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THE REMAINS OF THE DAY – Richard Robbins
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Remains of the Day is a British period drama film directed by James Ivory, based on Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel of the same name. The story follows James Stevens (Anthony Hopkins), a repressed English butler who has spent most of his life in service at Darlington Hall, a grand manor house formerly owned by Lord Darlington (James Fox), a man who was once deeply involved in political affairs and international diplomacy. The film is set in 1958 as Stevens, who is now working for an American named Farraday (Christopher Reeve), embarks on a journey across England, and reflects on his life at Darlington Hall – the events that transpired there in the years leading up to World War II, and specifically his relationship with housekeeper Miss Kenton (Emma Thompson), which Stevens never allowed to blossom into romance. The film explores themes of duty, loyalty, and personal sacrifice, particularly as Stevens begins to come to terms with the consequences of his unwavering blind loyalty to Darlington, who held complex political stances in the pre-war years. The film is also a poignant exploration of regret, nostalgia, and the changing social landscape of post-war England, as Stevens comes to the realization that he may have sacrificed his personal happiness for a sense of duty. Read more…
HOWARDS END – Richard Robbins
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In the 1980s and early 1990s the producing-directing team of James Ivory and Ismail Merchant made a series of films based on classic late Victorian-era British novels, including several by the great E. M. Forster, whose examinations of the hypocrisy of the British class system made him one of the most acclaimed novelists of his generation. Howards End was the third Forster adaptation by Merchant-Ivory Productions, after A Room With a View in 1985, and Maurice in 1987, and it’s generally considered to be one of the best films they ever made, and one of the best films of the 1990s. It’s a film about society, class, warring families, and life in Edwardian London, with the titular country house serving as the prominent location around which all the drama unfolds. The film stars Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham-Carter, Anthony Hopkins, and Vanessa Redgrave, and was an enormous critical success, eventually going on to be nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and with Thompson winning Best Actress. Read more…
Richard Robbins, 1940-2012
Composer Richard Robbins died on November 7, 2012, at his home in Rhinebeck, New York. He was 71, and had been suffering from Parkinson’s disease for many years.
Robbins was born in South Weymouth, Massachusetts, in December 1940, and studied at the New England Conservatory of Music and later later received a fellowship through a fund established by the philanthropist Frank Huntington Beebe to continue his studies in Vienna, Austria. He joined the film production company Merchant Ivory – co-owned by producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory – as a musical advisor in the early 1970s and went on to score over a dozen of the company’s films, with his work becoming an integral part of their cinematic identity.
Robbins crafted elegant, emotionally nuanced scores for the overwhelming majority of Merchant Ivory’s most celebrated films, including The Europeans (1979), Heat and Dust (1983), The Bostonians (1984), A Room with a View (1985), Maurice (1987), Mr. & Mrs. Bridge (1990), Howards End (1992), The Remains of the Day (1993), Jefferson in Paris (1995), and Surviving Picasso (1996); he received Academy Award nominations for Howards End and The Remains of the Day, and a BAFTA nomination for A Room with a View. Read more…
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