Muppet Scholar @muppetscholar - Tumblr Blog

The Servant // I Spy - Pulp

#the servant 1963 #ignore the spanish subtitles #this was never getting finished otherwise. Pretend its an artistic choice #pulp band #genuinely believe this to be an erotic thriller #PLEASE watch it #dirk bogarde #who wants to reenact this with me #I'm joking... mostly #my edit

batri-jopa

Maurice by E.M. Forster - Notes by David Leavitt:

The most sustained criticism of Pianola in literature comes in Forster's posthumously published novel Maurice. Here Clive Durham, the boy with whom Maurice falls in love up at Cambridge, is found in chapter six sorting out 'a castle of pianola records' of the march from Tchaikovsky's Pathétique; then, when he goes to play them, a mutual friend tells Maurice, 'You should get away from the machine [Pianola]' - and therefore Clive himself - 'as far as you can'. The Pianola manufactures music in the same way that Clive 'manufactures' heterosexual passion (which consequences less outwardly disastrous for him than for Tchaikovsky). That the way one makes music - or connects to music - signifies one's values in Forster's work is illustrated beautifully when Maurice meets Alec Scudder at Penge: together they move a real piano from under a leak in Clive ancestral home. This instrument, like their relationship, is the genuine article, and worth protecting from the decay of that society. The instrument itself embodies virtue.

muppetscholar

I love this quote and the point it's making, HOWEVER it does deeply frustrate me that this statement, which is supposedly about the book rests it conclusion on something that does not even happen in the novel. Maurice does not help Alec move the piano in the book, he only does so in the movie. He just watches him do it while picking a book to read from the bookshelf. I think its one of the best innovations made by the film adaptation and its frustrating to see it misattributed in the Penguin introduction.

#if the introduction to the PENGUIN EDITION will not be a pedant i shall #also david leavitt shits on the film adaptation for making maurice a blonde and then misattributes something from the film to the book.#like ok #I digress #maurice 1987 #maurice

Butch/Femme Apartment Zero

#getting these OUT OF MY SYSTEM.#Apartment Zero #Genderbend #lesbian art #butch art #target audience of me #my art

Maurice as 70s dykes, because I have free will

#maurice 1987 #maurice em forster #maurice hall #clive durham #alec scudder #fanart #art #genderbend #except for clive #she would NEVER call herself a dyke #my art

hansrilowz

the different ways people react to and about the movie maurice (1987) says a lot about someone…… to me it’s truly the real test of media literacy. like what do you mean you hate clive or you think clive is a villain or traitor or prefer maurice ending up with clive instead of alec. like what do you mean. what do you mean you view clive as the villain in the story when truly there’s no villain except the criminalization of homosexuality and the alienation towards queer people in this time period. what do you mean you don’t view clive’s character as a tragedy and a realistic commentary on a gay man of the higher class in early 20th century england who chooses to force himself deeper into the closer to protect his name, image and career….. what do you mean you see him as a selfish villain who cares only about himself when to him, he didn’t understand or accept himself and his sexuality and decided to give up his love for maurice to protect himself (and to him, maurice) when maurice chose to accept himself and his sexuality instead. what do you mean you think clive is better for maurice instead of alec who fought and chased maurice due to his love for him, unlike clive. what do you mean

#agreed #my own dislike of clive is based on personal projection lmao #NOT because he's an actual villain

still-roaming-the-greenwood

So, I just watched Maurice again (naturally) and this time I decided to watch all of the deleted scenes, which I hadn't watched on the disc yet. And I just have to ask, does anyone have any idea what they were going for with the Alternate Opening Sequence?? It's so long and nonsensical that I literally apologized to the person I was watching it with several times 😂 We even went back to watch the beginning of it with commentary to see if that explained anything, but basically they (I can't remember who was giving the commentary lol) just said they wanted the film to be in flashback format? Which still doesn't make sense because the scenes in that sequence were all over the place and definitely were not conveying "flashback" lol

muppetscholar

Definitely agree about the deleted intro being a bit of mess. There's a paper on the various changes the script went through by Suzanne Speidel that kind of covers why they may have tried that approach at first.

Maurice, when it was released in 1971 was critically panned and largely deemed to be more simplistic and juvenile than E. M. Forster's other published work. While the novel is definitely seen in a more positive light now, back in the mid-80s when they were writing the script the book was still not seen as up to par with the rest of his catalogue. Cambridge almost didn't let them film there, not because of the gay content, but because they thought it was a sub-par work!

So, the "flashbacks" were a way to disrupt the simple chronology of the book and as a way to make the story less "plodding." The paper basically admits that they were kind of a mess though, lol. As they continued to make drafts of the screenplay more and more flashbacks were removed and eventually they landed on the entirely linear film. David Greven in his book on the film (Maurice, 2023) argues that while we never see the flashbacks in the completed film, that original structure might have informed some of the dreamy/melancholy feel the complete film has.

Here's a link to the full article!

#maurice 1987 #finally a time where my knowledge is useful

Maurice // Good Luck Babe - Chappell Roan

#this is my magnum opus #a challenge as clive durham's number one hater #truly an embarrassing amount of time was spent on this and there's about a paragraphs worth of justification for each clip #feat my fruitless attempt to color grade the deleted scenes #for the culture #good luck babe #chappell roan #maurice 1987 #maurice hall #maurice em forster #em forster #hugh grant #james wilby #rupert graves #clive durham #maurice #my edit

perplexingly

‘There we shall be safe’ they thought. They were never to be that. But they were together for the moment, they had stayed disintegration and combined daily work with love; and who can hope for more?

Somewhat based on the discarded epilogue of E. M. Forster’s Maurice, where we can see Maurice and Alec living together in the woods

the end of Maurice (1987)

#maurice 1987 #maurice em forster

sonofcelluloid

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#armandposting

Wake up darling, it's urgent. I demand to see your Spotify Wrapped. the mortals online claim they are in the top 0.01% of Fiona Apple listeners, and I need to know that you are in this elite class. Indeed I checked early this morning and was placed in the pitiful top 1%. This is critical Daniel, she must know that we are devoted supporters