Studies in European Cinema Volume 3 Number 1. © Intellect Ltd 2006.
Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/seci.3.1.25/1
Beauty and the Beast: The construction
of Italianness in A Room With A View
and Where Angels Fear To Tread
Elisabetta Girelli
Abstract
This article focuses on the representation and function of Italianness in two
British heritage films: A Room With A View (Ivory, 1985) and Where Angels
Fear To Tread (Sturridge, 1991). In light of current debates on heritage cinema
and on the filmic construction of national identities, the article argues that the
films exploit their authoritative aura and privileged British positioning, to present
a specifically stereotypical image of Italy. While the films’ overt discourse celebrates
Italy as seductive and life-enhancing, their subtexts validate the ultimate
naturalness and desirability of the British subject; as an arbitrary creation,
delimited by a fixed set of representations, this treatment of Italian Otherness is
notable for its parallels with generic Western constructions of the Oriental.
Confined to a restricted stock of identifications, Italianness emerges as an
immutable foil to notions of Britishness, aiding the narratives’ exploration of the
possibilities and meanings of national self-definition.
Images of Italy and the Italians have populated British cinema since the
1940s, and British literature since the 1500s; as powerful signifiers of difference,
they have held a significant place in British culture, functioning
as a mirror in the negotiation and articulation of British self-definition.
This paper explores the representation and function of Italianness in two
heritage films: A Room With A View (Ivory, 1985) and Where Angels Fear To
Tread (Sturridge, 1991). The 1980s and early 1990s were a period in
which British cinema expressed an intense interest in the exploration of
national identity: arguably, no genre was better suited to this task than the
heritage film. ‘Heritage’ is a loose definition for a collection of films set in
Britain’s imperial past, often adaptations of classic literary works. Diverse
as heritage productions are, they all have something in common: a preoccupation
with the conventions of late Victorian or Edwardian Britain
(mostly England), a lavish mise-en-scene, and a middle-class, visually beautiful
representation of national society. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these films
have aroused great controversy among their critics. Despite its huge boxoffice
appeal, heritage cinema has been often savagely attacked, accused of
promoting a reactionary, celebratory version of national identity. Andrew
Higson (1996: 233) expresses a still widespread view by stating that ‘one
Keywords
Italy
Britain
identity
British cinema
heritage cinema
stereotypes
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of the central pleasures of the heritage film is the artful and spectacular projection
of an elite, conservative vision of the national past’. An opposite
assessment of the heritage genre also finds currency, so that Jeffrey Richards
(1997: 169), for example, insists that these films are ‘profoundly subversive’.
Undoubtedly, in the case of literary adaptations, heritage films are often
at odds with the sharp irony and social critique of the texts they are based
on. Apparently minimising the original debate on class prejudice, gender
roles, and national mores, the films focus spectacularly on outward dazzle;
in doing so they capitalise on the nostalgic appeal of period properties,
which include not just buildings and costumes, but the original novels
themselves, as well as their authors. For the purpose of this paper, the
portrayal of Britain thus presented has direct repercussions on the construction
of spectatorship, of the national subject, and of Italianness. Insofar as
the heritage project finds its place in a national cinema, in the sense of a
cinema actively committed to represent the nation, it immediately encourages
audience identification along predictable lines: guided through an
allegedly authentic picture of their own ‘heritage’, British audiences may
have difficulty in placing themselves outside the circle of the (British) protagonists,
effectively allowing the film’s notions of national identity to stand
for them on the screen.
There are strong similarities between A Room With A View and Where
Angels Fear to Tread: both films are based on homonymous novels by
E.M. Forster, are largely set in Italy and even share some of their stars
(Helena Bonham-Carter and Rupert Graves). Above all, the two films present
parallel plots, featuring Italy as the catalyst for their development. In order
to identify the films’ formal organisation, it is useful to refer to the work of
Edward Said: although focusing on Western representations of the Orient,
Said’s Orientalism (1995) highlights basic cultural patterns by which Self
and Other are constructed, which can be usefully applied to British constructions
of Italianness. Two concepts in Orientalism are particularly
useful: the first is that geographical and national distinctions, with their
derived attributes, are largely man-made, so that physical and theoretical
boundaries are seen as circumscribing certain moral and mental characteristics.
