Maurice (1987)

Forster's novel of a young man discovering he is gay in Edwardian England went unpublished until after the author's death, and Ivory's film treats it with a seriousness the decade rarely allowed. James Wilby's Maurice, Hugh Grant's Clive and Rupert Graves's gamekeeper Alec form a triangle about class as much as desire. Wilby and Grant shared Best Actor at Venice, where Ivory also took the Silver Lion. With King's College, Cambridge and a Wiltshire Palladian house as backdrops, it is the most quietly radical film in the catalogue.