In the New York Times Magazine of September 15,
1996, James Ivory had this to say about Quartet, which
he directed in 1981:
"Quartet, by Jean Rhys, would not
on the surface have seemed a good book to make into a film. I
read it and said, What a terrific movie this would make. Ismail
kind of shrugged, and Ruth said, "Oh, Jim, how would we
make it lively, it's such a nest of vipers." It's one of
the films we've made that I like best, but I think all Ruth's
fears were absolutely confirmed by the public rejection of it.
It was a sordid story."
Brief Review
Adrift in the Paris of the
twenties while her husband is imprisoned for dealing in stolen
goods, a writer falls under the doubtful protection of sybaritic
expatriates (Alan Bates and Maggie Smith), with disastrous results.
Adapted from Jean Rhys' autobiographical novel, with Adjani --
Best Actress winner at Cannes -- portraying the author and Bates
playing Ford Madox Ford. (For Ford's point of view, read his
The Good Soldier.) Winter location shooting in Paris afforded
a lavish evocation of the period. "Bright, brilliant, and
often immensely entertaining."--Tom Milne.
Video Vista DVD Review
 In Paris
1927, former chorus girl Marya (Isabelle Adjani), is living a
Bohemian existence with her Polish husband Stefan Zelli (Anthony
Higgins). Then, Stefan is imprisoned and threatened with deportation.
Penniless, Marya is taken in by the Heidlers, art dealer H.J.
(Alan Bates) and his wife Lois (Maggie Smith). But H.J. has eyes
on Marya to make her his mistress, actively encouraged in this
by Lois...
Jean Rhys' novel Quartet was originally
published as Postures in 1928, Quartet being the
American, and ultimately preferred, title. It was the first of
four novels that Rhys wrote in the 1920s and 1930s before she
dropped into obscurity and the novels went out of print, championed
by a few people who came across them in secondhand reprints.
In the wake of a BBC radio adaptation of the fourth ( Good
Morning, Midnight , 1939) Rhys was tracked down. She wrote
one more novel, Wide Sargasso Sea in 1966 (itself filmed,
none too well, in 1993).
Quartet has many elements of autobiography:
Marya has Rhys' Creole (white West Indian) ancestry, and the
author did live in Paris at the time of the novel. H.J. Heidler
is based on Rhys' patron Ford Madox Ford, whose mistress Rhys
did become with the full knowledge and consent of Ford's wife.
Reading Quartet now, you're struck by how modern it seems:
stylistically it's far less dated than more feted work of the
time. It was little appreciated then because Rhys was ahead of
her time in her objective look at her central characters. The
two sexes relate at their peril in her work: men miscomprehend
women and women distrust men, with tragic results.
Unfortunately much of this goes missing in
this Merchant Ivory film from 1982, made just before their great
commercial success with A Room With A View . Every cent
of a fairly small budget ($1.8 million) is on the screen, with
sumptuous camerawork, production design and costumes. And you
can't complain about the cast either: Adjani won Best Actress
at that year's Cannes festival for this performance. But somehow
the novel's essence has leaked away. Merchant and Ivory (and
their long-time screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala) are fastidious
talents, and this story needs a sense of a true darkness and
emotional brutality under the decorous surface. It's telling
that Jhabvala, in an interview included on this DVD, found this
story particularly unpleasant.
The DVD has an anamorphic transfer and a soundtrack
in Dolby digital 2.0 mono. The dialogue is in a mixture of English
and French, with an optional subtitle track translating most
but not all of the latter. Disc extras: the trailer, text extras
About The Film and About Merchant Ivory , plus
Insight Into Quartet (an extract from the documentary
about Merchant Ivory, The Wandering Company ), a recent
interview with Ivory, Merchant, Jhabvala and composer Richard
Robbins, cast and crew listing, biographies of the four principal
actors, trailers for other features in Arrow's Merchant Ivory
collection: The Bostonians ,The Europeans and A
Soldier's Daughter Never Cries. -- Gary Couzens
Cast: Alan Bates, Maggie Smith, Isabelle Adjani,
Anthony Higgins, and Sheila Gish
Director: James Ivory
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