Room With A View - 1986

A Room with a View is a 1908 novel by English writer E. M. Forster, about a young woman in the repressed culture of Edwardian England. Set in Italy and England, the story is both a romance and a critique of English society at the beginning of the 20th century. Merchant-Ivory produced an award-winning film adaptation in 1985. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked A Room with a View 79th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. The 1985 British drama film directed by James Ivory and produced by Ismail Merchan is a close adaptation of E. M. Forster's novel, and even uses his chapter titles to divide the film into sections. The film stars Helena Bonham Carter as a young woman in the restrictive Edwardian culture of turn-of-the century England and her love for a free-spirited young man. Maggie Smith, Denholm Elliott, Julian Sands, Simon Callow, Judi Dench, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Rupert Graves round out the principal cast. Elliott and Smith were nominated for Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, but lost to Michael Caine and Dianne Wiest from Hannah and Her Sisters.