The second point is that the difference ascribed to a given social
group is codified and organised, becoming a veritable system which frames
the Other into a specific stereotyped vision. To apply these criteria to the
films under discussion, is to recognise how their structure rests entirely on
a primary division, the opposition between Italianness and Britishness; it is
also to contrast the development of the British characters (and consequently
the possibilities opened up for their national identity) with the
immobility of the Italian ones, and the permanence of Italy as an
unchangeable symbolic space. A Room With A View and Where Angels Fear
to Tread trace what are essentially journeys of self-discovery for the British
protagonists, characterised by a flight from an oppressive, hypocritical,
and soul-numbing culture, to arrive at a new level of consciousness,
‘revealed’ to them through their Italian experience.
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A Room With A View focuses on Lucy Honeychurch (Helena BonhamCarter),
a wealthy and naïve young woman; as the film opens, she has just
embarked on an Italian tour, accompanied by her prim cousin Charlotte
Bartlett (Maggie Smith). The impact of Italy on Lucy is nothing short of
stunning, triggering sensual awakenings and undefined longings; a beautiful
but alien environment, the country appears to overwhelm the heroine
through its mixture of sun, heat, handsome men, and a staggering
amount of nude statues. Lucy’s conventional world is also challenged by a
chance encounter at a Florence pension: the bohemian Emersons, father
and son (Denholm Elliott and Julian Sands), whose unorthodox manners
entice Lucy but alarm Charlotte. The Emersons adapt easily to Italy, for
which they seem to feel an affinity, just like two other English tourists, the
old and eccentric Miss Alans (Fabia Drake and Joan Henley). At the same
time, Lucy sees the Italians being patronised or reviled by Miss Lavish
(Judy Dench), a writer of romantic fiction, and Mr Eager (Patrick Godfrey),
a zealously virtuous vicar. The film’s dominant discourse is thus set in
place, by outlining differences between Italianness and Englishness; characters
are divided in two camps, with the heroine posed in the middle,
facing a fundamentally moral choice. Motivation is then found in Lucy’s
struggle to find her own truth, and eventually to emerge on the other side
of her native environment: the ‘Italian’ side. The plot moves forward as
romance blossoms between Lucy and the young Emerson, George. Once
back in England, though, conventions again take over, and Lucy gets
engaged to Cecil (Daniel Day-Lewis), an eligible but pompous, unsexy fool,
who peppers his speech with pretentious Italian phrases. This order is
shattered when the Emersons reappear, renting a house in the neighbourhood;
a crisis ensues, until Lucy understands that her happiness lies with
George, and with the rejection of the arid conformity represented by Cecil.
Where Angels Fear to Tread is thematically and structurally close to A
Room, but provides the added interest of a main Italian character. The film
charts yet another Italian journey: this time the English, middle-class travellers
are the widowed Lilia Herriton (Helen Mirren), and her friend
Caroline Abbott (Helena Bonham-Carter). Opening with the two women’s
train departure, the film next shows Lilia’s in-laws at home, receiving some
shocking news: the impulsive Lilia has become engaged to Gino (Giovanni
Guidelli), a younger man and the son of a local dentist. Outraged at the
thought of Lilia marrying a lower-class foreigner, Mrs Herriton (Barbara
Jefford) decides to send her son Philip (Rupert Graves) to Italy, to stop the
wedding. On his arrival, though, Philip finds Lilia and Gino already
married; a lover of Italy himself, he is nevertheless disgusted at the union,
especially as the handsome but vulgar Gino seems to confirm his family’s
preconceptions. After Philip’s return to England, the Herritons receive more
distressing news: Lilia has died giving birth to a son. Immediate plans
ensue, aimed at removing the baby from the corrupt Italian environment;
Philip agrees once again to travel to Italy, to bring the child back. Things
come to a head, however, when Philip and his bigoted sister Harriet (Judy
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Davis) are joined by Caroline: initially meaning to ‘rescue’ the baby herself,
as reparation for her complicity in Lilia’s marriage, Caroline rapidly succumbs
to Gino’s charm, especially after witnessing the man’s passionate
love for his son. Meanwhile, the bewitching Italian atmosphere is working
its magic on Philip. The three Britons attend an open-air opera concert,
which fails to impress Harriet, but completes the Italian conversion of
Philip and Caroline; moreover, Gino himself makes an appearance, unsuspicious
of the baby-snatching plan, and greets them affectionately. Totally
captivated, Philip and Caroline prepare to return to England empty-handed;
at the last-minute, however, Harriet steals the baby, smuggling him onto
the carriage that is taking them to the station. But the carriage is overturned
in a sudden storm, and the baby is killed by the fall. Gino must be
told: Philip brings him the news, and is viciously attacked by the other,
driven crazy by grief and anger; Caroline’s tempestive intervention avoids,
perhaps, another death. The end sees Gino reconciled with his two English
friends, who leave for England; the return home is very sombre, though
lighted by the growing affection between Philip and Caroline.
