THE PURSUIT OF STUFFINESS

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

ONE DAY LONG AGO, HARRY Cohn, the legendary film mogul, found himself contemplating the minuscule grosses of some historical epic set in the 18th century and decreed that henceforth no picture emanating from his studio would feature men in wigs and knee breeches writing with quill pens.

Jefferson in Paris brings this bit of vulgar wisdom back to mind. Regrettably so, for it is the work of that redoubtable trio consisting of producer Ismail Merchant, director James Ivory and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. With films like Howards End and Remains of the Day, they have, almost alone, kept alive what in Cohn's day was one of Hollywood's more agreeable genres: the handsomely made, well-acted literary-historical drama. These movies reflected the cultural aspirations of producers like Irving Thalberg and David O. Selznick while serving the needs of that portion of the audience not enamored of car chases and tommy-gun fire.

The problem with this kind of filmmaking has always been caution. And that's what is wrong with Jefferson in Paris. It's as if everyone was just a little too much in tasteful awe of its subject, who is played rather stolidly by Nick Nolte. They are afraid to grant him his full vitality or give full dramatic life to the issues, public and personal, that stirred him during the five years (1784-89) when, recently widowed, he served as the new American republic's ambassador to France.

At the time, Jefferson had much of interest on his mind. The nation to which he was accredited was in a pre-revolutionary condition, and members of the liberal aristocracy (his particular friends) were trying to ameliorate the situation. At the same time the great deist's daughter Patsy (Gwyneth Paltrow) is flirting with Catholicism, even thinking about taking vows. Their relationship is not improved when Jefferson starts courting a married woman, the painter Maria Cosway (Greta Scacchi), and deteriorates further when Sally Hemings (Thandie Newton), one of Jefferson's slaves, arrives from Virginia and they begin their notorious (though historically unconfirmed) love affair.

There is plenty of material here for a gripping story about a man whose habits of life and belief are being challenged in all sorts of ways. But essentially the movie settles for pretty pictures. The love stories are presented with gingerly discretion. Jefferson's affair with Maria is all arch, twittering banter in an antique style; nothing in it elevates their pulses (or the audience's). Hemings is presented as a wise, if untutored, child, more of a nursemaid to Jefferson than a believably sexual being. It's hard to see what he saw in either of them, and the script does not provide any fully developed scenes of dramatic conflict between them. Even Jefferson's endless intellectual curiosity is seen more as an eccentricity than a vital force--like his sexuality, muted and eventually strangled in fastidious gentility.