The Europeans

The first Henry James adaptation by producer Ismail Merchant, director James Ivory, and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, 1979's The Europeans is a visually lovely if often awkward tale of a mid-19th century New England family whose placid existence is challenged by the arrival of sophisticated relatives from abroad. Of course, the clash of cultures is a subject dear to the filmmakers' hearts, and the treatment of it here is dedicated if a bit stilted (the film is staged very deliberately by Ivory, using authentic locations that the cast seem compelled to treat as carefully as they would museum exhibits). While Lee Remick is almost outlandishly beautiful as the foreign baroness whose attitudes distress the more Puritanically-inclined Americans, she never sounds convincingly British. Still, though The Europeans doesn't equal the best of the later Merchant-Ivory collaborations, it does look bewitching in the lush widescreen transfer on this handsome DVD release that includes interviews with Merchant, Ivory, Jhabvala, and composer Richard Robbins, as well as the charming 1976 short film Sweet Sounds, in which Robbins documented the introduction of five-year old children to rhythm and melody at New York's Mannes College of Music. Recommended. [Note: three other Merchant-Ivory productions are also newly available on DVD: The Bostonians (1984, starring Christopher Reeve and Vanessa Redgrave), Bombay Talkie (1970), and Heat and Dust (1983).] (F. Swietek)