Narrative similarities between A Room With A View and Where Angels
Fear to Tread should be obvious, though a structural difference divides the
films: while Italianness in A Room amounts to the influence and atmosphere
emanated by Italy, Where Angels channels the Italian ‘field’ through a
specific and highly visible character, Gino. Nonetheless, in relation to the
protagonists’ relation to Italy, the two films are identical. The main British
subjects initially acquiesce in the views and expectations of the Grand Tour,
content with ticking monuments off a list; however, they gradually undergo
a shift in perspective, abandoning their emotional and moral atrophy, and
choosing the path of truth to oneself which Italy has revealed. Although
Forster’s criticism of contemporary morals does not always make it onto the
screen, the novels’ exposure of a short-sighted reading of Italy is retained by
the films. But, while denouncing traditional British notions of Italy as a
fabrication, the narrative relies on an essential Italianness to provide a
mirror for the problems of Britishness, effectively giving the films, like the
novels, a double-shell structure: an unacknowledged construction within
the construction. Moreover, one version is not so dissimilar from the other:
what is really being discussed is not Italy, but rather the British approach to
it. It is indeed their attitude towards Italy to distinguish ‘good’ characters
from ‘bad’ ones: in A Room, the Emersons’ and the Miss Alans’ instinctive
appreciation of the country is clearly privileged, and contrasted with Miss
Lavish’s exploitation of it, or with the condescension of Mr Eager. In leaving
Cecil for George, Lucy swaps a pretentious intellectual, who fancies himself
‘Italianate’, for someone capable of blending in with Italians. Similarly, in
Where Angels, it is Mrs Herriton’s and Harriet’s contempt for the Italians
which marks them as representatives of Britishness at its worst. But, while
appreciation of the ‘real’ Italy is the measure by which characters are
assessed, the fallacy of the country as a knowable, qualifiable entity creates
a paradox at the core of the narrative. Whether blinkered or enlightened,
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British eyes are looking at the same object, an Italy which needs to be
grasped in absolute terms for the process of British self-definition to take
place. Choices made during script-writing and shooting are significant in
this respect, as they aim at presenting a single, unambiguous meaning for
Italy as a whole. In A Room, for instance, the early sequence entitled ‘In
Santa Croce Without Baedeker’ establishes one of the film’s major assumptions,
the association of Italianness with art, sensuality, and danger. The
camera leads the audience into the Santa Croce church, to show a disciplined
group of British tourists listening to their guide, Mr Eager: the latter’s
commentary on Giotto’s medieval frescoes stresses their lucky escape from
the ‘taint’ of Renaissance, ‘untroubled’ as they are from ‘the snares of
anatomy and perspective’. By assigning this statement to an obviously dislikeable
character, the script (here accurately reproducing Forster’s text)
achieves several objects: it reminds spectators of the traditional identification
of Italy with the Renaissance, inviting them to prefer it to the medieval
one, precisely because it is being dismissed by the voice of Anglo-Saxon
Puritanism. It also introduces the theme of nudity, therefore of sensuality,
in connection with Italy, which is reinforced in the next scene: here Miss
Lavish shocks priggish Charlotte Bartlett, by declaring Italy the place to let
oneself open to ‘physical sensations’. A parallel shot shows again Santa
Croce, where a panoramic view of the square is followed by a succession of
close-ups of its statues: naked, contorted and menacing, they almost fill the
frame, overwhelming Lucy as the camera takes up her gaze. At the same
time, extra-diagetic music adds to the sense of threat exuded by the statues,
and which finds its tangible culmination in the next scene, a messy and
deadly fight between two Italian men. Witnessed by Lucy and George, the
event violently shakes up the would-be lovers, who suddenly become aware
of time, place, and their own feelings.
