Handsome “Howards End” on Cohen Film Collection 4K UHD
- Peggy Earle
- 19 hours ago
- 7 min read
Updated: 1 hour ago
4K ULTRA HD REVIEW / SDR SCREENSHOTS
Center, Emma Thompson in her Academy Award performance as Margaret Schlegel, left, Helena Bonham Carter plays her sister Helen, and Anthony Hopkins as Mr. Henry Wilcox, a prominent London banker. (2) Howards End, the English countryside home of Mrs. Ruth Wilcox.
(Click an image to scroll the larger versions)
“HOWARDS END”
4K Ultra HD & Blu-ray; 1992; PG for mild profanity, violence and sexuality
Best extra: “Returning to Howards End” conversation between director James Ivory and curator Laurence Kardish
THE COLLABORATION of the late producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory has brought audiences a trove of cinematic treasures, notably three films based on the novels of E.M. Forster: “A Room with a View,” “Maurice,” and “Howards End.” Cohen Film Collection released a 3-disc set of “Howards End” last month, which includes a 4K UHD version, plus two Blu-ray discs: one with the feature film and the other filled with extras.
For those who haven’t yet had the pleasure of seeing this masterpiece, “Howards End” is a story set in Edwardian England, about the confluence of three English families: the wealthy Wilcoxes, the bourgeois Schlegels, and the working-class Basts. With a fantastic cast that includes Anthony Hopkins, Vanessa Redgrave, Emma Thompson, and Helena Bonham Carter, and a screenplay by Merchant/Ivory regular Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, the film presents a wonderful microcosm of the British class system.
Nominated for nine Academy Awards, “Howards End” received three, including for best actress (Thompson). She plays Margaret Schlegel, who becomes close to a neighbor, the ailing Ruth Wilcox (Redgrave), who learns that Margaret and her siblings, Helen and Tibby (Bonham Carter and Adrian Ross Magenty) are about to be evicted from their London apartment. As she lay dying, Ruth scribbles a note bequeathing her beloved childhood home, Howards End, to Margaret.
(1) Margaret reads a letter from Helen, announcing her engagement to Paul Wilcox. (2) Helen at Howards End. (3) Charles Wilcox (James Wilby) shows off his new “motor” to the family. (4) Paul explains to Helen why they can’t be married. (5&6) Aunt Juley (Prunella Scales) comes to investigate the engagement, and Charles picks her up at the train station.
When the note is discovered by Henry (Hopkins) after Margaret’s death, he and his children Evie (Jemma Redgrave) and Charles (James Wilby) agree to destroy it, assuming Ruth was delirious when she wrote it. Later, while helping Margaret find a new apartment, Henry falls in love with her, and proposes marriage. Meanwhile, Helen has become involved with young Leonard Bast (Samuel West) and is determined to help the poor clerk, with Henry’s help. It all goes terribly wrong, however, and that’s when the awful injustices of the British class system really come to the fore.
VIDEO
It’s taken nearly a decade for Cohen’s 4K restoration of “Howards End,” sourced from the original 35mm camera negative, to make its first U.S. release on 4K UHD. Yes, it was supervised and approved by Ivory from 2016. And, another oddity, there’s no HDR grading from the 4K master. Maybe it was beyond Cohen’s financing. So, whatever the case, the colors and contrast levels between the 4K disc and Blu-ray are identical, both with the SDR 709 color spectrum. The colors are still gorgeous and natural, but could’ve been so much better.
The real difference is the added resolution from start to finish with the 4K disc, providing finer details in facial closeups and fabrics, the beautiful landscapes, and English architecture, with a fine wash of natural film grain. Plus, the added video bitrate with the 4K disc encoded onto 100 GB disc, compared to the smaller 50 GB disc for the Blu-ray.
FYI: Sony provided an excellent 4K/HDR presentation of the Merchant Ivory production of “The Remains of the Day” (1994), also captured in the Super 35 format by cinematographer Tony Pierce-Roberts, and starring Hopkins and Thompson. It also included an upgraded Dolby Atmos track.
(1) Helen and Leonard Bast (Samuel West) are seated next to each other at a public lecture. (2) Leonard at home with his wife, Jacky (Nicola Duffett). (3&4) Ruth Wilcox (Vanessa Redgrave) and Margaret have tea in the Wilcox apartment.
(5) Charles and his sister Evie Wilcox (Jemma Redgrave) visit their mother at the Oxford hospital. (6) The Wilcoxes make a decision about Margaret’s handwritten final wish.
AUDIO
The same six-channel DTS-HD soundtrack was ported over, with plenty of sonic fidelity, for the front and center dialogue-driven film. The wonderful subtleties of Richard Robbins’ first Oscar-nominated score, which incorporated two Edwardian piano pieces from composer Percy Grainger, are as lush as the imagery.
EXTRAS
The commentary, by film critics Wade Major and Lael Loewenstein, from Film Week, a radio show on the NPR station KPCC in the greater Los Angeles area. (4K & Blu-ray)
The remaining bonus features on Disc 3, imported from earlier releases of “Howards End,” most of them from 2017.
“Interview with Ivory and Redgrave at the Cannes Film Festival” (8 mins.) before its 4K restoration presentation in 2016.
