''The Bostonians'' is a 1984 romantic

drama Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has b ...

period film A historical drama (also period drama, costume drama, and period piece) is a work set in a past time period, usually used in the context of film and television. Historical drama includes historical fiction and romances, adventure films, and swas ...

directed by

James Ivory James Francis Ivory (born June 7, 1928) is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. For many years, he worked extensively with Indian-born film producer Ismail Merchant, his domestic as well as professional partner, and with scree ...

. The screenplay by

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (; 7 May 19273 April 2013) was a British author and screenwriter. She is best known for her collaboration with Merchant Ivory Productions, made up of director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant. In 1951, Jhabvala ma ...

is based on the 1886 American novel '' The Bostonians'' by

Henry James Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the ...

. The film stars

Vanessa Redgrave Dame Vanessa Redgrave (born 30 January 1937) is an English actress and activist. Throughout her career spanning over seven decades, Redgrave has garnered numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Television Award, tw ...

Christopher Reeve Christopher D'Olier Reeve (September 25, 1952 – October 10, 2004) was an American actor, best known for playing the title character in the film '' Superman'' (1978) and three sequels. Born in New York City and raised in Princeton, New Jersey ...

, Madeleine Potter, and

Jessica Tandy Jessie Alice Tandy (7 June 1909 – 11 September 1994) was a British-American actress. Tandy appeared in over 100 stage productions and had more than 60 roles in film and TV, receiving an Academy Award, four Tony Awards, a BAFTA, a Golden Globe ...

. ''The Bostonians'' was released in the United States on 2 August 1984. The film received respectable reviews and nominations by the

Golden Globe Awards The Golden Globe Awards are accolades bestowed by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association beginning in January 1944, recognizing excellence in both American and international film and television. Beginning in 2022, there are 105 members of t ...

Academy Awards The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...

British Academy Film Awards The British Academy Film Awards, more commonly known as the BAFTA Film Awards is an annual award show hosted by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) to honour the best British and international contributions to film. The cere ...

, and won It won Golden Peacock (Best Film) at the

10th International Film Festival of India The 10th International Film Festival of India was held from 3-16 January 1985 in New Delhi. For the first time, the festival had an international panorama of select short films, and documentaries, in an effort to create an identity for short films ...

Plot

Olive Chancellor, a

Back Bay Back Bay is an officially recognized neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, built on reclaimed land in the Charles River basin. Construction began in 1859, as the demand for luxury housing exceeded the availability in the city at the time, and t ...

Boston spinster and leader of the

women's suffrage movement Women's suffrage is the right of women to vote in elections. Beginning in the start of the 18th century, some people sought to change voting laws to allow women to vote. Liberal political parties would go on to grant women the right to vot ...

, becomes enamored of Verena Tarrant, an inspirational young speaker, and adopts Verena as her protegée, her friend, and her companion. When Olive's distant relation, the chauvinist Southern lawyer Basil Ransom falls in love with Verena and wishes to marry her—to relegate the young woman to the kitchen and the nursery—Olive and Ransom find themselves competing for Verena's affections. The charismatic Miss Tarrant must then choose whether to get herself to the nunnery of Olive's social cause or submit to the sensual but subservient life promised by Ransom.

Cast

as Basil Ransom *

as Olive Chancellor * Madeleine Potter as Verena Tarrant *

as Miss Birdseye *

Nancy Marchand Nancy Lou Marchand (June 19, 1928 – June 18, 2000) was an American actress. She began her career in theatre in 1951. She was most famous for her television portrayals of Margaret Pynchon on ''Lou Grant'' and Livia Soprano on ''The Sopranos''. ...

as Mrs. Burrage * Wesley Addy as Dr. Tarrant * Barbara Bryne as Mrs. Tarrant *

Linda Hunt Lydia Susanna "Linda" Hunt (born April 2, 1945) is an American actress of stage and screen. She made her film debut playing Mrs. Oxheart in ''Popeye'' (1980). Hunt portrayed the male character Billy Kwan in '' The Year of Living Dangerously'' ...

as Dr. Prance *

Charles McCaughan Charles McCaughan is an American actor and director. Filmography Director and writer *'' Angel on Fire'' (2005) *'' Picture of Priority'' (1998) Acting *''The Cisco Kid'' (1994, TV) - Haynie *'' V.I. Warshawski'' (1991) - Trumble Grafalk *''Lega ...

as Music Hall Police Officer *Nancy New as Adeline *John Van Ness Philip as Henry Burrage * Wallace Shawn as Mr. Pardon

Production

Filming

Locations where the film was shot include: *The Library of the

Boston Athenaeum Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- most p ...

