The Europeans (1979) on Netflix
In 1850s New England, the penniless Eugenia Münster and her brother Felix arrive from Europe to visit their wealthy Wentworth cousins. Eugenia hopes to marry their wealthy cousin Robert Acton.
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- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb6.1/101,321 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes84%
Trailer
Plot summary
The Wentworths live quietly on their estate outside Boston in the 1850s, Mr. Wentworth and his grown children Gertrude, Charlotte and Clifford. Then two almost forgotten relatives arrive from Europe, Felix and his elder sister Eugenia Münster, who are witty, cultured and short of money. Felix paints portraits, and Gertrude, who skips church to read romantic novels, sits for him, while her father intends her for the Unitarian minister Mr. Brand. Mr. Wentworth lodges the visitors in a cottage on his land. Eugenia is a baroness by marriage to a minor German prince, and she turns her attention to the wealthy Robert Acton, a Wentworth cousin, who finds her alluring and her European ways hard to trust. She mentions a paper her husband's family wants her to sign.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Europeans (1979)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
SPOILER
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala added a ball at the Acton house, placing Eugenia's meeting with Mrs. Acton at its center, and wrote a new ending in which, as Eugenia leaves in a carriage Acton provides, Mr. Brand and Charlotte speak lines from a book of sermons.- Ruth Prawer Jhabvala gave Henry James's novel to James Ivory in 1968; Ivory, who had watched BBC television productions of James and thought he could do much better, was drawn to it because it needed only a modest budget, period houses and a small cast.
- The Europeans was the first of Merchant and Ivory's period dramas, the genre they became best known for, and it revived the duo's fortunes in 1979 after a lean decade in which Jane Austen in Manhattan and The Wild Party failed to find an audience.
