Eldergays, tell us about Merchant & Ivory's 'MAURICE'

James Ivory, last year, speaking about Maurice...

I thought it was a bit treacly and fetishistic but then it's Merchant Ivory. It was gorgeous and I thought nasty Hugh Grant was at his tastiest when young.

Saw it last month at the BFI, while visiting London. I'd never seen it before that and liked it. That said, I can see why it was overlooked at the time even though almost everything Merchant and Ivory touched in the mid-80 seemed to translate into a critical and commercial success. It came on the heels of more relevant gay movies such as "My Beautiful Laundrette" and "Prick Up Your Ears". It must've felt very quaint and restrained even 30 years ago.

Such beautiful boys. Maurice himself. Scudder.

Hugh still looks okay. Wilby, not so much.

Do British people really pronounce that name "Morris"?

Yes, R6.

What short memories you all seem to have. Brokeback Mountain caused a huge fuss with Academy voters and you think Maurice was ignored because it was mild? Because there had been edgier gay movies? Really? During the AIDS epidemic when homophobes declared AIDS was God's retribution on sinful sodomites? When Hollywood still thinks gay stories don't need to be told because we've already made a couple of them?

If only that rule applied to comic book movies.

I loved this movie!

Maurice suffered at the time because Another Country came out with a hotter cast. But that was just not a great movie and has not held up through the years.

I forget which reviewer talking about the revolutionary plot, R8. You were allowed to have beautiful boy characters, but they had to die hideous deaths. As a book written for himself, Forster gives the main characters a bucolic landing.

Too bad they couldn't have gotten Rupert Graves to be part of that interview. He's aged somewhat better than both James and Hugh, though I guess he'd be a few years younger.

and the beautiful rupert graves

Actually I see "Another Country" was three years earlier.

Merchant and Ivory really knew how to cast and then shoot those gorgeous young men in all of their films. They're all stunning!

The clips over on Youtube of the scenes between Wilby and Graves all seem to have added music, so I won't try to link to them. This clip at least has the original dialogue. Even though there's no kiss, no nudity, it's very sexy.

I saw it in a theatre. I've always found Hugh Grant to be amazingly handsome, but, back then, he wasn't just handsome: he was beautiful. Rupert Graves was incredibly sexy. But the idea of an upper-class Englishman taking up with a game-keeper just seemed so far-fetched and absurd. I was only later that I read about other examples of combinations like that, and now, it doesn't strike such a false note to me. I used to think it was just EM Foster's wish-gratification, but it wasn't just his.

The addition of 'Miserere mei, Deus' to the soundtrack elevated everything. I think Merchant and Ivory knew how precious this story was to EM Foster, and, as long term partners, wanted to impart a certain solemn, sacred quality to it. 'A Room With a View' has a rather jolly feel to it, while 'Maurice' takes its subject matter more seriously.

[quote]But the idea of an upper-class Englishman taking up with a game-keeper just seemed so far-fetched and absurd.

hahaha, you really should read more

All rich queens used to love high-low romance. Even real queens.

Didn't Rupert not too long ago say in an interview he wished he hadn't come out because he would have had a much more successful career if he hadn't? Too late for me to google it.

wrong rupert, that was everett, who is gay, not graves, who is not

R20, Not so fast.

[quote]And homosexuality is not his thing? "I've swung between two per cent and 38 per cent gayness, I think, something like that, in my life."Has he ever had a gay relationship? "Um, yes, one. I realised I wasn't gay because the only way I could really enjoy it was to close my eyes and imagine a woman. But I had issues to sort out and I felt like experiencing stuff."

I stand corrected, r20, you are right.

I don't know what you all are on about. Hugh has aged very well -- the guy's almost SIXTY. He's a full on zaddy. The fact that he never had any hesitation about taking on a gay role -- even at the height of the AIDS crisis -- makes him even hotter.

Anyway, here's Rupert talking about Maurice

i said rupert graves was not gay, i did not say he was not bisexual, which exists in the real world if not in DL

R23, Thanks, that was beautiful.

