Just watched "Maurice"

He's also beautiful, and full-frontally nekkid, in "A Room with a View." God bless E. M. Forster and Merchant-Ivory.

R1 beat me to it, but yes, OP, go watch Room With a View toutes affaires cessantes.

Ah, memories. One of the first gay films (and book) that I procured for myself as a teen. The book was good too and beyond its time although it wasn't published in Forster's lifetime.

The novel was my guilty pleasure in my early-teens. I thought I hid it well, but one day it was gone.

My mother, who routinely went through my things, never mentioned it.

I've got Room With A View saved to computer to watch later today. I'm sad, though, that it doesn't have as much Rupert in it as Maurice.

But! I also think he looks better in Room With A View than in Maurice. Not too keen on the shaggy hair in the latter.

[quote]I'm sweating and hyperventilating at Rupert Graves' beauty.

You sound a thousand years old.

MARY!

Yes, but it's a better-looking Rupert, and the film is just a pleasure for the eyes...

Swim by the lake

You see! Exactly R6. The hair is better in Room With a View. In fact, how is it that I do not yet own any of these movies??

[quote]The novel was my guilty pleasure in my early-teens. I thought I hid it well, but one day it was gone. My mother, who routinely went through my things, never mentioned it.

I don't remember it as being a very sexy novel--it's no Lady Chattelerey's Lover.

It's weird your mother was treating E. M. Forster as porn.

[quote]You sound a thousand years old.

You sound like a dumb twink.

"Different For Girls", anyone?

Scudder!

r1, my son, Maurice, looks beautiful nekkid.

And, Hugh Grant has never looked better. Not a fan, but he was dreamy

"Chatterley's," I meant--I mistyped.

Sorry.

I have a chat with Rupert at the stage door when he was appearing as one of the stars of "Closer" on Broadway in 2000. It took a few minute to get into a real conversation about the play.

Back then and particularly a decade earlier, I am sure he was constantly approached by gay men who associated him with the films we have mentioned, especially "Maurice."

He is smart guy, but that did not translate into a huge amount of work as he got older. Too bad.

But wouldn't a mother who routinely goes through her son's things have no idea about Maurice and just ignore it?

It's not like it was an issue of Inches. You probably just misplaced and then lost it.

R10, I doubt it was about 'porn'. Being gay is just as bad for homophobes as porn.

R6 His hair in ARWAV is stunning.

I love ARWAV. It changed me. I cried in my room after watching it. It came on tv very late and I was the only one up then. Very emotional evening.

R18 has it right. As for Rupert Graves, he is a great actor. Like him very much, although I've only seen him in 3 different productions.

Believe he does theatre mostly, doesn't he? He seems like a great guy.

The other production I saw him in was A Handful of Dust. It's very good, Kristin Scott-Thomas plays the inconsequential mother of a son she barely sees while she is in London cavorting with Rupert Graves' character.

He was excellent in "Clapham Junction".

R7, I'm 25. Ha!

Ah, yes. He was handsome and magnetic and a bit feral. Earthy and sensual. The way he is introduced in the story adds to the obsessive feel as well. It's like Maurice can't escape.

And leave it at that.

Rupert has matured into a handsome DILF.

Many critics, Roger Ebert among them, said the ending of "Maurice" was too unrealistic based upon class blah blah blah. Really? How many Regency romances have their been with straight people? How many ridiculous Cinderella stories are out there that critics never said that about?

But that's Hugh Grant, R24.

How many of us would rewind to see Scudder's dick flick up and then into his pants as he put them on?

Is anyone else intrigued by Rupert's eyes? I used to think they were too intense in Sherlock but I like them now. In one interview I read, the writer described his eyes as 'baleful.' It's true that they have a kind of threat/menace in them but not in a scary way--they just make me go, "Whoa!"

[quote]I'm sweating and hyperventilating at Rupert Graves' beauty.

Pussy.

The preview/trailer for "A Room With A View" featured the guys fully nude. Skinnydipping. Remember being very yoing, seeing that, completely unexpected.

And wanting to be friends with Graves' character, go off to have a "bath" in the woods with him, as though there was nothing remarkable about it.

**sigh**

Daniel Day Lewis is almost unrecognizable as the doofus in "Room"...

You are right R26 .

For me, the example that spring to mind is My Man Godfrey. Tsk! This het couple won't last a month!

But people don't worry about that, they take the movie for what it is.

They should do the same when the love story is about a Gay couple.

Of course they probably wouldn't last as a couple R26. That's another story. Either Forster or ivory said so before. But that's the end of the film.

Hey OP, BBC is reporting Rupert Graves has been cast in Last Tango in Halifax

Now, we shan't never be parted.

