Henry James has been renowned not only as a stylist writer famous for the refined dialogue, sophisticated characters, and cross-cultural theme but also remained as a reverent writer reputed to his subtlety of psychological discriminations through delicate language and conscientious symbolism. Many critics call James as a highbrow writer whose novels are innovated in the complicated form and sophisticated style that sometimes even the well-educated readers can hardly grasp real essences presented in his works. As a modernist novelist, James’s usage of stream of consciousness has become one of the major features in his novels. It could probe into the minds of individuals and explore their interpreting process for the purpose of who they are and what they want in life.

     James’s novels are not the ones easily to be transformed into the cinematic view for his works deal with the subject of consciousness. Even though his literal language is hard to be visualized, the vogue for his novels into cinematic language has been triggered in current years. Being in the state of this self-consciousness is something that the cinema finds difficult to visualize. Yet, ironically, there has been the popularity of James’s books with modern filmmakers in recent three decades. Probably the earliest film version, Peter Bogdanovich’s 1974 Daisy Miller, vividly depicts an innocent girl who is corrupted and restricted by the European norms. Also, The Merchant-Ivory team made two films out of James’ novels, The Europeans in 1979 and then The Bostonians in 1984. Furthermore, there have been various versions of The Turn of the Screw and the most recently one made by Ben Bolt in 2000 that has updated the versions from the 1960s onward to the 90s. Agnieszka Holland’s 1997 Washington Squaremodernizes the old film made by William Wyler in 1949. In addition, there are three films, released in the 90s, portraying the female sexuality: Jane Campion’s The Portrait of a Lady (1996), Iain Softley’s The Wings of the Dove (1997), and James Ivory’s The Golden Bowl (2000).