Getty Images released some more views of British actors James Wilby (in costume as Maurice Hall), Hugh Grant (in costume as Clive Durham), Ben Kingsley (as Lasker-Jones, but out of costume), and American film director James Ivory during the filming of ‘Maurice’ (directed by James Ivory), London, England, December 1986. (Photo by Mikki Ansin/Getty Images)
@undinecissy Oooh … thank you for spotting these! <333 The first one – Ben Kingsley in a blouson, leaning on Lasker-Jones’ couch – is just amazing. I love Mikki Ansin’s set photography.
Young Hugh as Clive, trading smiles and eye contact with Maurice over the table (again, insanely pretty)
‘Pippa says he writes verse. Mr Hall … is there someone?’
clive and maurice’s love was truly genuine and beautiful, it unfortunately just failed to hold
@simcox Their mischief and twinkly complicity here are beautiful. BTW I love your own later scene with the globe lamps where you serve dessert, then confuse Maurice by passing on Alec’s invitation to ‘bathe between innings’
‘It was on the third* day of shooting that he first met Rupert Graves to discuss the physical side of their relationship over dinner** with James Ivory. The director instructed them*** in Edwardian practice: mutual masturbation was in; oral sex was out. Kissing was out, too; nevertheless, Ivory felt that the two men should kiss at the end to show the depth of their emotions. “Rupert and I were strangers,” so we ummed around the subject a bit, then I said, ‘I think they really go for it,’ and Rupert said, ‘so do I.’ That’s how we did it.”’ [X]
*As a warm-up, Maurice/Alec’s first encounter, the greenhouse deleted scene, was shot on Day 1
**Curry
***‘Instructed them’ debateably, if we compare this advice with some of what Oscar Wilde reputedly got up to: ‘Love is a sacrament that should be taken kneeling.’
allow me to offer this trio of gifs from three of my favorite scenes
they all make me sensibly chuckle, this movie is a treat
Ah yes, Clive biffing Maurice over the head with his political speech. This is at least the second instance of closet!Clive getting inappropriately physical with Maurice when Maurice would really prefer not. (See also ‘Hail fellow!’ and the unsolicited hair-ruffling in the Russet Room.)
@ultra-rockart It would be amusing there *was* a scene in which Maurice biffs Clive over the head with a Conservative Party electoral speech, but … nope.
If you mean Maurice’s earlier physicality with Clive, there are many differences, not least that whole-hearted physicality is integral to Maurice’s personality, while Clive is the opposite. 20-year-old Maurice does it in the spontaneous flush of first love and clumsy desire. The ‘mature’ Clive only starts the biffing/hair-ruffling after he’s married and no longer interested in Maurice – and Clive specifically does this in scenes in which he believes (wrongly) that Maurice has found a ‘girl’ to marry.
Younger Clive’s unreadiness for Maurice’s physicality is a red flag that this be an issue for the future of their relationship. Older Clive’s sexless physicality comes at the precise moment when Maurice is pulling away from Clive – and Clive’s teaching – and about to take a different path. This becomes fully clear in Maurice’s speech in their final scene together, where (as many viewers have observed) Maurice has gained all the intellectual confidence, eloquence and authority which were once Clive’s.
Reblog to ask out fellow users for a talk the walk date.
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