5/31/2023 0 Comments Washington Square by Henry James![]() ![]() ![]() In 1949, the great Hollywood director William Wyler ( The Letter, The Best Years of Our Lives) mounted an adaptation not of Washington Square itself, but of The Heiress-the theatrical version of James’s novel which the writing team of Augustus and Ruth Goetz had brought to Broadway in 1947. Chagrin d’amour dure toute la vie”), all of which is a slightly cloying and over-insistent setting of the period for the American audience. At the beginning of the first and best movie adaptation of Washington Square, we see the following: a petit point of the square itself, which fades into a photograph and then a kind of tableau vivant-carriages moving before a handsome townhouse, a boy corralling some fowls, life bursting out all over and we hear the familiar French song, “Plaisir d’Amour” (“Plaisir d’amour ne dure qu’un moment. ![]()
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