[quote]Many critics, Roger Ebert among them, said the ending of "Maurice" was too unrealistic based upon class blah blah blah.

Forster said in the preface to the novel that the entire point of it was the happy ending: he refused to have a novel about gay characters that ended poorly (he even dedicates the novel "To a Happier Year"--meaning to the day when gay men can live together openly). But he would have admitted it was unrealistic--he could not imagine how in 1913 two gay men of Maurice's and Scudder's classes could live together, and so he has them more or less vanish into the forest.

World War I is looming on the horizon. I was hoping Alec would go to Argentina and be safe!

I always thought they moved to France since it was suggested by the Ben Kingsley hypnotherapist earlier. I did read some time ago, possibly even at DL, that they also could've lived as a couple where Scudder would've been his gardener or a chauffeur. I don't remember was it Forster's own suggestion. But I guess he did say that he deliberately left out the coming war.

Personally I didn't like the book that much since I saw the film first. Along with Brokeback Mountain it's been the only gay movie that has seriously shaken me to the core. The first time I saw Maurice I cried half an hour after the end.

You can see Rupe's fat uncut babymaker in DIFFERENT FOR GIRLS, in nice close-up.

The story Maurice was actually inspired during one of Forster's visits to Edward Carpenter. Edward was a posh, intellectual, well educated british gay man who had a live in poorly educated working class life partner, George. They were together for decades, then George died. Carpenter did essentially go off and live in the woods (a rustic farm), but he met George there rather than running off with him from the city. He was an independently wealthy guy who was very progressive on personal, health, political and social matters.

The story was triggered off in Forster's mind by George touching him on the lower back. It was clearly a big deal to Forster although he thought it was just a casual normal thing for working class George. I don't know how much off the amazement came from chilly upper class social conventions versus Forster's long time suppressed sexual urges, but either way it's rather sad.

Carpenter and George were very bold and free for their day, and it seems like they were Forster's only real contemporary model for a fully realized, permanent, successful gay domestic life.

It's a favorite at my apartment complex. Women seem to love it. The story's the thing. I especially enjoy Hugh Grant's character.

There's a good "Looking back on making the movie and on the movie's impact" documentary on youtube.

Hugh Grant is just as fake in his interview as his character is in the movie.

The great thing about "Maurice" was that it showed gays as the adults and the heteros as children playing dress up in a world they didn't really understand, with Durham's wife afraid to look at his body and so on. That was the first time that this truth of modern society was broadcast in such an accessible form.

ha, I was one of those gay guys who tracked him down in London (well, I was already there, not really stalking). Could not believe that the staff just pointed me backstage after a show where I met him. He was gracious but not much to say and then a looooong walk together back to the front of the house, ha. I bet he was thinking, "Another one who thinks I'm Scudder. Oy"

P.S. Vanessa Redgrave was in the same show and I can't believe they just let strangers go backstage like that. But different time and not much violence like that in England then. (The Salman Rushdie thing might've changed that).

Forster had a thing for working class men and somewhat naive ideas about them. His long term relationship was with a married policemen whom he integrated into his social set. The cop survived him and was integral enough to his estate that he contributed to the lack of public disclosure about Forster' sexuality after his death.

As for Graves, he is a very good actor and if he isn't pursued by guys who fell in love with Scudder, he probably also gets fools who think he's the other, untalented Rupert (Everett), the ex-hooker and sometime actor.

Just watched Fatal Attraction and now I'm afraid to have an affair!

OP here: would they really have been sent to war though? I could see Scudder being sent considering his class but would Maurice have been in danger? Were rich men drafted too?

It's so sad to think that they risked their lives to be together only to be sent to war and killed.

English men of all classes fought-and died-in the First World War, r48.

This movie came out the year I was born. I've seen it many times and it's still one of the best gay movies ever made imo.

A great great great stripped down gay movie in the vein of MAURICE (romance, falling in love, pastoral setting, class differences) is HAWAII (2013). It's by the same director (Argentinian Marco Berger) as PLAN B which was well liked in a long thread here at DL. The lead actor in PLAN B (the gorgeous Manuel Vignau who played Bruno) is also in HAWAII.

I can't recommend it highly enough. Most agree as the reviews at the link attest.

Not to hijack the MAURICE thread, a book and move that I love (it would have been perfect with Cary Elwes as "Maurice" instead of James Wilby), here is what I think is a pretty spot on review of HAWAII, though I would have given it 5 stars easy.

Fav Merchant Ivory Film .... just beautiful in ever way.

Are we all aware Graves is in the Benedict Cumberbatch Sherlock series?