The film thus presents some British characters who find Italian physicality
offensive (Mr Eager and Charlotte), one who is lured by it (Miss
Lavish), another two, Lucy and George, who experience a shift in consciousness
through it: this variety of reactions, however, is only relevant in
terms of how Britishness is articulated and challenged. As far as the construction
of Italianness is concerned, the film’s message is unequivocal:
Italy, unlike Britain, is the site of the body, with its implications of life, sex
and death. In Where Angels, as the plot maps Philip’s and Caroline’s inner
growth, the village setting of Monteriano ceases to be a postcard location,
becoming the place to discover love and death; lust and grief come into the
equation by association, making Italy a ‘total experience’, in contrast to
England’s emotional vacuity and physical inhibition. But, while the
English characters are given a chance to develop, sustaining an implicit
debate about the nature of Englishness, Italianness is forever cast in its
given representation, without alternatives or indeed the need for any. This
becomes obvious by comparing the films’ beginnings with their endings:
each plot completes its trajectory, a full circle is achieved, so that symmetry
highlights the magnitude of the changes occurred. A Room departs
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from the novel by introducing a new scene at the very end, in which a
letter from Lucy on her Italian honeymoon tells Charlotte ‘you’ll be glad to
hear that the Pensione Bartolini is its own dear self’, adding that even the
British guests are a replica of the previous ones, even including another
Lucy and another Charlotte. The letter is read aloud by Lucy, who is
shown with George having dinner at the Pensione: to symbolise her transformation
from uninitiated maiden to knowing woman, she is now dressed
in black, in contrast to the creams and pastels worn throughout the film.
While Lucy has evolved, Italy has conveniently remained the same, ready
to provide opportunities for another set of inexperienced British tourists.
This idea is even more forcefully expressed in Where Angels, again by
changing the original text. While Forster closes the novel with a train in
motion through Italy, lending a transitory sense to the conversation
between Philip and Caroline, the film transports this final scene to an
English station platform, neatly recalling the opening shot of Lilia’s and
Caroline’s departure. The audience knows that everything has changed for
Caroline and Philip: they are back home, wiser and better, to start a new
life. Even Harriet, the archetype of British self-delusion, has been affected by
the Italian events, and returns in shock. But in Monteriano, for Gino, everything
remains the same: neither friendship with Philip and Caroline, nor
the death of his wife in childbirth, not even the virtual murder of his child,
has failed to bring the slightest alteration to his carefree existence. As Philip
explains, ‘Gino knows that the things that have made him happy once will
probably make him happy again’. A caricature more than a character, Gino
is left as he was first found: in the eternal Italian world of pasta, opera and
football, untouched by life’s big questions. Introduced on the screen as a
bad-mannered heart-throb, who eats spaghetti and plays ball with the
same noisy energy, the film’s only Italian character sails through tragedy
by remaining always the same: he is ultimately defined not by his exceptionality
(his extraordinary passion for his child has vanished with him),
but by his sameness, his adherence to long-established standards of
Italianness, which blur iconography and meaning into one. It is worth
quoting in full what Said writes on the limits imposed on the Oriental by
Western representations (1995: 102), as by substituting ‘Italian’ for
‘Oriental’ one has a fitting commentary on Gino’s role in the film:
The general category in advance offers the specific instance a limited terrain
in which to operate: no matter how deep the specific exception, no matter
how much a single Oriental can escape the fences placed around him, he is
first an Oriental, second a human being, and last again an Oriental.
