A room with a view

Having just finished reading A Room with a View, I revisited the movie. It improves upon its source in this way: it gives more humor to the young George Emerson.

In this added scene, George climbs a tree and says his “creed.” And in this one, he teases the story’s killjoy, the spinster Charlotte Bartlett. Without such scenes I doubt that Roger Ebert would have said that George was his favorite character.

And not only does the movie reveal George more completely, it also reveals Freddy Honeychurch and the Reverend Arthur Beebe.

My own bedroom has no view; the blinds are always closed. (They’re translucent, however, and through them one sees the dancing silhouettes of leaves.) I do not stay long in my bedroom. I leave it to sit in the front room, or to pace in the kitchen. Or I spend hours out of doors. I’ve been outside more this year than ever in my life. In Ithaca my room had a splendid view, but I languished in my armchair day after day.