So this movie was on PBS this past sunday and i've been reading the comments from people saying the ending of the movie was terrible with freddie laying on the battle field, but when i watched, the movie didn't end there. It shows her back in Italy 10 years later taking a tour in a carriage with the same italian man that kissed his "sister" as before.
Did anyone else see this? Can anyone back me up here?
Yes, I saw it, too and had to check if the author wrote it that way. He did not! Just finished with the Ivory version and loved it.
JeanMM
Weeone, I believe all the versions also ended in the same place as you described. I think that most people were so annoyed by the killing off of Freddie that they focus on that, but I also saw it on PBS in New York and it ended with her and the Italian guy at the picnic.
shareFreddie? Don't you mean George?
shareYou guys are smoking crack. It was George Emerson who was killed, not Freddie (Lucy's brother). Then 10 years later Lucy returns to Italy, alone, and mentions her husband died, and she tells the Italian driver that George was a very good man.
shareIt was George lying dead on the battlefield, and that ending was added in Andrew Davies's (a Brit's) revision. He did so based very loosely on an EM Forster postscript which suggested that much later in life, George as a widower might return to the Italian village to reminisce. Instead, Davies decided to make it Lucy who returns after George has died, but it is very badly done since the content and the tone of the ending in no way fit the rest of the story as he wrote in the screenplay or (especially) as Forster wrote it in the novel.
shareActually, Forster originally intended to kill off George in the novel, as he kills off main characters at the end of most of his novels. Plus, even in the appendix of the novel (those published post-1960), Forster mentions George going to war, therefore the ending is not 'American' in the slightest.
sharehe didn't go to italy as a widower - he even writes lucy that he can't find the house anymore due to remodeling of the facades. while lucy is homeless back in england she's still happy that there's a romantic view to be had.