The longing… the love…

The best romantic scene I can ever recall btwn two men in a move, imo. Having seen when it was originally released I couldn't wait until it was finally available on VHS. I rewound that clip again and again of the lovers embracing and kissing. I remember being so relieved and elated to see Scudder asleep in that dimly lit boathouse. Half afraid that Maurice wouldn't see him there, and might rush out of there to maybe commit suicide or something equally drastic. This is def my very first happy ending experience in a gay themed movie or novel. Despite the passage of time since its release there has been sooo few other such movies with happy endings. Why is that? More happy endings in foreign releases than in America, for sure!

What always strikes me is that I too had EXACTLY that reaction – despite having seen the original cinema trailer for Maurice (which gives literally everything away: someone once called it ‘the worst trailer ever made for the greatest film ever made’) before seeing the film itself.

I guess we are so hard-wired to expect tragedy that – when Maurice arrived at the boathouse, his face luminous with hope, but there seemed to be no sign of Alec – I feared the worst even though I had seen the trailer. The brilliance of Maurice is the way it dangles and acknowledges ‘tragic’ tropes – only to flip these and deliver such a glorious happy ending. (See also: Lasker Jones’ hypnotism makes Maurice ‘open to suggestion’ – from Alec, Maurice’s blackmail panic – averted, and even Dick Robbins’ use of Tchaikovsky in the soundtrack. Sit tight until the very end of the credits to hear what he did there.)

Ivory adds to the tension by flipping the novel’s closing scenes: Forster had Maurice finding Alec at the boathouse first – then emerging only some hours later (tacitly, after some hours of lovemaking) to ‘close the book’ with Clive. Hence that line in Chapter 46: “‘Also in town. Also –’ here he stopped.’

maurice book update

firstly, I’m personally offended that Maurice Hall had a moustache for the whole book.

secondly, MAURICE TELLS ALEC HE LOVES HIM IN THE BOOK AND IT KILLS ME.

thirdly, if you thought movie Clive Durham was bad, you will really be upset when you read about book Clive. There’s no trial with Risley and he broke up with Maurice just because he didn’t want to be with a man and all of the sudden was disgusted by him and the thought of being with a guy.

lastly, I didn’t know it was possible to love Alec Scudder more than I already do. I was wrong.

1) (i) Well, not the whole book, as Maurice is 14 at the start! (ii) Also, note that, for Forster and his generation (in contrast with Ivory/the filmmakers) moustaches were HOTTTTT. I’ve blogged about this before – but, in Forster’s 1914 draft, even Alec has a moustache.

2) In the 1914 version of the novel, Maurice even mentions ‘marriage’ to Alec.

3) The MOST hateful Clive arguably isn’t book!Clive – it’s ‘night before Greece’ film-deleted-scene Clive, who is an out-and-out bitch. However, book!Clive doesn’t break up with Maurice ‘just because he didn’t want to be with a man’. The power and bravery of Forster’s Maurice is that he wrote it less than two decades after Oscar Wilde’s trials and imprisonment, at a time when homosexuality (or even the slightest suspicion of it) were ILLEGAL. To write a novel in which your hero DEFIES that illegality, actually has sex, runs off with a working-class lover, and doesn’t beat himself up with guilt, was and is astonishing. But, being realistic, Forster also focuses on characters who CAN’T bring themselves to defy the law, social taboos, or their own deep-rooted external and internal fears – and that’s Clive.

Clive’s psychology and orientation remain much debated, but his mental fragility and internalised homophobia are there in the novel. Book!Clive is a damaged person who suffered a breakdown in his teens over his sexuality. The REASON Merchant Ivory introduced the Risley plotline is exactly because (i) they realised 1980s audiences might not have a clue that the characters live in  world where they could easily be sent to prison, blackmailed, humiliated or ruined for their sexuality, and (ii) they didn’t buy into the psychology of Clive’s change in the novel, and thought audiences would find it unconvincing too. (In practice, reactions on this point vary among readers even today.) The film initially conceived of Risley committing suicide (again, see the deleted scenes); at least they changed that.

Perfect!

‘Excuse me, sir. The underkeeper wonders whether you have orders.’ 1 / 2

My new gifs.

I prefer when he says “ the match always goes better with a gentlemen in charge” and laughs later when Alec says “mr Halls a gentleman” the humour in that book

@jaylee1814 ;-) The humour is brilliant!

Forster’s version is even better: ‘Things always go better under a gentleman.’ (Ch 39, when Maurice is lying in bed after having sex with Alec. Simcox is sorting out Maurice’s cricketing attire, Maurice says ‘Then make the underkeeper captain’, and Simcox protests. Because ‘obviously’ the ‘gentleman’ should be on top, *cough*, but Maurice has just instructed Simcox somewhat differently, symbolically speaking. *double cough*)

It’s such a shame the film changed that line, and I’m inclined to blame Kit Hesketh Harvey, not Ivory. For many reasons, I’m sure Forster’s innuendo was deliberate – but I wouldn’t be surprised if KHH thought (wrongly) that ‘under a gentleman’ was just an embarrassing archaism that needed to be eliminated.

Alec’s ‘Mr Hall’s a gentleman!’ line (and that whole scene, which I LOVE) is actually film-only. That happens in the servants’ quarters immediately before Alec climbs the ladder. The Maurice script both expanded Simcox’s role and made him wonderfully obnoxious and all-knowing in a way he isn’t in the novel. What we learn in that little scene (IMO) is that Simcox knows Alec has a thing for Maurice (Simcox knows everything), while Alec’s indignant reaction (‘Mr Hall’s a gentleman!’) further betrays his feelings. Simcox’s sneering ‘…with only Mr Hall’s pleasure to wait upon’ adds to the innuendo, but also strongly hints that Simcox pretty much knows that Alec is about to ‘wait upon’ ‘Mr Hall’s pleasure’ big-time as soon as Simcox leaves. ;D I love so much Alec’s impatient physicality in this scene, as Simcox repeatedly blocks him from going…

:) :) Now, reblogging for the comment :) :)