A look inside Hollywood and the movies. : LET’S GET SMALL : You Don’t Understand--They <i> Want</i> You to Stand in Line for ‘Howards End’

If there was a bad review for “Howards End,” it was pretty hard to find. Newspaper, radio and television critics across the country positively drooled over this latest Ismail Merchant-James Ivory adaptation of an E.M. Forster novel.

Not that many people have seen it.

In the quirky, irrational world of moviemaking, the fact that the picture isn’t playing in many theaters and isn’t expected soon at your local multiplex--and even if it is playing within driving distance, is drawing long lines once you get there--has actually contributed to its success. And it’s all very intentional.

“If you make it a little difficult, like a beautiful woman, it is more attractive,” said Merchant, the film’s producer.

“Howards End” is playing on only 68 screens in selected major markets, compared to say, “Patriot Games,” the country’s No. 1 film, which is playing on 2,365 screens nationwide.

The films are hardly comparable and “Howards End” will never be a blockbuster (grosses to date: $4.7 million), but it has been piling up some phenomenal statistics in limited release for what is basically an art-house film.

The movie broke just another house record--this time at the Uptown Theater in Minneapolis, where ticket sales reached $48,000 in one week. House records have already been broken in theaters from Anchorage, Alaska, to Yakima, Wash.--including the Royal Theater in West Los Angeles, where it is expected to play for a year. At the Fine Arts in Manhattan, where “Howards End” first opened on March 13, grosses are expected to total $1 million by next weekend--that’s one theater.

The small number of prints and lower advertising and overhead costs translates to a higher per-screen average, the distributors said.

The film is booked “open-ended at every place that it’s playing,” said Tom Bernard, co-president of distributor Sony Picture Classics. The strategy is to widen the release slowly to 700 theaters and, if possible, still have it be playing in theaters (at least in Los Angeles and New York) at Oscar time next year.

The model Sony’s using for rolling out “Howards End” is similar to the strategy for “A Room With a View,” another Forster adaptation by the Merchant, Ivory and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala filmmaking team. The 1985 sleeper hit went on to win three Academy Awards and gross $24 million here and in Canada.

But unlike “A Room With a View,” which was essentially a romance set to operatic music against the backdrop of turn-of-the century Florence, “Howards End” is less a love story than an eloquent Edwardian saga of families in conflict, so it is questionable whether it will have the kind of crossover appeal to teens its predecessor did.

“It’s not as much a date film,” said a distribution executive.

But Merchant counters that the summer movie schedule, crowded with such diversions as a singing nun, a prehistoric man and a cartoon character, could also work in favor of “Howards End.”

“Young people aren’t mindless. They aren’t only interested in pop music and car chases,” he said. The producer said his analysis is based upon a recent visit with students at Harvard.