Gibson House Museum The Gibson House Museum is an historic house museum located at 137 Beacon Street in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. It preserves the 1860 Victorian rowhouse occupied by three generations of the Gibson family. The house was ...

Beacon Hill, Boston Beacon Hill is a historic neighborhood in Boston, Massachusetts, and the hill upon which the Massachusetts State House resides. The term "Beacon Hill" is used locally as a metonym to refer to the state government or the legislature itself, much ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...

Chateau-sur-Mer Chateau-sur-Mer is one of the first grand Bellevue Avenue mansions of the Gilded Age in Newport, Rhode Island. Located at 474 Bellevue Avenue, it is now owned by the Preservation Society of Newport County and is open to the public as a museum. ...

Newport, Rhode Island Newport is an American seaside city on Aquidneck Island in Newport County, Rhode Island. It is located in Narragansett Bay, approximately southeast of Providence, south of Fall River, Massachusetts, south of Boston, and northeast of New Yor ...

* Troy Savings Bank Music Hall *

Central Park Central Park is an urban park in New York City located between the Upper West and Upper East Sides of Manhattan. It is the fifth-largest park in the city, covering . It is the most visited urban park in the United States, with an estimated ...

(including Belvedere Castle),

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

Martha's Vineyard Martha's Vineyard, often simply called the Vineyard, is an island in the Northeastern United States, located south of Cape Cod in Dukes County, Massachusetts, known for being a popular, affluent summer colony. Martha's Vineyard includes the ...

Critical reception

Roger Ebert Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...

praised the film, giving it 3 out of 4 stars and observing:

...intelligent and subtle and open to the underlying tragedy of a woman who does not know what she wants, a man who does not care what he wants, and a girl who does not need what she wants.

On review aggregator

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wan ...

, the film has an 87% approval rating based on 15 reviews, with an average rating of 6.90/10. On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, ''The Bostonians'' has a score of 59 out of a 100 based on 10 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

Accolades

National Society of Film Critics Awards The National Society of Film Critics (NSFC) is an American film critic organization. The organization is known for its highbrow tastes, and its annual awards are one of the most prestigious film critics awards in the United States. In January 2014, ...

*Won: Best Actress – Vanessa Redgrave

Golden Globe Awards The Golden Globe Awards are accolades bestowed by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association beginning in January 1944, recognizing excellence in both American and international film and television. Beginning in 2022, there are 105 members of t ...

*Nominated: Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama – Vanessa Redgrave

Academy Awards The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...

*Nominated:

Best Actress Best Actress is the name of an award which is presented by various film, television and theatre organisations, festivals, and people's awards to leading actresses in a film, television series, television film or play. The first Best Actress aw ...

– Vanessa Redgrave *Nominated: Best Costume Design –

Jenny Beavan Jenny Beavan, OBE (born 1950) is an English costume designer. She has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Costume Design eleven times, winning three awards for the movies ''A Room With A View'' (1985) (for which she shared an award wit ...

John Bright John Bright (16 November 1811 – 27 March 1889) was a British Radical and Liberal statesman, one of the greatest orators of his generation and a promoter of free trade policies. A Quaker, Bright is most famous for battling the Corn La ...

BAFTA Awards The British Academy Film Awards, more commonly known as the BAFTA Film Awards is an annual award show hosted by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) to honour the best British and international contributions to film. The cere ...

*Nominated: Best Costume Design – Jenny Beavan, John Bright

References

External links

* * * *
''The Bostonians''
at

Merchant Ivory Productions Merchant Ivory Productions is a film company founded in 1961 by producer Ismail Merchant (1936–2005) and director James Ivory (b. 1928). Merchant and Ivory were life and business partners from 1961 until Merchant's death in 2005. During their ...

''The Bostonians''
at

Cohen Film Collection The Cohen Film Collection is a film archive currently held by Cohen Media Group. Containing several hundreds of rare and classic movies spanning from the silent film era to the present day, it was previously referred to as the Rohauer Library pr ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bostonians, The 1984 drama films 1984 LGBT-related films 1984 romantic drama films British LGBT-related films American LGBT-related films Lesbian-related films Films based on American novels Films based on works by Henry James Films set in the 1880s Films shot in Boston Films shot in Massachusetts Films shot in Martha's Vineyard Films shot in New York City Films directed by James Ivory Merchant Ivory Productions films 1980s English-language films 1980s American films 1980s British films