I still think it's odd being set in 1914 because there clearly is NOT going to be a happily ever after with the war and all.

Watched this a few months ago and enjoyed it.

Rupert's ass was a thing of beauty.

I'm going to add something historically relevant. As I posted upthread (I'm R16) I thought such unions were unlikely. But I wrong, and I'm happy for the correction.

[quote] I still think it's odd being set in 1914 because there clearly is NOT going to be a happily ever after with the war and all.

Forster finished the book in 1913. He had no knowledge of WWI coming--even people who thought there was going to be a war in the Balkans had no idea it was going to be the size of conflict it became (which it why it was often called The War to End All Wars in the 1920s).

One in seven British young men died, but that did not mean either Maurice or Scudder (or Clive, for that matter) necessarily would have died in the conflict.

OP Must've been Robbins with Merchant

OP Jhabvala declined to adapt the novel because it’s a very small story plot with none of Forster's socially-aware profundity.

R2 Hugh Grant was tasty in the first half and nasty in the second half. You could tell because he had a pretty hair style in the first half and an unflattering one in the second.

R5 James Wilby was delicious then but his skin is now like parchment.

R26, R29 I’m not sure why you talk about the war because Morgan Forster’s letters about this flimsy story say it was based on his brief meeting with the charismatic homosexualist Edward Carpenter and his sensual verse—

“Sun burning down on back and loins, penetrating the skin, bathing their flanks in sweat, Where they lie naked on the warm ground, and the ferns arch over them, Out in the woods, and the sweet scent of fir-needles Blends with the fragrant nearness of their bodies…"

[quote] OP Jhabvala declined to adapt the novel because it’s a very small story plot with none of Forster's socially-aware profundity.

She declined saying she did not what it was like when only two men were in a room by themselves.

I saw it in the theater - I even remember which one: the Clay in SF, which was a single-screen. It was the weekend it opened and the theater was packed. I was utterly enchanted and I still have a major soft spot for the film.

Maurice must be placed in context in terms of Merchant-Ivory's collective career. They were coming off of A Room With a View, the greatest commercial and critical success in their decades of filmmaking. The big studios were courting them at last, they had offers up, down and sideways, and they chose to use their new cachet to make a movie about a gay man finding love, losing it and then finding it again...with nudity and love scenes more daring than even more recent films have braved, and a happy ending, all at the height of the AIDS crisis. It was NOT viewed as 'quaint and restrained' at the time, not at all. It was a completely badass move.

There have been multiple reasons given over the years for why their usual screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala didn't write the script for this one. At the time, the official explanation was that she was too busy completing a novel she was working on, and that she felt this was very 'male' material that would be best suited to a male screenwriter. (James Ivory recruited Kit Hesketh-Harvey as his collaborator because Hesketh-Harvey was from that world of upper-crust schools and Cambridge, and Ivory thought he would have insight that Ivory, an American, wouldn't.) Then in later interviews Ivory said the reason for Jhabvala sitting it out was because she felt Maurice was a lesser work of Forster's and didn't think it was worth doing. Now with these quite recent interviews with Wilby and Grant, they're claiming that she was apparently icked out by the ghey, which I find truly odd considering her long friendship and collaboration with Merchant and Ivory and their assorted crew of regular collaborators who were also gay. I really don't know what to think at this point. Obviously she just didn't want to do it.

Forster himself, many years after completing the novel, acknowledged the unlikelihood of a happy ending for Maurice and Scudder, due to WWI. But Ivory has said he was determined to give the story a happy ending, no matter what. He did not want anyone to die at the end of the movie.

[quote]which I find truly odd considering her long friendship and collaboration with Merchant and Ivory and their assorted crew of regular collaborators who were also gay.

It's not really that odd. There are straight people who can be close friends with gays while still (without admitting it) being uncomfortable with, or 'squicked out' by, the physical aspect. They do not want to delve too deeply into it, let alone write a same-sex love scene. Anyway, interesting and informative post, R33. I love the movie too.

of course forester could not have foreseen in 1913 what the next five years would bring so the facts of the impending war do not negate a "happy ending" in a work of fiction

isn't the implication at the end of the movie that they will emigrate to a place where gay is not a crime (italy, france, argentina?) if so they could have avoided wwi conscription.

