screenplay has no lapses of any kind and never falls into the usual traps. Loyal to its source material and yet, cinematic in the most revolutionary traditional sense of the word. The Britishness of Anthony Hopkins character is turned upside down giving us a glimpse into a character that's a mass of contradictions. But it is Emma Thompson's film from beginning to end. What a glorious achievement.

characters, especially of different classes. He captures attitudes of the time to near perfection. A cinematic treat.

audience and forces us to confront even our own class discriminations! Well worth a VHS or DVD rental; sorry I can't give any comments on DVD extras as I borrowed this free from our local library. Keep a copy of the book handy and notice the masterful interweaving done by Ruth Prawar Jandhlava. Life when fully realized is about much more than consumerist illusions and brief "ownership" by a selfish few. The novel's Motto is "Only connect" and the hard-thinking viewer of this great film will be enabled to do that as well !!!

the Hubbards lite. Their mother is the class of the family and she's played by Vanessa Redgrave who is in poor health.While Bonham-Carter is rejected by Hopkins's son James Wilby as a suitable wife for marriage, Vanessa befriends Thompson finding her to be a kindred intellectual spirit in a house full of moneygrubbers. In fact before she dies she writes an unsigned note asking that a cottage that's in her family's name called Howards End be given to the Schlegel sisters. When Hopkins and the rest of the family find the note after she's dead it gets torn up and burned. Unsigned it has no probative value in any event.But as fate would have it Thompson and Hopkins get into a relationship and they soon marry and she tries to polish some of the rough edges off him. Especially in regard to snobbery. Hopkins is the kind of man who wants no reminders of where he came from. Particularly with another of the Schlegel sisters friends, a young clerk named Leonard Bast played by Samuel West trying to make his way in the world as the Wilcoxes have.Emma Thompson won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Howards End that year and the film also won Oscars for Art&Set Direction and for adapted screenplay. Though Thompson won the Oscar, my absolute favorite in this film is Susie Lindeman as Mrs. Dolly Bast. She's so incredibly common and obviously holding him back, you can't blame West for eventually getting involved with Bonham-Carter which leads to tragedy.The team of Ismail Merchant producer and James Ivory director succeed again at bringing the look and manners of Edwardian England as seen by E.M. Forster to life. Who says they don't make literate films any more, whoever says that have them see Howards End.

is based on a novel by E.M. Forster. Even though I haven't read the book, the story itself is impressive, and it seems like Ruth Prawer Jhabvala took full advantage of it, making the movie extremely believable and understandable. Of course that are maybe parts of the book missing, but the overall effect is great. It's one of those movies that you don't want for it to end, it could easily have another hour. That's why I find the ending very unsatisfactory, since it doesn't explain what happened to some of the main characters, and a few things are just weird. The script has also a few flaws, but they doesn't tear up the whole experience.There's really nothing to talk about the acting in this movie. Only that its's absolutely marvelous. The cast features names like Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, Vanessa Redgrave and Helena Bonham Carter, and they are all great. There are also not so well-known names that do a nice job, but they don't obfuscate the glow of these stars. It seems like an acting contest, where everyone is a winner, especially the audience, that is able to witness one of the best overall cast in movie's history. Everything here feels so real and natural.This excellent acting and story really sets the mood, but it wouldn't work with a weak director. A thing that James Ivory absolutely isn't. In order to direct this great cast and conduct this incredible script, James Ivory never lefts the audience feel bored or with that feeling that the movie never ends. There are some really intelligent angles and shots here, some of which you'd never seen before. That's right, James Ivory got to be original in 1992 ! . Every other aspect of this movie is perfect. The set-decoration and art- direction put you into that period in history, and the photography, along with the soundtrack composed by an original music score and well- known classic songs, the mood here couldn't be better.Overral, this movie is an incredible adaption. The excellent script, along with a perfect acting and incredible direction, set-decoration and art-direction, makes this movie the perfect representation of Victorian England. 9/10

Leonard has been left in a low-paying job, believing that his previous place of employment is going out of business. Instead, the place booms. Margaret and her sister Helen, who set up Leonard to receive Henry's advice, feel responisble and Margaret demands that Henry give Leonard a job. Henry's refusal leads to great tension in the Wilcox household.Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson star in this Merchant-Ivory production. Their fantastic chemistry, later used to brilliant effect in "Remains of the Day", a Merchant-Ivory masterpiece, is evident throughout. Hopkins has a way of making even his posture pretentious and condescending. He bends at the waist, as if looking down on everyone, and his sense of overwhelming confidence makes him easily hateable. Emma Thompson is just the opposite. She is warm, welcoming, and open to everyone.It is when the two meet that things get really interesting. Thompson's Margaret is someone that Hopkins' Henry can not bring himself to look down upon, and his confidence breaks. The conversation in which Henry proposes perfectly shows Henry's true self: unconfident, bad with words, and afraid to be turned down."Howards End" is a great film; a scathing critique of hypocrisy and classism, and at the same time a tale of a man who is too afraid to be himself, and a woman who refuses to be anything but herself. It's richly and densely layered, with a complex story. Under the direction of James Ivory and with the incredible acting ability of everyone involved, Howards End is a triumphant adaptation of E.M. Forster's novel.