Q&A with Ivory after a Lincoln Center screening, moderated by author Michael Koresky (27 mins.) The director was drawn to the works of E.M. Forster after reading his novel, “Passage to India.” The author had said before his death, “he never wanted his novels to be made into films,” Ivory says.
“1992 behind-the-scenes featurette” (4 mins) short interviews with the cast and Ivory.
"Building Howards End” (43 mins.) is a sit-down conversation with Ivory and Merchant as they detail their struggles to get the $8 million production financed. At the time, Ivory wasn’t that familiar with Hopkins, but forwarded the script via a sound editor involved with “The Silence of the Lambs,” while bypassing traditional Hollywood agents. “He was interested right away… and had the time and liked the part,” Ivory says.
“The Design of Howards End” (9 mins.) is an interview with production designer Luciana Arrighi, who won an Oscar for her work.
“James Ivory Remembers Ismail Merchant” (12 mins.) recalls his first encounter with Merchant, who was standing in front of the New York India consulate after a screening of Ivory’s documentary “The Sword and the Flute” (1959). The two formed Merchant Ivory Productions in 1961, and their first film was “Householder” (1963). Merchant died in 2005.
(1) Leonard takes tea with the Schlegel sisters. (2-4) Henry proposes marriage to Margaret. (5) Helen is back from Germany and awaits Margaret at Howards End.
(6) Henry, Dolly (Susan Lindeman), and Margaret enjoy a ride in their motor vehicle. (7) Charles has a smoke as he and his wife Dolly, talk about their children. (8) The Wilcox stately home is the perfect spot for the marriage of Evie Wilcox and Percy Cahill. (9) Helen brings the uninvited Basts to the wedding reception.
“Returning to Howards End” (26 mins.) is a 2016 conversation between Ivory and the Museum of Modern Art film curator Laurence Kardish, and it’s quite interesting.
Kardish notes that one way the screenplay differs from the novel is that there is no narration in the film, while the book is written in the third person. Ivory says the idea for making the film came from Jhabvala, who adored the book and passed it on to him. He read it three times before deciding to take on the project. He discusses a scene in the book that Jhabvala particularly loved, in which Charles Wilcox is driving Margaret somewhere in his car. At one point, he runs over what seems to be an animal but, despite Margaret’s passionate entreaties, refuses to stop – so she jumps out of the car. The scene, says Ivory, would have been impossible to shoot so, to Jhabvala’s disappointment, it had to be left out.
Kardish focuses on the character of Leonard Bast, whom he feels is presented much more sympathetically in the film than he was in the book. Jhabvala believed that since Forster was a member of the upper class, he wouldn’t have been able to identify with a working-class character like Bast, so she decided to make him more real and relatable in the film.
Ivory adds that Samuel West, who plays Leonard, is actually the son of Prunella Scales, also in the cast as the Schlegel sisters’ Aunt Juley. Ivory talks about Henry Wilcox’s character. He’s unsympathetic for several reasons, including that his fortune comes from a rubber plantation in Africa, a business that became infamous for the horrible abuse suffered by its workers. “Forster,” Ivory says, “would have known that.”
The director also notes that “Howards End” was the film that “made Emma Thompson the international star she became.” She was the last actress to audition for the part of Margaret, and read her lines directly from the novel for Ivory, who immediately concluded, “This is Margaret!” Ivory knew from the start that he wanted Helena Bonham Carter to play Helen (“Who’s going to complain?”) and he felt that James Wilby would make a “good villain.”
The building used for Howards End in the film, Ivory points out, once belonged to Lady Ottoline Morrell, famous as a wealthy socialite and patron of the arts who specifically supported members of the Bloomsbury group.
Ivory talks about how Jhabvala went about writing the screenplay for “Howards End”: He gave her a “marked-up” copy of the novel, filled with his notes, and she proceeded from there. He says she was “very careful … not to include too much dialogue,” despite the fact that he “loves dialogue.”
— Peggy Earle
(1) Helen and Leonard have a romantic outing. (2&3) Margaret and Henry look over blueprints for their new home to be built in Sussex. (4) Brother Tibby Schlegel (Adrian Ross Magenty) and Margaret discuss Helen’s romantic missteps. (5) Helen at Howards End. (6&7) Tragedy hits the Wilcox family, and Margaret pleads with Henry to allow Helen to stay at Howards End for a night.
SPECS
100 GB disc
TRUE 4K mastering
Captured on 35mm film stock in the Super 35 format (2.39:1 aspect ratio).
Video bitrate: Varies from the lower 70 Megabits per second average to lower 90 Mbps, with a running time of 142 minutes.
Box office: $26 million worldwide, with a production budget of $8 million.
Academy Awards: Nominated for nine Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Music, and Original Score. It won Three golden statues, one for Emma Thompson – Best Actress, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala for Best Writing, based on Material Previously Produced or Published, and Luciana Arrighi and Ian Whittaker for Best Art Direction.
British Academy Film Awards: 11 nominations, and won a BAFTA Best Film and Best Actress.
Rotten Tomatoes: Top Critics’ 92 percent, Moviegoers 81 percent
Metacritic: Critics 88 percent, User score 8.1
The Guardian Top 10 Merchant Ivory films: “Howards End” No. 3, behind No. 2 “A Room with a View” and No. 1 “The Remains of the Day.”