In this delightfully droll Henry James adaptation, the lives and routines of the puritanical Wentworths of New England are upended by the not-so-welcome arrival of their European cousins one particularly golden autumn. Lee Remick shines as the snooty and calculating Eugenia, a Baroness whose marriage to a German prince is on the fritz—meanwhile her dapper brother Felix has his eye on one of the Wentworth daughters. Boasting a characteristically witty script by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (A Room With a View), the first in Merchant Ivory’s Henry James triptych explores the social and moral clashes between the New World and the Continent. Per James Ivory himself, the BAFTA-nominated production design and Oscar-nominated costumes solidified the “state-of-the-art” (and impeccably researched) period trappings that have since become synonymous with Merchant Ivory.

Nominated for the Cannes Palme d’Or and Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film.