"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. 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. 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." Wiki

Won tickets to a screening in Dublin recently. Fell in love with Scudder, who in real life,Rupert Graves, is by his own admission Ihas had a gay relationship.

[quote]OP Jhabvala declined to adapt the novel because it’s a very small story plot with none of Forster's socially-aware profundity.

That would explain not writing it, but it would not explain refusing to watch it, a film by her two best friends. She was probably OK with gay men at dinner; just not in the bedroom. I know the type, and do not care for them.

I do think the film improved on the book. In the book, Hugh Grant's character magically, conveniently becomes straight. In the film, he is more realistically shown as an opportunistic, sad closet case.

Jhabvala is no surprise.

Remember how Jews turned on gays during Bush II by turning us over to the fundies and spraying contempt all over us via Broke back Mountain?

This continued into the Obama administration with Jews throwing gays under the bus except for "allowing" us in the military to fight for Israel's benefit and by trying to geld us into marriage norms.

It is not uncommon for homophobic straights to be able to maintain a relationship with gays for business reasons. For instance, to continue to get work writing screenplays for an essentially gay outfit.

Yes, they can sustain a "friendship." For business reasons.

And they can say the right things, politically and socially. For business reasons.

And the gay people involved forgive the bad feeling, For business reasons.

They're simply doing what is necessary to hold on to a job that means financial security.

I'm not saying that this is what was happening with these people. I've no idea what the psychological transaction was.

But there are situations--if not this one among Merchant and Ivory and their writer--where this hypocrisy obtains.

Incidentally, does anyone know if this Kit Hesketh-Harvey is one half of the performing duo Kit and the Widow? I saw their show in London a long time ago. Sport of a campy Flanders and Swann.

Yes, it's the same Kit, R39. There is a bit of attention to Maurice at the moment because it's being remastered and rereleased.

Jhabvala has written several short stories featuring gay and --especially--lesbian characters. "Poet and Dancer" contains an explicit sex scene between two teenage female cousins, and there's another story I recall about a butch/femme couple living together in a rural area. Gay characters pop up often enough in her work for loyal readers to notice.

Just because she puts her hands on gays and lesbians doesn't mean she actually likes them.

Think of Harvey Weinstein ejaculating on little blonde girls.

Was a good film years ago when it came out, and still it. Simple.

Jhabvala was not some homophobe who refused to collaborate because she found the material objectionable or too limiting. These are stupid and spurious claims and not based on reality at all.

And I've never heard of Merchant or Ivory, who were a couple in life and art, having a piece on the side, but maybe one of them did. It's OP's pronouncements as facts that are the issue I have.

OP really is young--and I don't mean in years.

R44 - what on earth are you going on about? It's not my pronouncement -- Hugh and James speak about Robbins being "with" either Merchant or Ivory during one of their apparent "off" periods in their relationship in the video in the first post. I'm not sure why on earth you think they'd make such a thing up.

[quote]And I've never heard of Merchant or Ivory, who were a couple in life and art, having a piece on the side, but maybe one of them did.

BOTH of them did - multiple pieces - and that is straight from James Ivory himself, who discussed it in a Daily Beast profile back in February. It was an open relationship and both had other lovers, both short-term and long-term within the relationship. A number of them ended up working with the Merchant-Ivory team. It's not clear which one Richard Robbins was involved with, but it wasn't during an 'off period' - there was no off period. It was simply a non-monogamous relationship. But it's not surprising if Hugh Grant and James Wilby weren't completely clear about the personal goings-on with Merchant and Ivory. The relationship sounds labyrinthine, to say the least.

