The Bostonians

There’s every reason in the world to read the book, and to do it before you see the movie (so that you don’t let the movie images saturate what you read). The only good reason to see the film version is Vanessa Redgrave’s performance as Olive Chancellor.

''The Bostonians'' is, from its opening shot to last, a rare delight, a high comedy with tragic undertones, acted to passionate perfection by a cast of the best actors ever assembled by the Merchant-Ivory-Jhabvala team.

James' story is so fascinating and Redgrave so urgently fine that you can lose sight of these lapses and have an eminently satisfying time.

Like the Merchant-Ivory-Jhabvala team's 1979 The Europeans, this is a classy adaptation of a Henry James novel.

[The Bostonians is] intelligent and subtle and open to the underlying tragedy of a woman who does not know what she wants, a man who does not care what he wants, and a girl who does not need what she wants.

''The Bostonians,'' which opens today at Cinema I, unfolds elegantly but not always smoothly... But the performances, especially that of the astonishing Miss Redgrave, generate an urgency and momentum to match Mr. James's own.

Although the film is basic in its production and camera work, the story is not without profound depth in the concept that the battle continues to rage for women to have equal rights and freedoms with men no matter the time and place.

Ivory, working in concert with his longtime producer-partner Ismael Merchant and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, possesses an abundance of those civilized virtues we could use more of in everyday life but that are often a handicap in making movies.

Redgrave's skill is being able to render a visibly caged interior life for Olive who is constantly living in code. There's an urgent descant to her delivery that cues us to what Olive is not saying and what she really wants to say.

The women's movement as a whole is... presented in the film as the creature of a couple of reporters on the make and a handful of aristocratic Boston spinsters whose other pet causes include faith healing.