Daisy Miller (1974) – DVD

***/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras B+
starring Cybill Shepherd, Barry Brown, Mildred Natwick, Eileen Brennan
screenplay by Frederic Raphael, based on the novella by Henry James
directed by Peter Bogdanovich

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Daisy Miller is that rare literary adaptation that improves when considered next to its source. Not content to deliver the consumption porn that would later define Merchant-Ivory and their fellow travellers, director Peter Bogdanovich instead serves up a bittersweet evocation of an oblivious life lost and an all-too-conscious one wasted in check, employing the tools of cinema–not just art direction–to make his aesthetic/emotional case. Here, one feels the pressures of late-19^th century mores as they close in on the title character and the civilized restraint that keeps its protagonist from acting on impulse; the costumes and furnishings, though lavish enough, are not the main event. And while the self-contained nature of the piece (endemic to the Henry James source) keeps the film from touching greatness, it's still very sensitive work in a genre that is normally beneath contempt.

It could have gone so wrong in so many ways. James's 1878 novella is a story of violation of societal taboos: when the eponymous Miss Miller (Cybill Shepherd), a capricious American girl abroad, strikes up a friendship/obsession with the Europe-bred Yank Mr. Winterbourne (the late, lamented Barry Brown), the film becomes a face-off between a life driven by random desires and one who keeps those desires at bay. In the wrong hands, this could have fetishized the agonizing tension between the two extremes, coming down by aesthetic default on the side of repression (are you listening, BBC?). And the film's scrupulous accuracy could have easily degenerated into a fusty old librarian's book worship–Frederic Raphael's screenplay hews so closely to the line of the original (reproducing most of its dialogue) that a middling director might have turned into a stiff and unoriginal replay of a favourite work.

But the film is far from stuffy. There's a languid melancholy to most of its scenes: Bogdanovich foregrounds the characters and not their trappings, making their dialogues weightier and more pungent. The camera moves with Daisy during the leads' initial meeting in Vevey, following her ball of fire as Winterbourne tries to keep up; at the same time, the lack of ostentatious cutting traps them in the movement, letting their words and desires spill out into vast spaces that do not acknowledge them. Thus Daisy's motormouth is revealed to be uncomprehending of the forces that will destroy her, and Winterbourne's attempts to retain composure look helpless and painful. There's no verbal announcement of these feelings, merely a vague feeling of menace you can't put your finger on until the machinations of the plot finally bring you to a conclusion.

To be sure, there's nothing particularly analytical about Daisy Miller: it simply drifts from Switzerland to Rome with the characters, marks the unwitting flouting of propriety of Daisy and her uncouth family, and charts her flippant romance with an unsuitable Italian who delivers her to her destruction. The inevitability of it precludes the possibility of action to the contrary, and the film flutters to a brittle and delicate close. But taken on its own terms, it's both a superb rendering of James and a supremely satisfying film in its own right that shows there might be more to the career of Bogdanovich than early successes like Paper Moon and The Last Picture Show.

THE DVD
Paramount's DVD platter is decent enough. The 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer is largely good, though scenes of darkness can be muddy and lose fine detail. The 2.0 mono sound, meanwhile, is generally quite subtle and complex–it doesn't hit you over the head with its brilliance, choosing instead to seamlessly blend the dialogue and the sound effects for a gentle blur that is quite complementary to the picture's quiet power. As far as extras are concerned, there is a 12-minute opening interview with the director ("Daisy Miller: An Introduction by Peter Bogdanovich") wherein he describes the origins of the project, briefly profiles the performers, and reveals some production secrets; alas, it is largely rendered superfluous by the accompanying commentary track, which covers much of the same ground. The yak-track itself is reasonably interesting, detailing both the shooting methods and motives for those shooting methods–readers of the novella and lovers of the film will be surprised by his slightly unorthodox interpretations of certain scenes. There are no other extras, not even a trailer.

91 minutes; G; 1.78:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 2.0 (Mono); CC; English subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Paramount