In the profile Ivory mentions one of these long-term lovers, a married man with kids who had been a friend for years before he and Ivory became involved, and who then began working with the team. After the Wilby and Grant interview I wondered if this was Robbins, but I haven't been able to find any evidence that Robbins was ever married to a woman. He did have a longtime male partner at the time of his death in 2012, though. Somehow I think it was probably Merchant that he was involved with, but that's just a hunch.

R16 I love that Hugh still gets ribbed about the squeaky wicker chair.

I'm not EG, and had to read/watch MAURICE for HS English classes. The chair had us all cackling at the time. Now I'm out of school though, I see why it worked to fill the scene with that strange unpleasant sound, instead of a quiet bit of the ominous score (or with dead silence). It shows how acutely on-edge Maurice & Clive are.

I bought a Kindle version of all of EM Forster's novels. Maurice was not included.

I don't think any of the omnibus collections of Forster's work being offered include Maurice - they seem to only have the works that are in the public domain. Maurice was written in 1913/14, but wasn't published until after Forster died, in the early 1970s, so it's not in the public domain. You'll probably have to buy it as a standalone e-book if you want it.

No-one really talks about it but I adore the friendly feeling still there between Grant & Wilby as they chat, and that they vaguely knew of and quite liked each other from the Oxbridge actors’ circle before they started work or even got the job on MAURICE. There’s something terribly sweet about it. I wonder if they had stayed in close touch before the MAURICE anniversary, or if they’re just now speaking again?

My favorite anecdote about the two of them is how, in their eagerness to get the roles, they practised kissing & cuddling on Hugh’s sofa the night before the auction- only to have Hugh’s more-successful brother walk in on them and tsk politely and with no real surprise. They were both superbly cast in spite of their physical dissimilarity to the written characters (Maurice is darker and more solid of physique in the book, and Clive fairer).

I like the movie - probably more for the memory of the time and place in my life when I saw it for the first time, than actual "film" merit.

This teen ass was cut from the movie.

It's an overlong pretty movie which can't hide the paucity of E.M. Forster's short story.

R53 is audaciously faecetious, or simply hasn’t read MAURICE. It is a 300pg novel.

Poor Wilby, that beauty is long gone.

According to IMDB's trivia page:

[quote] King's College, Cambridge, permitted the production to film there after much consideration. The delay was not over the movie's subject matter, but due to the fact that many scholars consider Forster's novel an inferior work.

So the book wasn't well regarded and Stephen Fry was dismissive about the movie (can't recall the exact quote - something about rattling pots and pans or something).

James Wilby pops up in those quaint British Murder Mysteries every now and then (Midsomer Murders, Father Brown, Poirot, Death in Paradise, etc.). Always get a kick out of spotting him (oh, that's the guy from MAURICE!).

Call me Mary! but one of my personal treatures is the Criterion DVD release. And I still have the soundtrack CD.

Sorry, TREASURES

Fry is a jealous bore, R56. I’m glad M&I persisted and got the rights to film.

R56, I think he summed up all Merchant-Ivory films with "the rattling of teacups."

Neither I or my friends thought much of it. It was very lame and musty like most Merchant Ivory films. And we were hugely disappointed that sexy Julian Sands had turned it down, fearing the poofterism would affect his American career. Instead we got that other blond who looked like a young Evelyn Waugh. Hardly loin stirring. And Graves was very take it or leave it. We infinitely preferred Another Country — an instant classic. It was fully alive, and the meeting in the restaurant between Rupert Everett and Cary Elwes was perfectly played, and in fact, the most erotic scene in a film of that decade. That all the critics didn’t flag it as such only shows the intensity of homophobia.

Like all Merchant Ivory films, the approach and direction was just too prosaic. There’s something very motheaten about their output: only rarely do they come alive, like the famous hillside kiss in A Room With A View. One prominent problem was their perennial choice Helena Bonham Carter — a wooden actress of an awfulness equivalent to Keira Knightly. They also resorted to Lee Remick, another underwhelming performer.

All these complaints about it being dusty & longwinded & limping as a film...you do all realise that is contextually apt, don’t you? That was the fausty England of the time. Perhaps you have to be British to get it.

Did anyone go and see Wilby’s stage production of MAURICE in September? There’s no footage online, sadly.

