Washington Square (1997)

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Memorable, crazy movie

Brilliant and touching

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

I first saw "The Heiress" when it first came out. I was about 12, but old enough to be fascinated by the characters and the basic conflict. Wow! I read the James' book "Washington Square" about 30 years later. I was disappointed. It was a rambling story told by a busybody with none of the dramatic high points of The Heiress; it is Henry James" first novel and has none of the intriguing nuances of his later novels.This film stays closer to the novel than "The Heiress". Thus, it is much less of a drama. The attempt to do the book is commendable, but it is not necessarily the route to an entertaining film. Here, the characterizations are obscurely unmotivated (Finney), over-the-top (Smith), uneven and sometimes weird (Leigh), and charmless and off-putting (Chapin). The musical score is intrusive. All of this contrasts badly with "The Heiress", in which the characters had far more depth, authenticity, and appeal(certainly Morris and even the minor characters). This longer version attempts a better exposition of the characters' psychology. Good ambition but it fails. Take Dr. Sloper. A hard working, self-made man who despises Morris Townsend mainly because he is a self-centered loafer. It is not snobbery which motivates him, Morris is a gentleman, but his belief in merit and good works. He does love his daughter but she disappoints him with her shyness and inability to master much of life. He pushes her to manage better, but he is constantly frustrated. For her to marry Morris would be to shatter all he believes about how people should live. A bad guy? A good guy? All of this comes out in Ralph Richardson"s performance in "The Heiress.' Finney just seems like an nasty oaf in comparison.

I love Henry James books and Washington Square was no exception. I was very excited to see a new movie coming out, based on the book of that title. Jennifer Jason Lee is an exceptional actress and Ben Chaplin good enough to play the lead roles. Albert Finney is miscast and doesn't carry the role well. I wanted to shoot Maggie Smith....or rather her silly, insipid role. The real problem and what's lacking in this latest version is a good script, music, and direction.I fell asleep in the theater watching this long, drawn out and exceptionally boring movie. There are more pauses in the dialog than a Pinter Play. In the book I felt a deep caring for Catherine Sloper and her life. The movie had just the opposite effect. I also disliked the twist where her aunt has a sexual attraction to Morris. Eeeeeeeek. YUK.Watch it if you can't sleep, it's a definite snoozer. Don't watch it if you're depressed. You'll need Zoloft after this.Sure, "The Heiress" was exceptional with Olivia Haviland and Montgomery Clift in the title roles. The actor who played her father was on the mark as the uncaring, cold father....still grieving for his dead wife and hating Catherine for it. The movie was not faithful to the book but neither is this one.This movie was a box office flop. I have no doubts as to why.

Henry James is one of our clearest writers of dense phrases. Reading him feels like swimming through interesting bodies tightly packed in pomegranate flavored honey, desiccated down to smudges on a page, then reconstituted by the eye through memories of that sweet fluid. Like that.It was he who refined the notion of internal, contradictory dialog and sometime untrusted narrative. He's important to what we have in film.I thought of him recently as I am in a patch of good movies. I saw a Louis Malle film last night and the style reminded me of James: economical ambiguity. Clean, but open. And the night before that I saw a film of a novel by George Eliot and I recalled what James said of Elliot — that she had a horrible face, but he fell in love with her — this from a man who never married and whose ability to love is questioned. Reminded me of Catherine from this story.So I sought this out and was surprised to find Jennifer Leigh. She's a sort of female Johnny Depp. Though she is accused of being overlarge in her characterizations, I find her engaging in pretty much every project. This business of exaggeration to be real is tricky business, and excess works in many cases. Visceral commitment trumps delicate reality, because reality IS commitment.Here's the problem: this is a complex book, a braid of four galaxies of urges collected in four beings and squared off against each other. The contrivance is only in the setup: the tragic wheels turn ultra-realistically.The film does not, cannot, reflect this with anywhere near the internal view of the novel. But I liked it. One cinematic trick that used is that nearly every scene has something in the background. It may be an obtrusive object, but is as likely to be a secondary character with some non-secondary trait. Or some activity you see in the back and can't ignore even though the continuity of the narrative is in the foreground.And that foreground is embodied in four quite talented actors, each with a fundamentally different acting style. These actors were selected because their styles contrast with that of the characters. Leigh for instance is one of the most visibly confident actors alive, while Finney who plays the overbearing father, has a style based on obvious fear of being.It isn't quite James. But it is superb, and in its way superior to any Mamet film. The woman making this is anything but clumsy. Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

I got THE HEIRESS, and WASHINGTON SQUARE. I love them both, but prefer WASHINGTON SQUARE. I love the period style and costumes. In fact I have the VHS and asked ex hubby to put it into a DVD format because I am DESPERATE to get the ITALIEN WORDS OF the Italian Laurate Poet SALVATORE QUASIMODO "Tu chiami Una Vita". The couple sings this song (kind of also the theme song and used as instrumental in the film also) and it is also later song 2 x more by trained voices. Simply beautiful, sticks with you. If anyone can completely understand the Italian, please share the TEXT. I got ex hubby to put it on DVD mainly because I wanted to see the CREDITS, bookmark when the song is on and when the credits go to "Tu chiami Una Vita" which would be difficult with my system via VHS. Would it not be GREAT to go to the FILM Editors themselves to get that information, or see it also mentioned as music credits on the sleeve?? Karla