The Remains of the Day ***** (1993, Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, Christopher Reeve, James Fox, Peter Vaughan, Hugh Grant) – Classic Movie Review 451

Director James Ivory’s and producer Ismail Merchant’s 1993 triumph is an awesomely meticulous adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Booker-prize-winning novel.

Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson give the most incredibly impressive, subtle, miniaturist performances as Lord Darlington’s desperately emotionally repressed rule-bound head butler James Stevens and Miss Kenton, the life-affirming new housekeeper he finds himself gradually drawn to but feels he can’t reach out to.

Their private drama plays out against the backdrop of the great World War Two events it mirrors as the good-hearted but naive Darlington (James Fox) seeks appeasement with the Nazis. As the housekeeper falls in love with him, the butler is forced to examine his carefully maintained veneer of servitude. The possibility of romance and his master’s ties to the Nazi cause challenge rock his world.

The characters’ deeply repressed passion blends effortlessly into the beautiful fabric of the film and this is a much more successful attempt to deal with the subject of stunted emotion than Ivory’s earlier film Mr and Mrs Bridge (1990) thanks to Ishiguro’s distinguished source work and screen adaptor Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s elegantly crafted script, with its sharp ironies and telling dialogue.

Ultimately the film stands or falls on the delicate nuances of the Hopkins-Thompson partnership. And it proves to be one to rival the equally exquisite portraits of longing and repression from Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson in Brief Encounter. Hopkins and Thompson are incomparable and pitch perfect.

But there’s a great ensemble cast too, one of Merchant-Ivory’s finest, and there are especially exquisitely honed supporting performances from Peter Vaughan as Hopkins’s proud old retainer dad, Christopher Reeve as the American aristocrat who warns against English dangerous amateurism and Hugh Grant as Fox’s probing journalist nephew.

It is just the kind of film and performances that you would expect to be inundated with awards. It was nominated for eight Oscars, but alas, after all the brilliant work, there were no wins, and there were no Golden Globes or Baftas either. On the other hand it was voted British Film of the Year at the London Critics Circle Film Awards, with Hopkins Actor of the Year and Ivory Director of the Year.

The original screenplay was written by Harold Pinter for director Mike Nichols. A few of his scenes survived the rewrite after Columbia Pictures reassigned the film to Merchant-Ivory (after which Pinter insisted that his name be removed from the credits). Nichols stayed on as one of the producers with Ismail Merchant and John Calley.

Also in the cast are Michel Lonsdale, Tim Pigott-Smith, Peter Cellier, Patrick Godfrey, Ben Chaplin, Paul Copley, Peter Eyre, Lena Headey, Brigitte Kahn, Ian Redford, Peter Vansittart, John Haycraft, Caroline Hunt, Paula Jacobs, Steve Dibben, Abigail Hopkins, Peter Halliday, Terence Bayler, Jeffrey Wickham, Hugh Sweetman, John Savident, Tony Aitken, Emma Lewis, Joanna Joseph, Christopher Brown, Jo Kendall, Steven Beard, Pip Torrens, Frank Shelley, Jestyn Phillips, Wolf Kahler, Frank Höltje, Andreas Töns, Roger McKern and Angela Mewmarch.

Tim Pigott-Smith, who plays Thomas Benn, died on 7 April 2017, aged 70.

Superb English character actor Peter Vaughan (aka Peter Ewart Ohm) died on 6 December 2016, aged 93.

© Derek Winnert 2013 Classic Movie Review 451

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com