SCAD announced the news quietly last week on the Savannah Film Festival Facebook page, so I’m not sure word has really gotten around that actor Julian Sands is coming to town. He’s not being officially honored like Jeremy Irons and others, but he’s on his way, and he’ll be doing a public Q&A after the screening at 9 a.m. (early!) on Saturday, Nov. 2 of the Merchant-Ivory classic A Room with a View.
When I noticed A Room with a View on the schedule, I first thought that maybe director James Ivory was coming back to town. A couple of years ago, he screened The City of Your Final Destination here, and, several years earlier, the late Natasha Richardson appeared at the festival for a screening of Merchant-Ivory’s The White Countess. Those are both excellent films, but they never found the audiences that they deserve.
And it would make sense if Ivory made another trip this way — Savannah native and filmfest advisory board member Gil Donaldson has been a friend and colleague of Ivory’s for many years.
Some of Ivory’s more recent films may not have found the audiences they deserve, but A Room with a View sure found its audience after being released in 1985. For many of us, the unabashedly romantic and funny story of Lucy Honeychurch was our introduction to the rich, nuanced world of E.M. Forster, of James Ivory, of Ismail Merchant, of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala.
Consider for a moment some of the people who worked on this picture.
Of course, there’s director James Ivory and his longtime partner and producer Ismail Merchant.
The adaptation of Forster’s novel won Ruth Prawer Jhabvala her first Oscar. She picked up a second for Howards End. Jhabvala is, I think, the only writer ever to win both an Oscar and the prestigious Booker prize. She won the Booker for Heat and Dust, a brilliant and challenging novel about desire (and many other things) that was also turned into a Merchant-Ivory film.
And then the cast:
Maggie Smith
Helena Bonham Carter
Denholm Elliott
Julian Sands
Simon Callow
Judi Dench
Rupert Graves
Daniel Day-Lewis
What?!! This is 1985, remember. (The film didn’t pick up its Oscar nods till 1987, btw.)
Day-Lewis was in one other theatrical release that year: My Beautiful Laundrette. Helena Bonham Carter had been in, well, almost nothing at that point.
Julian Sands has been an amazingly busy actor since 1985, but I don’t know if he’s ever been better suited for a role than that of George Emerson — Lucy’s impulsive, passionate would-be suitor — in A Room with a View.
Gonna have to try to get out of the house early next Saturday . . .