you get the best interpretations, the best performances, admirably shown in so many films made on both sides of the Atlantic. If Vanessa Redgrave has long since been a legend among British actresses, Emma Thompson is no lesser performer, and as to the pedigree of Helena Bonham-Carter there can be no arguing. Anthony Hopkins is at least up to the mark in his always sober readings in these kinds of films.The Bonham-Carter family were well known in the fashionable circles of 1930's London high-society life, for their extravagant soirées and philanthropic sponsoring of young artists, especially musicians, similarly to the Sitwell family from their Chelsea home. Thus it is hardly surprising that Helena Bonham-Carter finds these kinds of rôles admirably suited to her - A Room with a View, anything Shakespearean, among other select `comedies'. Prunella Scales is a grand old lady of theatre, cinema and television, and I can remember her offerings back in the late fifties-early sixties especially on radio programmes. Beautifully filmed in mostly Oxfordshire and in several places in London, the film also has a few scenes on the coast, possibly Dorsetshire or more probably the south coast of Devon, surprisingly not included in IMDb's very detailed listing of locations. Richard Robbins' music seemed to be heavily influenced by Philip Glass at times, which seemed a misfit, though it was nice to hear a few snatches by Percy Grainger, as well as a version for four hands on the piano of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, possibly one of those tremendous transcriptions which Franz Liszt carried out.The dialogues are mostly exquisitely delivered, with that peculiarly British panache and timing, though slightly spoiled in this recent re-viewing as there were some untimely cuts on the copy in question. However, the story holds its line and is faithful to E.M. Forster's original concept. He has long been one of the greatest of British novelists, with such works as `A Passage to India', `Where Angels Fear to Tread' and `A Room with a View' to his credit, for serious readers of real literature.This film version maintains that seriousness for people interested in real play-acting.

great actors, especially when they are together.If you like period pieces - this is 1910 Edwardian England - along with fabulous sets and scenery, a solid cast, and an involving story, you'll like this. If you are a fan of melodramas then you'll really, really like this!

master of small scale, James Ivory.Both of Forster's stories offer no dramatic relief in the end: in Passage we are left with an unresolved mystery and justice only partially rendered; in Howard's End we have, really, no mystery, with justice only partially rendered. Alas, such is the integrity of Lean and Ivory, that we remain frustrated in the filmed versions.As to Howard's End, in particular, one thing that you should be prepared is perhaps the most tragic character in the history of film, maybe even of literature, that of Leonard Bast. He is tragic in the classical sense of having a nobility which makes him morally superior to his nemesis, Henry Wilcox, but also possessed of hubris, in the form of false pride, which leads to fatal consequences. His sympathetic sponsors, the Schlegel sisters Margaret and Helen, are part of the Greek chorus, plaintive but ineffectual at the hands of the millionaire god, Wilcox who, like the British Raj in India, dismisses charity with an imperious "The poor are the poor, and one's sorry for them — but there it is." What makes Bast's tragedy so excruciating is that his fate is not in the hands of blind sisters at a spinning wheel, who have no idea where they cut the strand of life, but in the hands of presumably free agents, who are or should be conscious of and conscientious about the consequences of their acts but are not. Helen, the one character who is indeed possessed of these qualities, is marginalized by Henry's Zeus and Margaret's Hera, whereupon she withdraws to Germany, where folk are, if nothing else, conscientious.There is a major problem with Howard's End, the film, for which I deducted a point. Leonard Bast's wife, Jacky, is a strong character, who is allowed to develop in a major scene. However, for some reason, Ivory chooses, at a fatal moment, to make her just disappear, so that we're left at the end wondering why those who are so concerned, out of decency, about Leonard, seem to have discarded Jacky, as if she had never existed. Jacky's character demands some kind of resolution, tragic or otherwise, but I have the feeling that Ivory just didn't want to deal with her, an attitude not unlike that of the Wilcoxes and, alas, the heretofore sympathetic Schlegels, who finally have copped out.I deduct another point because this is an irredeemably morose film. It is an important film, with an important point to make. It is also a moving film, with a superb cast and a faultless production design. But like another film in which Anthony Hopkins stars, Shadowlands, there is a pathos so intense that it is almost physically painful. So the question becomes, is the point a film makes so revelatory as to make it worth the pain of watching.The irreconcilability of the social classes is a great debate and makes for great literature. Howard's End and a Passage to India certainly make for effective lessons in Forster's gloomy side of the debate. Whether you want to sit through the lessons more than once is another question.Note: I see that the rating of this review isn't very positive. Undoubtedly the film queen brigade resent their precious porcelain vase being touched.