The Bostonians (1984)

Henry James's tug-of-war over a gifted young speaker, played as a political drama as much as a romance. Vanessa Redgrave's suffrage campaigner Olive Chancellor and Christopher Reeve's Southern lawyer Basil Ransom both want Madeleine Potter's Verena, and neither is entirely wrong about the other. Redgrave earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination for a performance of fierce, wounded restraint, and the Beacon Hill and Martha's Vineyard locations give 1880s Boston real texture. Reeve, cast against his Superman image, is a pleasant surprise.