Birthday Girl: Nothing Like a Dame

In this grim season, it is heartening to celebrate a birthday, and especially one of such a bracing and acerbic superstar. Seen in here in period splendor (and quite convincing at it, too), all hail Dame Maggie!

You Must Remember This

If you're looking for something to while away some time this fine spring weekend, I can't recommend anything more highly than spending time with the eminent British novelist Charmian Colston, her trying sister-in-law Dame Lettie, her faithful retainer Taylor, and even her rather odious "carer," the very uncaring Mrs. Pettigrew.

Farewell to the Woman Behind the Men

This being a ridiculous week, I've only just seen the obituary for Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, who went off in search of a room with a better view yesterday at the fine age of 85.

Jhabvala was the silent partner in the magical film duo-really-a-triad known as Merchant/Ivory, the writer whose work underpinned much of what was best in their mostly very, very fine work.  Of them all, I must confess that it's her first Oscar-winner that's still, after 27 years (!), my favorite - indeed very nearly my very favorite film.  A Room with a View must rank as one of the most remarkable film adaptations ever - at once painstakingly faithful to E.M. Forster's dryly sentimental (an odd combo, but that's how he strikes me) view of the world and an achingly romantic, utterly cinematic creation.  It's a luxury wallow in beautiful clothes and wonderful rooms and stunning scenery, yet the wit and discipline of Jhabvala's screenplay make it ring true in every moment.  Let this fateful sequence represent the whole, even if it omits two of my pet characters, the dear Miss Allens.

Filling out Jhabvala's script, of course, is one of the more treasurable casts one can imagine:  fresh-faced and still un-Gothed Miss Bonham Carter, Julian Sands at the height of his considerable looks, Denholm Elliot rumbling away as his eccentric father, Daniel Day Lewis bechameleoned into an Edwardian dandy, young Rupert Graves in a small but toothsome baby-brother part, Dames Maggie and Judi as the straitlaced cousin and unbuttoned novelist, respectively, and - nearly as beloved as the Allen sisters - infinitely charming Simon Callow as the worldly Reverend Beebe.

Jhabvala wrote many more films, many of them marvelous indeed, as well as a great deal of distinguished fiction, but if she'd never done anything but this, she would still be a film immortal.  I've decided not to think about her dying; I think instead she has, like the Miss Allens, gone on to Constantinople.  The title of her last screen adaptation, after all, was The City of Your Final Destination...

Trailer Trash: No Pinkies?!

Three decades before Mel Brooks took on Broadway (and triumphed, at least the first time out of the gate), Rialto favorite Neil Simon decided to tread the Brooksian route with a spoof of classic Hollywood whodunits.

The result, Murder by Death, may not be a great film, but it has a peerless cast, amusing situations, some funny lines (Maggie Smith really gives her all to "Where's my Dickie?"), and the peculiar spectacle of Truman Capote trying to be a movie star. Throw in unbridled hammery from the likes of Nancy Walker, Alex Guinness, and Estelle ("Murderpoo?") Winwood, and you've got a perfectly satisfactory night out. It's not Young Frankenstein, but then again neither is it (thank God) Won Ton Ton...

Images du Jour

I woke up this morning feeling rather Maggie Smith - wary, brittle, equally prepared to be amused or offended.

I had honestly forgotten how lovely she was when in Her Prime (and Miss Brodie's, although I think this is from the rather lamentable California Suite):

Even in her youth, a Dowager's touch with the pearls...

Her finest moment, still, seems to me her peerless Cousin Charlotte in that most approachable of Merchant-Ivory monuments, A Room with a View.

She is dithering, dictatorial, foolish, misguided, and quite, quite immortal. The scene at the end, in which she tells the Reverend Beebe (the very dishy Simon Callow) that "Lucy will not be going on to Constantinople" ranks with "Fasten your seatbelts!" as a favorite movie vignette.

Cousin Charlotte, here with Miss Eleanor Lavish

Now that she plays mostly crones and witches (and some of them very well - her old Queen in Richard III is fantastic), it is too easy to forget what a sophisticated and fetching young thing she was:

Feline and sleek even in a bubble cut...

All Hail Dame Maggie, Queen of the Dubious Pause and the Withering Double Take!