So we watched the DVD once, then read the book (serially, we do not do parallel), then watched the DVD again, then this morning bought the 1985 & even more start-studded adaptation by Merchant Ivory. Oddly, I can see the full 2005 version on YouTube, but only snippets of the 1985 version.
The book was a rather nice edition from Penguin's English Library. Perhaps their Modern Classics range, well known in my youth, has been expunged by the marketing people. Having now read it, I don't think I had read it before, but I was struck by the parallels with the work of Forster's near contemporaries Lawrence and Huxley - including their shared love of Italy, a love which went beyond it being a cheap and convenient place for impoverished scribblers to live. Rather a big jump to Proust, also of roughly the same time, and an even bigger one to Joyce. Clearly a time when there was a lot going on.
A lot of gentle humour, for example in the titles of some of the chapters, a humour which does not fare very well in its translation to the screen. Then I was interested in old Mr. Emerson's talk of muddles and the need to avoid them, muddles, seemingly being, both to old Mr. Emerson and to Forster, the many avoidable idiocies into which get drawn. Not big disasters which are beyond our remedy, rather little disasters which, on a good day, we might have avoided. I associate to a worry of my own concerning the seemingly never ending drip of avoidable lapses in what I regard as proper & civilised behaviour. Again not disasters, certainly not felonies or mortal sins, but lapses none the less.
By way of analogy I offer the drive to Tunbridge Wells from Epsom. The last leg of this journey is through Southborough and on into Tunbridge Wells from the north. The main road on which we are heading south is generally quite busy and there are lots of side roads, from which vehicles do not have the help of traffic lights to get them out. So I try to remember to let people out, more or less free to me given the slow moving traffic in which I am travelling, and often get it wrong. So sometimes I only think to help in this way when it is too late and sometimes I do think in time but get it wrong and try to help in a way which turns out to be unhelpful. Sometimes I get it right. A parable of social life.
The adaptation, the 2005 one that is, was generally good and was certainly well cast. The main flaw, to my mind, was the invention of a new tri-partite ending: energetic sex in Florence, then death in Flanders and closed by romantically flavoured memory lane in Florence & Fiesole. The book ends much more quietly, on a promise, on the word rather than on the deed. Minor flaws included the overcooking of Miss. Lavish (the writer) and the exit of Cecil Wyse, with him being made to look improbably silly rather than dignified. We were confused on exit by talk of one Rafe Spall, having been entertained by Timothy Spall as old Mr. Emerson and I only learn this morning that the Rafe Spall who played the son of old Mr. Emerson, was the real-life son of old Mr. Spall and was named for someone in 'The Knight of the Burning Pestle', presently being done in or around the Globe Theatre.
The viewing was given additional interest by our having gone to Florence for a short break back in 2008, a visit which was covered in the entries for early October at reference 2. We remembered, for example, the Piazza della Signoria and its statuary, which got a good outing in the adaptation. But, oddly, we do not remember at all the road running along the north side of the Arno, a road in which the party seem to be staying in the adaptation. We shall have to go back to see, clutching our DVDs, rather than the Baedeker's which get outings in both book and adaptation. Or perhaps we will have loaded our DVDs onto our tablets so that we can really compare life on the tablet with life in the street.
Reference 1: http://www.psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/chateaubriant.html.
Reference 2: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/2008_10_01_archive.html.
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