundtrack as the young lovers, both dressed in white, enjoy their illicit embrace amid the tall grass and poppies. But then we hear the strident voice of the chaperone, Charlotte (Maggie Smith), who has stumbled on to the scene. “Lucy!” Charlotte shrieks and the romantic spell is broken. Lucy beats a furtive retreat. Moments later, everybody heads back to town in their carriages, but George stays behind saying he will walk. As he strides off alone, a violent storm suddenly breaks around him.

Earlier this week, when it was finally confirmed that Sands had died after going on a solitary hike in January on Mount Baldy in California, A Room with a View was the first film cited in almost every obituary of the actor. This was the only movie Sands made with Merchant Ivory, and yet, you could easily be forgiven for thinking he was a permanent part of their repertory company.