Frozen indeed into a system of representations, Gino remains the custodian
rather than the owner of the ‘other’ life, that alternative universe of
the soul which Caroline and Philip have experienced, and profited from:
the Italian, accidentally leading others to a higher level of perception, is
himself too infantile and too elemental to be aware of it.
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All this is not to deny Sturridge, or Forster, the right to depict Gino as a
childish womaniser. What needs to be pointed out is the suggestive power
of such a representation, its inscription in a long-established cultural tradition,
and its parallels with Orientalist discourse, insofar as the Other is
limited to a specific function (the unwitting catalyst for change), role
(seductive villain), and appearance (dark, good-looking, and vulgar). In
cinematic terms, the objectification of Gino is achieved by never letting the
camera take up his point of view: like the Italian landscape, he is a spectacle,
seen exclusively through British eyes. The same is not entirely true of
A Room: in a scene featuring the British group being driven around
Tuscany, Mr Eager decides to throw out the driver’s girlfriend, as the two
have dared to kiss. The unfortunate girl is then shot in medium close-up,
left on the side of the track while the others drive on: by lingering on her,
and on her evident resentment of Mr Eager, the camera allows the Italian
gaze to take over briefly. Similarly, in the earlier sequence in Santa Croce,
close-ups of the statues precede the shot of Lucy looking at them, giving
the impression that they are actually observing her, initiating the
exchange of looks. These shots, however, are rare interludes in a tightlyfocused
narrative, aimed at maintaining Italianness within certain specifications,
and at letting British perceptions of it guide spectators through a
preferred meaning. While both films follow the original texts in replacing
the ‘wrong’ reading of Italy with the ‘right’ one, they totally lack the irony
of Forster’s novels, where the very condition of the tourist is problematised,
and any version of Italy retains a self-conscious fragility. In the films,
instead, the picturesque and the beautiful are foregrounded, inviting the
audience to find satisfaction in aesthetic nostalgia. The presentation of
Italy through the British gaze, the scarce subtitling of Italian speech (completely
missing from A Room), together with a British-led narrative and a
lavish visual style, define Italy as a perennially known, passive, splendid
background: the space where Britishness, and its relationship to what
Forster calls ‘the inner life’, are negotiated.
In both A Room With A View and Where Angels Fear to Tread, narrative
structure and form are determined by the films’ singling out of inhibition,
hypocrisy and snobbery as the main British ‘faults’, as much as by symmetrical
motivation: these traits require an antithetical double to set them
off. Obliged to provide a contrast to emotional and physical restraint,
Italianness embodies excess and lack of self-control, whether behavioural
or artistic: in Where Angels, Gino’s jealousy and violence, paternal obsessiveness
and vengeful grief find a less dramatic parallel in the opera singer,
whose massive (excessive) body size is matched by her over-the-top performance,
as much as by the loud rapture of the audience. A Room’s presentation
of Italian art focuses exclusively on its presumed sexual license, first
hinted at by Mr Eager, later displayed, somewhat grotesquely, in the shots
of the Florentine nude statues.
While British inhibition finds its opposite in Italian excess, British
hypocrisy is contrasted to Italian frankness, which is not the same as lack
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of deceit. Gino fools Lilia into believing that he loves her, proceeding then
to have affairs behind her back; when she confronts him with the truth,
however, he good-humouredly admits everything, just as he later admits
to Caroline his intention of remarrying for purely practical reasons.
Similarly, the driver of A Room lies to Mr Eager, describing his girlfriend as
his sister, only to give up the pretence as soon as it is challenged.
Charming and open, but with a tendency to cheat and unleash upheaval,
the Italian Other has an aura of danger, steeped in British traditional
notions of treacherous dark strangers: while Gino is finally treasured as a
friend by Philip and Caroline, he remains someone who has abused Lilia,
tried to kill Philip, and cast his foreign spell on Caroline, who falls hopelessly
in love with him despite herself. Philip’s earlier comment on
Caroline’s proposed visit to Gino, that the latter ‘will marry her, or murder
her, or do for her somehow’, retains a certain validity to the end.
