Maurice

Set in Edwardian England, the 1987 film Maurice, directed by James Ivory from E.M. Forster's novel, follows a young man as he comes to recognize his desire for other men and eventually accepts who he is. The film stands out as one of the more politically defiant productions of its decade. It tells a coming-out story and gives its central couple, Maurice and Alec, a happy ending.

The film was released during the first decade of the AIDS epidemic, when homophobia was openly widespread on both sides of the Atlantic. Ivory and his producer, Ismail Merchant, whose partnership is closely associated with period literary adaptation, faced criticism at the time that dismissed Ivory as shallow and conventional. Many viewers and reviewers saw the film as a retreat into the static, overly faithful style of the early Merchant Ivory adaptations.

This volume takes a close look at Forster's novel and at Ivory's visual approach, along with Richard Robbins's score and the performances of James Wilby, Hugh Grant and Rupert Graves. David Greven argues that the film is a sympathetic adaptation, that Ivory is a subtle and intelligent director whose talents have been underrated, and that Maurice deserves reassessment from the critics who turned against it. The book treats the film as a complete work of art in its own right and traces how a novel about gay love became an established work of queer cinema.