Where Angels Fear to Tread
by Charles Sturridge
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DVD details
Actor: Barbara Jefford, Helen Mirren, Helena Bonham Carter, Judy Davis, Rupert GravesDirector: Charles Sturridge
Brand: Image Entertainment
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; Italian (Original Language)
Format: Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 112 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-11-07
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Image Entertainment
DVD Reviews of Where Angels Fear to Tread
DVD Review: This Tale,is Ridiculous,Stupid and Beyond Belief!
Summary: 2 Stars
I give it 2 stars only for the great acting and breathtaking scenery. After viewing it,all I feel is YEAH,RIGHT!
I wouldn't watch this again,even for the beautiful scenery! It is too aggravating.
DVD Review: Where Angels Fear to Tread - At Long Last, EM Forster's Classic on DVD!!! A Subtle Gem!
Summary: 4 Stars
Where Angels Fear to Tread
"Where Angels Fear to Tread" is based upon the classic E.M. Forster novel and features an all-star cast. Directed by Charles Sturridge, this production is full of subtlety and imagery. While this classic has flown under the radar, it's now available on DVD for many more people to enjoy.
The setting, like many of Forster's novels, is Edwardian England. That is contrasted against a sun-drenched Italian countryside that acts as an escape for many characters. The cinematography is used expertly to highlight the smoke in the train station, the light in the air, the feeling of travel, and so many other indescribable feelings.
Helen Mirren is wonderful as a widow well past middle age who strikes out on her own path against the norms of society and her well-off family. She escapes to Italy for a passionate love affair that produces a child. Her family wants to retrieve her and her baby from Italy but tragedy intervenes. Her family goes to Italy ready to reclaim their kin only to be set off course.
Helena Bonham Carter is also a standout as Caroline. She too is romanced in her journey to Italy by both man and country.
The story unfolds with twists and turns that allows the characters to come to life in a way seldom seen on film. Forster's world view is carried to film seamlessly.
So many English novels have been brought to film in the past 20 years, its refreshing to see it done so well and respectfully as in this movie. Where Angels Fear to Tread (Penguin Classics) This is a very good movie that leave you wondering why you never saw it before.
Enjoy!!!!
DVD Review: Have No Fear
Summary: 4 Stars
Fans of the better known "Forsters" such as Maurice, A Room with a View, the works of Merchant and Ivory, and fairly similar A Passage to India, may be quite disappointed with this much more quiet and less colourful production. The story-line also offers less of a twist - this is EM Forster's first novel and he was still learning his trade. Still the movie is well worth seeing - the story and the beautiful images in dusky sepias as if taken from old photographs will keep enthralled you in front of the telly if only you can accept that the world changed immensely within the last century. A big bonus is a chance to see world-famous actors in roles not exactly identical with their current careers. DVD Review: Treads unsteadily
Summary: 2 Stars
While I am a huge fan of period costume movies and British literature, I must confess that this adaptation of Forster's novel has me stymied. A Passage to India and Howards End are beautiful, fluid films that masterfully balance the comedic and tragic aspects of Forster's work in a way that makes them accessable to everyone whether or not they've ever read one of his novels. Not so with the unbalanced and scitzophrenic Where Angels Fear to Tread--a movie that cannot seem to decide if it's a lush romance with a hint of comedy, or a grim, cynical satire of Edwardian morals. The first half comes along nicely with the wonderful Helen Mirren as an English widow who embarks on a trip to Italy and subsequently scandalizes her stuffed-up family by marrying one of the local boys. He's 21, she's in her forties. But when things start to go wrong for the new lovers, so too does the movie. Mirren's lover cannot be pinned down. One minute he seems to want her for her money. Then he seems to really love her. Then he adopts a brutish attidtude and roughs her up. One has the sense that the novel would have explained things better, but the movie's approach to character makes everyone's motives seem murky.