It is on the issue of class prejudice that the films are perhaps most
ambiguous. Ostensibly, A Room and Where Angels are at pains to condemn
British snobbery towards the Italians, by making the least likeable characters
patronising and arrogant in the extreme. Mr Eager’s dismissal of Italy
is such that he considers its history and art best studied by British scholars;
Miss Lavish’s infatuation with the country rests on its image as a
primitive place, inhabited by child-like creatures. Before his ‘awakening’,
Philip joins his mother and sister in tolerating Italians only if they are aristocrats:
nothing less would be a match for the British middle class, while
the notion of a dentist in Monteriano is enough to spoil Italy’s appeal.
Viewed from this angle, the films are exposing British attitudes as arrogant
and bigoted; however, the films’ own portrayal of Italy tells a different story.
The fight scene in A Room, depicting individual violence among an
excitable mob, adds a working-class flavour to its evocation of primitive passions:
in offering a spectacle of men let loose, Italy is bringing the lower
classes closer to Lucy. In Where Angels, the casting of Gino as an unrefined
gold-digger, with a stress on his bad table-manners and inaptitude for polite
conversation, constructs an Italian ‘good savage’, making Italianness inherently
low-class; thus British highly-civilised inhibition is tempered by Italian
wildness, and Gino’s brutality is forgiven in view of his genuine barbarity.
While Philip and Caroline may dabble at ‘going native’ in Monteriano, their
sombre return to Britain makes Italianisation an isolated event: useful as a
life-changing experience, Italy remains outside the realm of the ‘proper’
world. Just like the Oriental, whose perceived difference is dismissed as
archaic or alien, only to be idealised as an antidote to the West’s spiritual
crisis, the Italian is viewed through an ambivalent framework, which is
patronising and myth-making at the same time.
Not all of the films’ inconsistencies, however, result in the rigid delimitation
of Italianness: paradoxically, the insistence on a certain view of Italy
contains possibilities for its own subversion. While the films’ overt structure
relies on a distinction between Italian and British traits, the preoccupation
with transforming British characters through immersion into Italianness
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reveals a different subtext, in which national distinctions are subordinated
to individual qualities and potentialities. This is clear if one considers A
Room, where, through the Emersons, British tweedy quaintness is linked to
Italian wildness: the eccentric father and son, country-loving, unruly and
outspoken, are able to mingle with both groups. To discuss trespassing
British characters, it is useful again to look at theoretical models of
identity-construction: Robert Young’s concept of the Oriental Other (1990:
139), seen as the externalisation of Western inner dislocation, bears
directly on the films in question, where Italianness is the manifestation of
latent qualities, excluded from dominant versions of British identity. Robin
Cohen’s theory of ‘fuzziness’ (1994: 18, 19), the idea of a flexible or permeable
barrier between one’s identity and that of others, is also enlightening:
self-definition, built on a principle of innate separation, is in fact
precariously achieved through constant negotiation. To apply this model
to A Room and Where Angels is to uncover a paradox, by which Britishness
and Italianness, supposedly antithetical poles of identity, serve as relative
positions along the common, on-going path of self-discovery. In both films,
when British characters infringe perceived rules of national conduct, they
adopt Italian standards not to relinquish their identity, but to find it. Their
successive return to Britain cannot alter what Italy has highlighted, the
confluence of opposing qualities into a single individual: the frontier
between two sets of values has, indeed, turned out to be fuzzy.
Viewed from this angle, the major difference between the various
British characters is not the degree of their adherence to Britishness, but
their interpretation of it: an interpretation which may incorporate, permanently
or transitorily, some supposedly Italian characteristics.
