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By RICHARD SCHICKEL

THE EUROPEANS Directed by James Ivory Screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala The Europeans is one of Henry James' most delightful novels, a small, approachable comedy of manners, widely regarded among Jamesian scholars as the masterpiece of his early years. But the story of Eugenia and Felix, Europeanized sister and brother who return to Massachusetts for some genteel fortune hunting, is, on the face of it, unlikely material for a film in the Age of Travolta.

More power, therefore, to Director Ivory and his collaborator, Jhabvala, for making the effort, and for providing a reasonably faithful and literate screen version of the tale. It is good to hear subtle and intelligent conversation in our native accents issuing from a movie screen--and to see New England caught in its glorious fall foliage.

The piece has a good, basic comic premise in the puzzled response of the black-clad, soberly Unitarian locals to the exotic birds of passage who have come to light among them. This is nicely realized in the film by Felix, an unpretentiously bohemian artist, recognizing in his cousin Gertrude a fellow spirit struggling to burst free. The couple, played with lively grace by Tim Woodward and Lisa Eichhorn, provide the movie with its most beguiling passages, and their story, his winning her away from the lumpish minister her family intends her to marry, gives it its strong est narrative pulse as well.

About Eugenia's pursuit of the well-to-do Robert Acton -- what should be the film's central action -- one's feelings are ambiguous. James himself never quite pinned down what instinct preserved Acton and his fortune from her designs. The movie is even less clear on that point, perhaps because Lee Remick, as Eugenia, does not touch on those hints of boldness and desperation that are implicit in the text. Robin Ellis might have brought to Acton more of the shrewdness and tart ness of his Poldark. As presented, the pair are so agreeable and handsome that one sees no reason for them not to get together in the end.

Ivory might have been helpful, but he is a careful and slightly anemic director, unable to dig out tensions lurking beneath his correct, bland surfaces. The result is a pleasant, pretty entertainment. One suspects that this film is outside its natural element on a theatrical screen, that its mod est virtues would shine to better advantage on PBS. If we had a properly functioning public broadcasting system in the country, American classics like The Europeans might be produced with funds and talent in profusion.

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