Henry James first visited the French Riviera in 1881. On May 14, he will return there with the world premiere of Merchant Ivory's adaptation of his novel The Golden Bowl at the Cannes International Film Festival.

Scheduled for a fall release by Miramax in the United States, The Golden Bowl has been chosen as one of the main films in competition at Cannes 2000. In addition to the producer and director, Ismail Merchant and James Ivory, a number of the film's stars -- Nick Nolte and Uma Thurman among them -- are slated to walk down the red carpet at the Palais des Festivals.

The Golden Bowl tells the story of Adam and Maggie Verver, a turn-of-the-century American millionaire and his daughter, who become involved in a love quadrangle with an Italian prince and a beautiful, gifted society woman. The film was shot on location in England and Italy in the summer of 1999 and stars Nolte, Thurman, Anjelica Huston, Jeremy Northam, Kate Beckinsale, James Fox, and Madeleine Potter.

The screenplay is by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of A Room with a View and Howards End, and the film re-unites Merchant Ivory's frequent musical collaborator Richard Robbins, cinematographer Tony Pierce-Roberts, and Oscar winning costume designer John Bright.