R33 Jhabvala was a rather strange little bird of a person. Highly cerebral. Painfully shy. Very cultured, very sweet. Not social. One could not really get to her.

[quote]you do all realise that is contextually apt, don’t you?

If you think leaden is contextually apt, then it was so. Critics are uniform in their opinion — with the general exception of A Room With A View, that their films have an odour of formaldyede about them. A period film in the hands of a great director like Visconti can be as static as you like, but Mercant Ivorys rarely come alive.

I dont think Ruthie penned the script of Room, did she? There was a critical feeling after that that she wasn’t the right person for them: too stodgy, approaching the material like a Delhi librarian. Andrew Davies could have done wonders, like he did with the BBC adaption of Pride & Prejudice, or the woman who adapted Cranford.

r60, thank you. That's the expression he used. I completely blanked in my comment at r56.

[quote] blond who looked like a young Evelyn Waugh. Hardly loin stirring. And Graves was very take it or leave it.

In the novel Maurice is written as a homely, awkward, painfully average jock. He’s not meant to be a David, and is at most slightly strapping like boys who play cricket or rugby fairly often. Likewise Scudder is penned as rough-hewn peasantry, probably envisioned by Forster as cute trade at best. Only Clive is described as having anything like good looks, and he is not sexually-appealing or aware in the least.

I thought Maurice himself was such an asshole. He didn't deserve cute Scudder climbing into his window. At least as portrayed in this film.

R68, in the context of the time, however, when men lived in absolute fear of being discovered/outed, Scudder and Mourice would've been smart to jump on the opportunity to be together. In their minds, each of them might not meet another one "like that" for some years. It isn't like they had Scruff on their smartphones.

True but we were also supposed to believe the Hugh Grant character missed out by not allowing his love for Maurice to happen. And Maurice was so not a prize that it didn't work (Pauline Kael said that Forster himself admitted later he wasn't fair to the Grant character, took out a lost relationship on him. Damn, I used to know that character name so well. I am getting old).

I felt the same way about the Paki guy in "Beautiful Launderette" too, such a dick to DDL that I hated that he ended up with him in the end. Maybe it was a trend in the '80s British wave.

R68, in the book, Maurice is an obtuse and a mean-spirited petit-bourgeois. If he had happened to be a heterosexual, he would have been a merciless homophobe. Real love transforms him.

Also, I never understood those who needed to point out that in real life the Maurice/Alec relationship wouldn't last. It is fiction! Do we subject hetero fictious relationships to the same test ?

My example is always the movie My Man Godfrey. I doubt the wise man and the ditzy heiress are a good match and would last. But no one complains about that. We are merely entertained.

Hmmm... MMG would be an interesting gay adaptation...

Baby gay: why don't you see it and decide for yourself?

I'd love to see a gay My Man Godfrey...

“Maurice” changed my life. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It brought me out of the closet. It had a hugely profound effect on me.

[quote] I've heard it was more due to her feel that it was a minor EM Forester work.

Oh, [italic]dear.[/italic]

[quote]King's College, Cambridge, permitted the production to film there after much consideration. The delay was not over the movie's subject matter, but due to the fact that many scholars consider Forster's novel an inferior work.

People after our own hearts. Spoken like true DLers.

It's how I knew I was gay. It played on A&E — which was then a hoity-toity arts network — in 1988 or so. Uncensored.

I was in middle school and watched it alone in my parents' den. The frontal scenes made me run to the bathroom and masturbate immediately.

Rupert Graves comes accross as a bitter queen who thought he was destined for a greater career than he had. He also randomly (and unfoundedly I know) strikes me as a man who likes to get pegged by women or cross-dress. Just my 2 cents.

I thought the actor who seduces the other closet case via entrapment in the movie was hot. He looked like a bellman and they went out into an alley.

R67: in the preface, Forster explains that he actually made Maurice his opposite in many ways: physically attractive, athletic, unintellectual, and so on. I don't think he's meant to be plain at all, but quite handsome.