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...

Back to Reality (or What Passes for It)

"The Signora had no business to do it," said Miss Bartlett, "no business at all. She promised us south rooms with a view close together, instead of which here are north rooms, looking into a courtyard, and a long way apart. Oh, Lucy!"

Having once read Forster - or seen Merchant-Ivory, for that matter - I suppose any hotel room that looks out on water will inevitably call up visions of Lucy Honeychurch and her trying Cousin Charlotte. 

Our pleasant little rooms this past weekend looked out on the Bosporus rather than the Arno, but it was a gratifying view nonetheless, even if the Otel Stella Theodora lacked the cosy English charm of the Pensione Bertolini (not to mention anything as toothsome as Julian Sands in his prime.  Or Simon Callow for that matter, who was truth to tell always rather more my taste).  A short trip such as this one was can seem rather surreal on one's return, sudden and unwelcome, to reality; that feeling is perhaps amplified when the contrast between two places - the immense energy and history, layer on layer, in Istanbul, as opposed to the lethargic artifice of this invented Sandlandian semi-metropolis - is so great.

But here I am again, and while Mr. Muscato continues his little autumn jaunt, I return to the grindstone, a dubious pleasure allayed only by the ferocious joy of two small dogs.  What they'll do when the one they really care about returns later this week, I hardly dare think...