Ruth Prawer Jhabvala 1927-2013
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, the prodigiously gifted novelist and prolific screenwriter, Oscar winner for her adapted screenplays Room with a View and Howards End, has died in Manhattan after a long illness. She was 85.
As the screenwriter for movies by producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory she was for 40 years the hypotenuse of one of the most productive filmmaking triangles in film history. A German Jew who left her native country for England during World War II and relocated to India and then the United States, she was attuned to tales of dislocation and cultural collision. She was a brilliant adapter of novels — both of her Oscars were for screenplays based on E.M. Forster works — who distilled the nuance and depth of the source material in under two hours running time.
Although her critics griped about the “Masterpiece Theater” aspect of the many costume dramas she wrote, she was equally deft in writing modern-day material, as with her adaptation of her own novel, Heat and Dust and the book Le Divorce.
My favorite of her screenplays was Howards End. Yours?
@CarrieRickey Ah. She adapted one of THE FUTURIST!’s favorite films of all time http://t.co/1LT7N4zW26
Love love love Room with a View. Esp. when Maggie Smith, looking at Julian Sand in the drawing room and Daniel Day-Lewis in the garden, confronts her niece and asks, “Is it HIM …or HIM?”
Your favorite Ruth Prawer Jhabvala screenplay? Mine are Howards End and Heat and Dust:… http://t.co/sWJap2ieiF
Another one bites the dust. RIP Ruth. http://t.co/b90R4iLvfA
RT @CarrieRickey: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala 1927-2013 – http://t.co/Uz0qIPMYyR
RT @CarrieRickey: Your favorite Ruth Prawer Jhabvala screenplay? Mine are Howards End and Heat and Dust:… http://t.co/sWJap2ieiF
It’s funny, while love ROOM WITH A VIEW and HOWARD’S END, MR. & MRS. BRIDGE may be my pick. I remember feeling absolutely STIFLED by that film (a supreme compliment) and whenever anyone mentions M&M BRIDGE, I picture Joanne Woodward stuck in her car, or Newman eating dinner calmly during a storm. That film is oddly seared in my memory, and I recall just wanting to escape the theater to get some air. How many films have that power?
I also think A SOLDIER’S DAUGHTER NEVER CRIES is fantastic and highly underrated.
Ruth Prawer Zhabvala has great contribution to English Literature and Films. India and the world shall not forget her work for ART…
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