This is especially apparent in the second half when Mirren dies in childbirth and her repugnantly stuck-up family decides that the baby should be taken from its father and brought back to England. Here the plot becomes murky as Helena Bonham Carter (playing Ms. Abbot, Mirren's former traveling companion) beats Rupert Graves and Judy Davis (playing Mirren's brother and sister-in-law respectively) back to Italy to begin coercing the father into surrendering the child. How she thinks she can get away with adopting the baby herself is never explained and doesn't make sense. She's not family and Graves, Mirren's brother by marriage, is a lawyer who could easily sue her. The relationship between Graves and Bonham Carter's characters is not fleshed out enough for us to decide on their relationship to one another. She seems to be in love with him for half the movie but he's such a wet noodle mama's boy we can't see why. It's also hard to decide if Graves' character is as evil as the rest of his family (his mother is the one who decides to essentially buy the child from its father as though it were a painting not a person) or if, as the film seems to suggest, he longs to break free and be his own man. Anyone who would entertain stealing another man's child--especially after witnessing first hand how much the child is loved by its father--is morally bancrupt, but when Davis' character kidnaps the child he goes along with it even after we've been led to believe, by his stirring speeches about wanting to "be somebody", that he's become a better person.
WARNING: SPOILERS!
Uneven characters and badly excecuted plot points aside, the movie might have skated by simply on the rapturously beautiful cinematography and the occassional deep speech about human nature by Bonham Carter or Mirren, both of whom could make a dog-food commercial seem stirring. However, when the contested baby dies during the kidnapping, the event which ought to be the shattering point for Graves' conflicted character and for the entire Edwardian superiority complex he and Davis have so honored the length of the film....nothing happens. The father beats Graves up, then Bonham Carter induces them to drink some milk together and make friends. Hello! You people are responsible for the death of a beloved child! A little milk is not going to cut it! And yet, for some nebulous reason, it does. In Howards End Leonard Bast was killed just for impregnating a noblewoman. If he's killed a noble woman's child, the result should have been even worse. But at the end of the movie no one seems to feel very guilty and Bonham Carter even says that the child's father doesn't really care about the death either, even though his pure love for the child has given our misguided protagonists their biggest conflict.
I have not read the novel, but if it is as convoluted and uneven as the film, it comes as no surprise that Forster's other novels--and their subsequent film adaptations--are better known.
DVD Review: Lent, not gave!
Summary: 5 Stars
Finally, somebody does Forster to Film right. Actually, all adaptations have been very good, some great, but this is by far the most faithful and the most believable. "Angels" is a true tragi-comedy and has a cast that most directors only dream of. One flaw: the milk-drinking scene, which works well in the novel, pushes the theatrical envelope almost too far towards the end of the film. The only problem - how to do without it since it is necessary for the characters' reconciliation? Well, it's still a joy to behold.
Rustic and realistic, "Angels" does not have the fluffiness of Merchant Ivory's Forster adaptations, nor the largesse of Lean's "A Passage to India." It is just right. Charles Sturridge would have made Forster, who hated film, happy.
Description of Where Angels Fear to Tread
While traveling through Italy on an extended vacation, Lilia Heriton (Prime Suspect's Helen Mirren falls for handsome Gino Carella (Fiorile's Giovanni Guidelli) and, against the wishes of her family, decides to stay in Monteriano. Dispatched by self-centered relatives to retrieve her, brother-in-law Philip (Maurice's Rupert Graves) and chaperone Caroline Abbott (Corpse Bride's Helena Bonham Carter) discover startling news that will alter the course of two families forever. Based on the novel by E. M. Forster (Howards End, A Room with a View), this insightful, funny, and sometimes tragic look at the collision of two different cultures features astonishingly beautiful scenery, a haunting score by Academy Award-winning composer Rachel Portman (Emma), and a memorable supporting turn by Emmy-winner Judy Davis (Barton Fink).Where Angels Fear to Tread is a Merchant/Ivory production in all but name. Lilia (Helen Mirren, in fine form) is a wealthy widow on holiday in rural Italy with her companion Caroline (a dressed-down Helena Bonham Carter) when she falls for penniless local Gino (Giovanni Guidelli). Her horrified relatives promptly dispatch brother-in-law Philip (Rupert Graves) to break things up, but he's too late--she's already married and, in short order, gives birth to a child. Unfortunately, a happy ending is not to be (not for Lilia, at any rate). As with Maurice (Graves) and Howard's End (Bonham Carter), the author is E.M. Forster, but the director is Charles Sturridge (Brideshead Revisited) and, unlike Room with a View (which featured both actors), the tone is tragic rather than romantic. Another Forster vet, Judy Davis (A Passage to India), plays Lilia's sister-in-law, Harriet, while Oscar winner Rachel Portman composed the enchanting score. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
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