"The Remains of the Day"
                        A film review by
                      Linda Lopez McAlister
                      on "The Women's Show"
                    WMNF-FM (88.5), Tampa, FL
                        November 26, 1993

   The art of the screenwriter is often underestimated in this
medium of film where the director is sometimes thought to be the
"auteur" or author of the film.   And when a screenwriter is
writing not an original screenplay but an adaptation from a novel
or some other previously-existing work, the tendency to
underestimate the screenwriter's contribution is even greater.
"The Remains of the Day," the newest film from Merchant Ivory
Productions (co-produced with Mike Nichols and John Calley) is
such an adaptation (from the novel of the same name by Kazuo
Ishiguro).  But this is one case in which, perhaps, the
contribution of the screenwriter, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, can be
appreciated a little more fully than usual.

   The original novel, wonderful in its own way but sparse and
cerebral, was thought to be "unfilmable."  Nonetheless, a risk-
taking producer like Mike Nichols decided to option it and gave
the task of writing the screenplay to the equally sparse and
cerebral playwright, Harold Pinter.  The resulting screenplay
was, apparently, equally unfilmable.  Enter the legendary team of
producer Ismail Merchant, director James Ivory, and screenwriter
extraordinaire Ruth Prawer Jhabvala to attempt the impossible.
Prawer Jhabvala has gone in and taken the framework the novel
provided and made it come to three-dimensional, vivid, living,
breathing life.  Miss Kenton (played beautifully, as always, by
Emma Thompson), a minor character in the book, becomes flesh and
blood and a major character in the film, one whose hopes and joys
and sorrows move us and serve to point up, by contrast, the
emotional winter of the main character of the novel and film Mr.
Stevens (played with utmost skill and artistry by the great
Anthony Hopkins).

   This film is both the story of the lives of these two
characters, the housekeeper and the butler in service at one of
the great old English estates, in this case that of Lord
Darlington (James Fox), and a metaphor for the decline of Britain
and the rise of the United States as a world power from the pre-
World War II era to the postwar years.  Lord Darlington is one of
those aristocratic Britons of the old school, blinkered by
privilege and narrow vision, who acted out of a skewed sense of
honor and the and naive notion that others do too, and urged
appeasement of the Nazis virtually up until the time the Germans
attacked Britain itself.  Contrasted with him is the young
American Congressman Lewis (Christopher Reeve) who understands
that the world is a different place and is able to step in and
take effective action in the new order, and who after the war is
the new owner of Darlington Hall (read: England).

   Mr. Stevens, as the Butler of Darlington Hall, is so
identified both with his Master, Lord Darlington, and the house
over which he presides, that he sometimes expresses his own
feelings as though they were those of the house.  The only way he
is capable of telling Miss Kenton that he likes and values her is
to tell her how much she means to Darlington Hall.  To do his job
properly, following all the Byzantine rules that this entails, is
his life.  Like the violin maker in "Un Couer en Hiver" that
played here recently, Stevens is unable to allow himself to
express, or even to feel, emotion, and he gets his sense of
identity from his work and his identification with the great
house and all the past glory and tradition it stands for.

   Even in the narrative present of the film, the 1950s, when the
new American owner has moved in and Stevens is free to go to the
West of England to seek out the former Miss Kenton, he is still
unable to change his lifelong patterns and to let his feelings
come out.

   It is primarily to the artistry of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
that we owe the fact that, we, the audience, know what lies
hidden beneath the stiff-upper-lips of these proper Britons
despite their utter inability to express their emotions outward-
ly--not only those aristocrats above the stairs but also
those of working class origin beneath the stairs who teach
themselves to speak like upper-classes, internalize their rules
of propriety and values, and run the risk, like Stevens, of
sacrificing human relationships in the process.

   For the superb writing of Jhabvala, the impeccable direction
of James Ivory, and the flawless acting of Hopkins, Thompson, Fox,
Reeve and the large supporting cast, you'll want to see this film.

   For the WMNF Women's Show this has been Linda Lopez McAlister
on Women and Film.

   Copyright 1993 by Linda Lopez McAlister.  All rights reserved.
Please do not reprint this review without the permission of the
author.