Product Description

Helena Bonham Carter, Judy Davis, Rupert Graves, Helen Mirren The widow Lilia Herriton meets a young man when she visits Italy and marries him. The man is only a dentist without a good name, and Lilia's relatives are clearly unhappy with her choice. Lilia dies while giving birth to a son, and two relatives travel to Italy to take care of the baby, expecting no trouble from the father.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #43095 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-07-25
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English, Italian
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 109 minutes

Synopsis
An adaptation of E.M. Forster's debut novel. A woman who has recently lost her husband visits Italy where she soon marries again.

Customer Reviews

one of the lesser known productions.
"Where Angels Fear To Tread" was one of the earliest E M Forster novels, and in it you can trace the same theme that ran through his more well-known work "A Room With A View", i.e the Edwardian English and their love of Italy, and the freedom it gave them compared to the strictures of back home. Helen Mirren plays a widow who goes off on holiday to Italy, meets a man much younger than herself, and to the horror of her straitlaced in-laws back home, decides to marry him. Mirren soon finds though that marriage in Italy is, if possible, even more confining than back in Blighty. Even going for a walk on your own can seem an outrageous thing for a respectable married Italian woman to do. When she dies giving birth, the family back home are determined that the baby should be brought up in England and delegate the only man of the family, a somewhat dismayed Rupert Graves, to go over to Italy and fetch the baby back.
Accompanied by his waspish sister and a repressed spinster friend (an excellent Helena Bonham Carter, acting dowdy for a change), he sets off with great reluctance to Italy. Once there though he falls under the spell of the country, bewitched by the climate, the beauty of the countryside, the free-and-easy atmosphere, and the exuberant opera put on with great zest in the village. He becomes increasingly reluctant to separate the baby from his young father, and when an attempt is made to do so tragedy unfolds.
This is quite a charming little film in many ways, and E M Forster finds won't be disappointed at all. Graves is splendid as the straitlaced young man who finds himself beguiled and disturbed (in more ways than one) by the life he finds in Italy. Helena Bonham Carter makes a great pairing with him, as she too yearns to leave behind her respectable spinster image and throw caution to the wind.

A Very Superb Work
This may be E.M. Forster's first novel but it is a faithful adaptation and a very fine film. I don't see what others finding lacking in this excellent motion picture. The cast works marvelously together. Helena Bonham Carter gives a very superb performance acting against her usual more glamourous roles. Rupert Graves and Judy Davis are excellent as the son and daughter of the great Barbara Jefford who is extremely memorable as the manipulating mother-in-law of Helen Mirren. Judy Davis is extraordinary as a mirror image of Barbara Jefford without the latter's cunning devices.
The story is captivating and the scenes, costumes and direction are all first rate. I find that this film is of great quality and belongs perfectly well with the other E.M. Forster adaptations. Perhaps some are biased because this isn't marked Ivory Merchant? I wouldn't know that it wasn't Ivory Merchant. It is of equal quality. The direction, script, and actors make this story very plausible. It would have been a greater box office success but it was not publisied as much as "Howard's End". I still find it a superb film and highly recommend it.

Have No Fear
Fans of the better known "Forsters" such as Maurice, A Room with a View, the works of Merchant and Ivory, and fairly similar A Passage to India, may be quite disappointed with this much more quiet and less colourful production. The story-line also offers less of a twist - this is EM Forster's first novel and he was still learning his trade. Still the movie is well worth seeing - the story and the beautiful images in dusky sepias as if taken from old photographs will keep enthralled you in front of the telly if only you can accept that the world changed immensely within the last century. A big bonus is a chance to see world-famous actors in roles not exactly identical with their current careers.