Roseland | |
---|---|
Directed by | James Ivory |
Written by | Ruth Prawer Jhabvala |
Produced by | Ismail Merchant |
Starring | Teresa Wright Geraldine Chaplin |
Cinematography | Ernest Vincze |
Edited by | Humphrey Dixon Richard Schmiechen |
Music by | Michael Gibson |
Release date |
|
Running time | 104 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $375,000 |
Roseland is a 1977 Merchant Ivory Productions' anthology film with a screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. It was directed by James Ivory and produced by Ismail Merchant.
The film is made up of three connected short features: The Waltz , The Hustle and The Peabody . All three stories share a theme of the protagonists trying to find the right dance partner, and all are set in the Roseland Ballroom in New York City.
At Roseland, an older lady, May (Wright), with a light step, looks for the memory of her husband in the ballroom's mirrors. Stan (Jacobi), a cheerful older man steers May to brandy alexanders and away from her past.
Pauline (Copeland) is a middle-aged widow with the means to pay for the services of a younger gigolo, Russell (Walken) and share champagne with her Roseland friends, the dance teacher Cleo (Helen Gallagher) and the shy divorcee, Marilyn (Chaplin). Both Marilyn and Cleo fail to break Russell's attachment to the lifestyle that Pauline provides.
Rosa (Skala), a former Schrafft's cook and aspiring dance superstar makes it her mission to win the peabody prize with her older partner, Arthur (Thomas) who is desperate to marry her. [1]
Roseland was filmed in an almost pseudo-documentary style as an exploration of the lives of Roseland's customers. The vignettes are also purportedly based on true stories. Filming took place almost entirely in the Roseland Ballroom. [1]
The Washington Post explained that the film shows what "is mostly the sadness and faded dreams of dancers who look like they were around the day the doors first opened". The review praised how Ivory "effectively uses three romantic vignettes" as well as the "realistic" dialogue. [1] John Simon called Roseland a piece of vulgar and inept filmmaking. [2]
Some films feature recognizable dance forms, demonstrating them, shedding light on their origin, or being the base of a plot.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala was a British and American novelist and screenwriter. She is best known for her collaboration with Merchant Ivory Productions, made up of film director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant.
Mr. & Mrs. Bridge is a 1990 American drama film based on the novels Mr. Bridge and Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell. It is directed by James Ivory, with a screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, and produced by Ismail Merchant.
James Francis Ivory is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He was a principal in Merchant Ivory Productions along with Indian film producer Ismail Merchant and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. The trio is known for making film adaptations of stories by authors such as E.M. Forster and Henry James. Their body of work is celebrated for its elegance, sophistication, literary fidelity, strong performances, complex themes, and rich characters.
Madhur Jaffrey CBE is an Indian-born British-American actress, cookbook and travel writer, and television personality. She is recognized for bringing Indian cuisine to the western hemisphere with her debut cookbook, An Invitation to Indian Cooking (1973), which was inducted into the James Beard Foundation’s Cookbook Hall of Fame in 2006. She has written over a dozen cookbooks and appeared on several related television programmes, the most notable of which was Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cookery, which premiered in the UK in 1982. She was the food consultant at the now-closed Dawat, which was considered by many food critics to be among the best Indian restaurants in New York City.
Shakespeare Wallah is a 1965 Merchant Ivory Productions film. The story and screenplay are by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, about a travelling family theatre troupe of English actors in India, who perform Shakespeare plays in towns across India, amidst a dwindling demand for their work and the rise of Hindi film industry. Madhur Jaffrey won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the 15th Berlin International Film Festival for her performance. The music was composed by Satyajit Ray.
The Remains of the Day is a 1993 drama film adapted from the Booker Prize–winning 1989 novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. The film was directed by James Ivory, produced by Ismail Merchant, Mike Nichols, and John Calley and adapted by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. It stars Anthony Hopkins as James Stevens and Emma Thompson as Miss Kenton, with James Fox, Christopher Reeve, Hugh Grant, Ben Chaplin, and Lena Headey in supporting roles.
Jefferson in Paris is a 1995 historical drama film, directed by James Ivory, and previously entitled Head and Heart. The screenplay, by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, is a semi-fictional account of Thomas Jefferson's tenure as the Ambassador of the United States to France before his presidency and of his alleged relationships with Italian-English artist Maria Cosway and his slave, Sally Hemings.
Surviving Picasso is a 1996 American biographical drama film directed by James Ivory and starring Anthony Hopkins as the famous painter Pablo Picasso. It was produced by Ismail Merchant and David L. Wolper. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's screenplay was loosely based on the 1988 biography Picasso: Creator and Destroyer by Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington.
Heat and Dust (1975) is a novel by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala that won the Booker Prize in 1975. The book was also ranked by The Telegraph in 2014 as one of the 10 all-time greatest Asian novels.
The Roseland Ballroom was a multipurpose hall, in a converted ice skating rink, with a colorful ballroom dancing pedigree, in New York City's theater district, on West 52nd Street in Manhattan.
The Householder is a 1963 film by Merchant Ivory Productions, with direction by James Ivory and a screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and James Ivory, and direction of James Ivory. It is based upon the 1960 novel of the same name by Jhabvala.
Autobiography of a Princess is a 1975 film directed by James Ivory and starring James Mason and Madhur Jaffrey. It was written by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and produced by Ismail Merchant.
The Golden Bowl is a 2000 period romantic drama film directed by James Ivory. The screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala is based on the 1904 novel of the same name by Henry James, who considered the work his masterpiece. It stars Kate Beckinsale, James Fox, Anjelica Huston, Nick Nolte, Jeremy Northam, Madeleine Potter, and Uma Thurman.
The Europeans is a 1979 British Merchant Ivory film, directed by James Ivory, produced by Ismail Merchant, and with a screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, based on Henry James's novel The Europeans (1878). It stars Lee Remick, Robin Ellis, Tim Woodward and Lisa Eichhorn. It was the first of Merchant Ivory's triptych of Henry James adaptations. It was followed by The Bostonians in 1984 and The Golden Bowl in 2001.
Heat and Dust is a 1983 British historical romantic drama film, with a screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala based on her novel, Heat and Dust (1975). It was directed by James Ivory and produced by Ismail Merchant. It stars Greta Scacchi, Shashi Kapoor and Julie Christie.
The Peabody is an American ballroom dance that evolved from the fast foxtrot of the ragtime era of the 1910s and 1920s.
The Courtesans of Bombay is a 1983 British docudrama directed by Ismail Merchant. A collaboration by Merchant, James Ivory, and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. The film focuses on a Bombay compound known as Pavan Pool, where women aspiring to work in the entertainment industry dance for donations from a male audience by day and, it is broadly suggested although never specifically stated, work as prostitutes by night. It was broadcast by Channel 4 in the UK in January 1983 and went into limited theatrical release in the United States on 19 March 1986.
The Householder is a 1960 English-language novel by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. It is about a young man named Prem who has recently moved from the first stage of his life, a student, to the second stage of his life, a householder. The book is a bildungsroman, which is a story where the protagonist develops mind and character as he passes from childhood through various experiences usually through a spiritual crisis into maturity.
Jacob Rutsen Van Rensselaer House and Mill Complex is a historic home and mill complex consisting of 14 interrelated buildings and located at Claverack in Columbia County, New York.