The American
June 2005 Reviewed by: Charlotte Meyer Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

Which to do first? Read the book or see the film? That old dilemma raises its horns again with The American, a 2001 BBC version of the 1877 novel by Henry James. The novel is a super-subtle investigation of the cultural distance between tradition-bound Europe and the emerging, entrepreneurial America. James’ protagonist is a prosperous, self-made businessman, Christopher Newman, on his first trip to France, confidently seeking the culture he knows he lacks. His antagonist is the Marquise de Bellegarde, elitist and rigid, the matriarch of a French family with an ancient lineage, in decline. She needs his money and he loves her daughter, but they can’t make the trade. What gives the novel its power are the naive miscalculations Newman makes of the complex secret codes that govern the noble Bellegardes. It’s a superbly nuanced study of the invisible walls that divide cultures.

The DVD though is about the plot -- a thwarted love story. Boy-loves-girl, and evil-mother-intervenes. And Diana Rigg is one evil mother. With her leathery, lined, cunning face, she’s terrific in the role. Matthew Modine, who is Christopher Newman, has played the American-abroad role before in Le Divorce, but he’s better cast in more typically American roles like Private Joker in Full Metal Jacket. He’s not quite convincing as the homespun prairie tycoon, yet he breezes through, sipping tea at Hotel de Bellegarde and horrifying his noble hostess with stories of his commercial success in washtubs. In what looks just like a 21st-century one-night stand, he makes love to Noemie (Eva Birthistle), the blonde painter from the Louvre whose amateurish copies of the masters he mistakes for art. The bedroom frolics in the movie would have mortified Henry James who makes only the faintest suggestions of the repressed sensuality of his characters. Claire de Cintre, Newman’s love interest, is played with intense restraint by the rising Irish actress Aisling O’Sullivan. Much of what the book is really about, though, isn’t here.

The DVD itself seems dark and murky, especially the interior shots. The score by Stephen McKeon enhances the emotion but without the subtlety Henry James would have preferred. Sound overall is muddy, and dialect not too crisp. There are no features of any kind. But PBS has an excellent ancillary website with essays and interviews and lots of biographical information. For example, there is an excellent study of how The American was written first in 1877 as a novel and then rewritten by James in 1890 as a play and finally as a screenplay for the BBC production by Michael Hastings. The website takes the same three scenes from all three versions and shows the changes from "page to stage to screen." Another page on the site called "Adapting the Master" assembles the comments by several James screenwriters on what they find so compelling in his fiction. Even they would agree that if it came down to making a choice between book or movie, let it be the book.

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