R54: Yes, although I thought he looked best in season 1 when his hair was longer. Didn't like the season 3 buzz cut that much.

Ivory said years ago that none of the stars of Maurice were gay. It turns out he didn't know about Rupert. He has admitted to at least one gay relationship in his life in the last few years. He explains it away that it wasn't a success sexually for him. That guy he was with has never come forward, nor has the press found him.

[quote]He is smart guy, but that did not translate into a huge amount of work as he got older. Too bad.

I thought he looked quite good in "V for Vendetta"... I'd still swoon for him.

I think one of the most beautifully filmed gay themed movies from that time is "Another Country." It's also where so many great actors got their start.

Hawaii is a dull movie about men so caught up in their own shit they couldn't talk to each other as grown ups if their lives depended on it. In that respect, it is true to life.

Graves has never sought stardom. He's done well for someone who just wants to be a working actor.

R51, Hawaii is practically a remake of Plan B, if not in screenplay then at least in spirit. I thought the director would've moved on from not really showing anything gay happening which was the case with Plan B but no such luck. It was same old long stares into nothing in silence, dull moments and overall vagueness. I'm not saying those films are bad (not that they are that good either) but Maurice is in every possible way above them that I wouldn't mention them in the same sentence with Maurice. And those films are just completely different from Maurice.

James Wilby was perfect as Maurice. Cary Elwes was in Another Country and possibly played a gay guy, I don't remember anymore because I didn't like the film and only saw it once.

I saw Rupert many years ago in a London West End revival of David Rabe's Hurly Burly. I guess it was the late 1990s?

He was awful and not at all sexy as a nasty heterosexual macho creep. Horrible production. I was so disappointed by him!

That movie made me understand romance and the fantasy of films. I was 17 and immediately ran out to get a Maurice haircut - very dramatic swoop over my right eye.

Later dated the guy that cut it.

One thing I didn't understand while watching the film: was Maurice as rich as Clive? I guess it's a minor point but I was curious the whole time as to what Maurice's station was. He didn't seem as rich as Clive and his family but he clearly wasn't broke either.

R64, I always understood that Clive was from a bit higher up and richer family but that is based mostly on Clive's house and lands looking bigger than Maurice's house, which we don't actually even see that much. Clive also appeared to be famous because Ben Kingsley's hypnotherapist recognized his name from Maurice's letter, if I remember correctly. But he was in politics.

I don't remember if this was already discussed here but at Wikipedia there's information about the original ending Forster first had for the novel:

[italic]In the original manuscripts, Forster wrote an epilogue concerning the post-novel fate of Maurice and Alec that he later discarded, because it was unpopular among those to whom he showed it. This epilogue can still be found in the Abinger edition of the novel. This edition also contains a summary of the differences between various versions of the novel.

The Abinger reprint of the Epilogue retains Maurice's original surname of Hill throughout. The epilogue contains a meeting between Maurice and his sister Kitty some years later. Alec and Maurice have by now become woodcutters. It dawns upon Kitty why her brother disappeared. This portion of the novel underlines the extreme dislike that Kitty feels for her brother. The epilogue ends with Maurice and Alec in each other's arms at the end of the day discussing seeing Kitty and resolving that they must move on to avoid detection or a further meeting.[/italic]

[quote] He is smart guy, but that did not translate into a huge amount of work as he got older. Too bad

Are you joking?

Rupert Graves has been in virtually every episodic British television series. He's a posh cheating husband, a middle class murderer, a lower class policeman. He's Everyman.

I've got a bit of a crush on James Wilby. He was so beautifully innocent in that movie.

I found MAURICE rather underwhelming. Perhaps it's a nostalgia thing (I'm not sure I was yet born when it came out). I felt the same about PARTING GLANCES. I should probably give the novel a try.

Maurice and Parting Glances are two completely different movies, obviously, with one a period piece having a happy ending, and the other a contemporary piece having an unhappy ending.

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be, and has noting to do with either of these films.

I still fantasize about Scudder.

Yes, the accent, the shyness, the devotion, the hair, and (most importantly) the masculinity. Scudder is a character for the ages.

When he confronted Maurice at his workplace...and eventually said something like “Oh, I could never do that to you sir...” That scene sold me on their romance.

[quote] My mother, who routinely went through my things, never mentioned it.

Did she rub her lady parts when she read it?

How this gayling knew he was gay.

This was the first movie I saw as a kid (watched secretly on cable) when I KNEW.

I was overcome by the nude scenes.

Rewatching it later, I wasn't surprised. Hugh Grant and James Wilby were just beautiful.

R74, I hope your fainting couch was nearby!

Yes, R75, and I masturbated all over it.