Background E. M. Forster began to write
A Room with a View during a trip to
Italy in the winter of 1901–02 when he was twenty-two. It was the first novel he worked on; however, he put it away before returning to it a few years later. Forster finished first two other novels:
Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905) and then
The Longest Journey (1907).
A Room with a View was finally published in 1908. Set in Italy and England,
A Room with a View follows Lucy Honeychurch, a proper young Englishwoman who discovers passion while on a trip to Italy. At her return to the restrained culture of Edwardian-era England, she must choose between two opposite men: the free-thinking George Emerson and the repressed aesthete Cecil Vyse. The story is both a romance and a humorous critique of English society at the beginning of the 20th century. The novel, Forster's third, was very well received, better than his previous two, but it is considered lighter than his two best-regarded later works
Howards End (1910) and
A Passage to India (1924). In Forster's own appreciation "
A Room with a View, may not be his best, but may very well be his nicest". In 1946,
20th Century Fox offered $25,000 for the film rights to
A Room with a View, but Forster did not hold cinema in high regard and refused although the studio was willing to pay him even more. Following Forster's death in 1970, the board of fellows of
King's College, Cambridge, inherited the rights to his books. However, Donald A Parry, chief executor, turned down all approaches. Ten years later, the film rights for Forster's novels became available when the film enthusiast Professor
Bernard Williams became chief executor. The trustees of Forster's estate invited producer
Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory to Cambridge to discuss filming Forster. The film was made on a budget of $3 million that included investment by
Cinecom in the U.S, and from
Goldcrest Films, the
National Film Finance Corporation, and
Curzon Film Distributors in Great Britain. Merchant and Ivory had originally been rejected twice by
Jake Eberts of Goldcrest Films but obtained money from the company after Eberts left. Eberts would later admit to being "completely wrong" about the film.
Casting The role of Lucy Honeychurch was
Helena Bonham Carter's breakthrough as a film actress. She was eighteen at the time and had just finished the art-house film
Lady Jane (1986). Ivory gave her the role as he found "she was very quick, very smart, and very beautiful". Given the choice of either George Emerson or Cecil Vyse, he took on the more challenging role of Cecil. The role of Freddy Honeychurch, Lucy's brother, went to
Rupert Graves, in his film debut. The supporting cast included veteran performers: Five years earlier,
Maggie Smith had worked in another Merchant Ivory film,
Quartet. With a prominent theatre career,
Judi Dench had made her film debut in 1964, but she took the supporting role of Eleanor Lavish. Dench and Ivory had disagreements during the filming of
A Room with a View because, among other things, he suggested that she play her character as a Scot.
Filming A Room with a View was shot extensively on location in
Florence, where Merchant Ivory had the
Piazza della Signoria cleared for filming. Pensione Quisisana served as the Pensione Bertolini, also
Villa di Maiano in some interiors. From its decoration of the walls they asked a painter to do a series of decorative artworks called
grotesques that were used for titles between sections of the film, like chapter headings, following chapter titles in Forster's novel. Other scenes were filmed in London and around the town of
Sevenoaks in Kent where they borrowed the Kent family estate of film critic John Pym for their country scenes. Lucy's engagement party was filmed in the grounds of
Emmetts Garden. Foxwold House near
Chiddingstone was used for the Honeychurch house and an artificial pond was built in the forest of the property to use as the "Sacred Lake". Two years later, the
Great Storm of 1987 would tear through the area and destroy the gardens and almost 80 acres of the surrounding forest. In London, the
Linley Sambourne House in
South Kensington was used for Cecil's house and the Estonian Legation on
Queensway was used for the boarding house where the Miss Alans live. In all,
A Room with a View was shot in ten weeks: four in Italy and six in England. The film includes a notable scene of full frontal male nudity in which George, Freddy, and Mr. Beebe swim nude in the Sacred Lake. ==Reception==