The Bostonians

One of the more interesting and Boston-centric highbrow period dramas of 1984 is this Merchant/Ivory production of Henry James' tragicomedy about a triangle of characters in the midst of our fair city's panorama of quirky eccentrics, political activists, and journalists during the American suffrage movement. A post-Superman-1-II-and-III Christopher Reeve plays Basil Ransom, a dashing, male chauvinist, politically conservative lawyer from Mississippi visiting Boston. He is a distant relative of the prominent Back Bay spinster and leader of the women's suffrage movement, Olive Chancellor (played by Vanessa Redgrave, back during the era when she was considered the most politically outspoken actor). Olive has adopted a young protégée, Verena Tarrant (newcomer Madeleine Potter), an inspirational young speaker who has been her friend and her companion. When Basil falls in love with Verena, she is drawn into an internal and external conflict between the two people closest to her and between her heart and her ideals.

The Bostonians is not one of the best Merchant/Ivory productions, but it's full of the trappings that make their filmmaking style so delectable, including exquisitely photographed locations, surprisingly unfussy performances by A-list actors, and a deliberately paced screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. This was one year before the filmmakers began their collaboration with cinematographer Tony Pierce-Roberts, so the camera work here comes courtesy of Walter Lassally (A Taste of Honey, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Tom Jones). The British New Wave DP was known for a much rawer visual look than the refined aesthetics of Merchant/Ivory. Lassally had won the Best Cinematography Oscar in 1965 for Zorba the Greek, but his film immediately prior to this one was the 1983 Phoebe Cates teen-sex comedy Private School—directors of photography certainly do get around!

The Bostonians shot all around Massachusetts in some locations that rarely grant filmmakers access, including The Boston Athenaeum, the Gibson House Museum, and one of the film's most memorable sequences in Harvard's Memorial Hall. There are also beautifully photographed scenes filmed in Oak Bluffs, Martha's Vineyard, and the neighboring Nashawena Island.