Paraphrasing Said once again, one can say that the reclamation of
Italianness takes place when Italy is approached intuitively and not textually,
when its qualities are felt and recognised, rather than detachedly
known from a text: hence the difference between Cecil and George, the
first vainly assuming the airs of an ‘inglese italianato’, the second never
voicing a single comment on Italy, but instinctively being at one with the
place. While Lucy’s confused Italian experience remains characterised
by the need for ‘a view’, the Emersons are the only British tourists not to
endorse a textual attitude: as fuzzy in-betweens, they effectively expose
the artificiality of national distinctions. This level of meaning is carefully
underplayed by the film, which clings to its oppositional structure; the
Emersons’ difference, and to a lesser extent the Miss Alans’, are contained
under the catch-all, if vague, category of ‘English eccentrics’. In
Where Angels, on the other hand, trespassing British characters embrace
Italianness having consciously renounced their textual baggage: Philip
and Caroline lack the Emersons’ radical philosophy, or the Miss Alans’
child-like openness, so their Italianisation is more a course of action
than a pre-existing condition.
Notwithstanding their token native transgressors, A Room and Where
Angels leave little positional choice to British viewers, who are inserted in a
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binary structure dividing the British protagonists (those ‘like themselves’)
from the Italians (the Others). With the virtual absence of the Italian gaze,
each film constructs subjectivity around its own, narrow notions of
Britishness. This lack of alternatives results in the privileging of a specific
national image, making the few available subject positions ‘the only legitimate
positions of the national subject’ (Higson 1995: 275). While the
films point to the fuzzy Emersons, or to the less fuzzy Philip and Caroline,
as to preferable, gap-bridging positions, meaning remains ultimately based
on the ‘naturalness’ of Britishness. As the self-doubt permeating the original
texts is hidden from view, so the blurring between nationalities is
unacknowledged, thanks to a visual and narrative pledge to ‘national
heritage’; the fact that the British premiere of A Room was in aid of the
National Trust, and took place in the presence of the Queen Mother, leaves
no illusion as to the intended presentation of the film.
Ultimately, the crucial factor in the reception of heritage cinema is the
claim to authenticity of the whole heritage industry: films are implicitly
given the reliable status ascribed to museums, listed buildings, classic literature,
and other films. As authenticity lends authority, these films’ representation
of Britishness, or Italianness, reaches the screen already
validated. In A Room and Where Angels, every narrative thread and subjective
shot contributes to place authority with the British characters, albeit
those who are able to see beyond the national ‘muddle’. Mr Emerson, who
guides Lucy and George out of their maze of self-delusion, or Philip and
Caroline, who achieve their own self-awareness, are clearly representing
moral authority; in particular, Caroline’s authoritative aura gives her the
last word on Italy, and her final position can be seen as symptomatic of
both films. After playing a reconciliatory role, drawing Gino and Philip
together after the child’s death, Caroline stands for wisdom and ‘true’
knowledge; when she declares that she will never visit Italy again, she
explains that she does not need to, because she understands Italy ‘perfectly’.
It is a statement which neatly closes the British journey of selfdiscovery:
after knowing oneself through knowing Italy, the latter is no
longer useful and is abandoned, to remain a distant Other with no place in
‘real’ life.
Works cited
Cohen, R. (1994), Frontiers of Identity: The British and the Others, London:
Longman.
Higson, A. (1995), Waving the Flag: Constructing a National Cinema in Britain,
Oxford: Clarendon.
——— (1996), ‘The Heritage Film and British Cinema’, in A. Higson (ed.),
Dissolving Views: Key Writings on British Cinema, London: Cassell, pp. 232–248.
Richards, J. (1997), Films and British National Identity: from Dickens to Dad’s Army,
Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Said, E. (1995), Orientalism, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Young, R. (1990), White Mythologies, London: Routledge.
34 Elisabetta Girelli
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Suggested citation
Girelli, E. (2006), ‘Beauty and the Beast: The construction of Italianness in A Room
With A View and Where Angels Fear To Tread’, Studies in European Cinema 3: 1,
pp. 25–35, doi: 10.1386/seci.3.1.25/1
Contributor details
Elisabetta Girelli has completed her Ph.D. on the representation of Italianness in
British cinema. She is particularly interested in issues of identity and nationality in
film, and is currently researching representations of the Cambridge Spies in British
cinema and television. She has taught Film Studies part-time at Queen Mary,
University of London. Contact: Elisabetta Girelli, 31b Haydon Park Road, London.
SW19 8JQ.
Tel: 44 (0)20 7882 3335.
Email: elisabetta_g2002@yahoo.co.uk
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