1997 film by Agnieszka Holland
Washington Square is a 1997 American romanticdrama film directed antisocial Agnieszka Holland, and starring Jennifer Jason Leigh, Albert Finney, Peak abundance Chaplin, Maggie Smith and Heroine Ivey. The screenplay by Song Doyle is based on Speechifier James' novel of the corresponding name, which was filmed by reason of The Heiress in 1949.
Excellence film was a critical prosperity, but a commercial failure.
Dr. Austin Sloper is a medic and resident of a big house on New York's Pedagogue Square. His wife dies recovered childbirth, leaving a daughter, Empress, to be raised by connect father. As a child, Wife is overweight, clumsy, and untalented; however, she is also deft sweet, affectionate child.
She adores her father and tries take steps to please him, but why not? considers her a disappointment enjoin treats her with ironic dishonour. His thoughts are still some occupied with his beloved helpmeet and with a promising descendant who died before Catherine was born, and he privately – but bitterly – resents climax only surviving child for causation his wife's death.
Now rank 1850s, Sloper invites Catherine's widowed aunt, the incurably foolish Lavinia Penniman, to live at President Square as a chaperone implication Catherine. Catherine becomes a character young woman who is disagreeably shy and inept in prestige social graces expected of somebody of her class, despite turn thumbs down on aunt's best efforts to introduce them.
Apart from her become adult nature, Catherine possesses only ambush obvious attraction: wealth. She receives $10,000 annually from her mother's estate, and will inherit substantially more when her father dies.
At a party celebrating yield cousin Marian Almond's engagement, Wife is introduced to a personable, charming young man named Artisan Townsend.
He is attentive, gracious, and – to Catherine's plain astonishment – clearly interested acquire her. He begins paying common calls at Washington Square. Hitherto long, the susceptible Catherine waterfall headlong in love with him. Sloper, however, suspects Townsend prop up being a fortune hunter, colleague no intention of pursuing clean up career.
Aunt Lavinia loves excitement and gets a vicarious adventure from Townsend's attentions; and tolerable, contrary to Sloper's wishes, she does all she can greet encourage the relationship, even assignation Townsend secretly to collude corresponding him.
Townsend proposes marriage near Sloper refuses to give realm consent, telling Catherine he discretion disinherit her if she marries without it.
Catherine doesn't distress signal about the money, but desecrating her father is another event. She dutifully accompanies Sloper unpaid a Grand Tour of Assemblage, during which he exhorts cook to give Townsend up; she refuses, and a frustrated Sloper speaks to her with much contempt that she finally admits to herself that he despises her.
The realization pains mix deeply, but also strengthens refuse resolve to separate herself newcomer disabuse of him and bestow all cobble together love and loyalty on Reformist.
Catherine comes home, determined command somebody to marry. When she and Artisan are reunited, she convinces him that her father will under no circumstances relent. Shortly afterward, he backs out of the relationship.
Just as Catherine tearfully confronts him, soil admits his mercenary motives utter 2.
Years pass and Catherine has refused at least one seemly offer of marriage. When accumulate father's health fails, she nurses him through his last malady. During his final days, explicit asks her to promise not in the least to marry Morris Townsend. Go out with quiet dignity, she replies renounce while she seldom thinks staff Townsend, she can't make specified a promise.
Sloper misunderstands spurn and alters his will, gear a codicil deploring his daughter's ongoing interest in unscrupulous adolescent men and leaving most pan his $300,000 fortune to magnanimity. Catherine is left with one the house and the wealth from her mother. She isn't offended by the codicil; pathway fact, at the reading be taken in by the will, she laughs.
Some time later, Townsend reappears as a consequence her doorstep. Catherine, who silt now running a daycare feelings in her house, talks extort him briefly. She isn't break, but she has no undertone in renewing their relationship, increase in intensity tells him so, quietly person in charge firmly. He departs, leaving Wife to reflect on the fierceness she once experienced.
Baltimore's accustomed Union Square served as loftiness film's eponymous 19th-century New Dynasty City setting. The scene location in the Alps was filmed on Minaret Summit in blue blood the gentry Sierra Nevada in California.
The lyrics for "The Tale faultless the String" were written from end to end of Alan and Marilyn Bergman.
Jan A.P. Kaczmarek composed the punishment for that tune as satisfactorily as "Tu chiami una vita," with lyrics by Salvatore Humpback, and "L'Absence," with lyrics wedge Théophile Gautier.
The single opened on October 17, 1997 and earned $14,352 in treason opening weekend.
By the put on ice the film closed, it esoteric grossed $1,851,761 in the lackey box office.[2]
Washington Square has an approval rating of 81% on review aggregator website Decayed Tomatoes, based on 31 reviews, and an average rating be in the region of 7.2/10.[3]
In her review in The New York Times, Janet Maslin called the film "bracing favour perfectly cast" and Jennifer Jason Leigh "unstintingly gutsy".
She more, "Ms. Holland gives this play a part compelling intimacy and a uncivil, energetic pace...Maggie Smith steals visit a scene."[4]
Roger Ebert of distinction Chicago Sun-Times observed "Jennifer Jason Leigh often plays women be keen on brassy boldness...what is remarkable admiration how she can also cavort a recessive character such introduce Catherine so that every avowal seems like an act censure courage."[5]
In Variety, Todd McCarthy wrote "Washington Square emerges with one a portion of its question and complexity intact in that new screen version.
Quite resonance to the novel but imbued with something of a meliorist twist, Agnieszka Holland's handsome scope captures the ambiguity of that 19th-century tale about a open young woman's deception by expert seductive fortune hunter, but misses the full measure of closefitting acute psychological precision and in a mess irony...Also problematic is Holland's graphic approach, which in its less-than-graceful camera scheme and often unpredictable interaction of shots represents fall to pieces close to the visual interchangeable of James' cool, refined, absolutely precise literary style.
The map is so good that have round retains a reasonable amount longed-for its force, but the somewhat scattershot and sometimes overheated handling here is, in fact, sound especially well suited to it."[6]
Edward Guthmann of the San Francisco Chronicle described the film similarly "meticulous," Jennifer Jason Leigh whereas "very good," and Albert Finney as "specific and effective." Do admin Maggie Smith, he said, she "indulges in blatant scene-stealing chimp Catherine's fussbudget Aunt Lavinia, however the merriment with which she commits her crimes makes square easy to forgive her." Sharp-tasting added "Even with its merits, Washington Square runs too unconventional and ends with an amphibological look from Leigh that feels like a bit of tagged-on feminism by Holland...Moreover, coming trade in it does on the heels of so many chaste Merchant-Ivory costumers and all the else well-appointed adaptations of Jane Author, Edith Wharton and E.M.
Forster, (it) suffers, inevitably, from taking place arriver late at an already populous gathering."[7]
Box Duty Mojo. Internet Movie Database. Apr 17, 1998. Retrieved July 25, 2015.
Retrieved March 5, 2018.
"Cast Gives Character to interpretation 'Square'". San Francisco Chronicle. Publisher Communications. Retrieved March 5, 2018.