Callas Forever
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Movie Reviews of Callas Forever
Movie Review: Extraordinary
Summary: 5 Stars
I am a fan of Fanny Ardant and I have adored/loved Maria Callas for years. (She's my most favorite opera singer. I listen to her music every day...at home and at work. She "moves" me as no other opera singer/star can or has. Her voice captivates me.) Ms. Ardant's portrayal of Ms. Callas is superb!!! To me, her performance is "Oscar" worthy.Movie Review: Unforgettable!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
I recommend this to eveyrone I know and have given it as birthday and Christmas presents to friends, I love it that much!! A wonderful actress. Ms. Ardant really nailed the "mystique" that was Callas, the woman. Great film!!Movie Review: She IS Callas
Summary: 5 Stars
Besides the lushness of Callas' old recordings, Fanny Ardant's performance is spectacular. If you're not a Callas fan be very careful. After this movie you might become one.Movie Review: "Impossible, it's dishonest!"
Summary: 4 Stars
Marvelously acted with an absolutely gorgeous musical score, Callas Forever could probably be forgiven for being a little over long, and often looking like a second-rate, cobbled together, low budget art house movie.
Yes - the film is an often-glorious and beautifully acted exploration of the great, but misunderstood soprano Maria Callas, but apart from the staged scenes from Carmen, Callas Forever has a rather economical, and cost effective feel to it. The film was obviously made on the cheap, which probably explains why it languished in limbo for a few years, before finally getting a theatrical release last year.
In this tale, Maria Callas (played to the hilt by Fanny Ardant) is living as a virtual recluse in her Paris apartment, her career is over, and her voice is a shadow of its former glory. Her friends are worried about her, but she ignores them, preferring to remain solitary, listening to old recordings and relying sleeping pills to hide her demons.
The year is 1977, and film technology is about to take the leap to VCR"S. Larry Kelly (Jeremy Irons), a concert impresario, who courts punk rock bands as well as classical singers, convinces Maria that there's no future in her being a pill popping, reclusive shell. He tells her that she still has much to offer and that she'd be far happier if she were singing again.
Together, with her recording company, Larry hatches a plan, convincing Maria that she can lip-sink to her old recordings, because after all, she's still a great actress. Thus the movie of Carmen is born, a film that uses, as the soundtrack, an opera that she recorded in her heyday.
It may be a bit fraudulent, but hey, it's 1977 and singers are now almost never recorded live anyway. Surely it would make no difference that the recording is from fifteen years ago, because lets face it, it's still her. Maria is ambivalent at first - "it's dishonest" she screams; but once she sees her old voice matched up with her more recent concert footage, she becomes fanatically enthusiastic.
Kelly's desperately wants to help Maria. In one scene, he looks through a crack in the door as Maria listens and acts out her 1955 recording of "Un bel di," the famous second-act aria from Madame Butterfly. Maria plays it with all the passion disappointment that she can muster and Kelly, with tears in his eyes, cannot help but be moved. But Larry also wants to make money, and her recording company is also keen to invest in this project; they see the sales of her old recordings skyrocketing.
Visually the film is quite sumptuous and robust, particularly the scenes involving the staging of Carmen; and it's obvious where most of the money went in the production. The rest of the film, however, suffers from a kind of quasi, minimalist attempt to recreate the era of the late 70's, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.
But Callas Forever hinges on Ardant's performance. She unabashedly chews up the scenery, giving it almost everything she's got. Her interpretation is, at once, sensitive and intelligent and she finds just the right amount of feistiness in portraying Callas' insecurity. As Carmen she's terrific, imbuing the lusty girl with an impetuous, imperious, man-scorning pride, physically dominating the production.
Jeremy Irons is Larry Kelly character is patient, flattering, persuasive, and insidious. But his relationship with Michael (Jay Rodan), a young bohemian artist, is sort of rendered in shorthand and almost gets lost in the shuffle. The same can be said of Joan Plowright, who occasionally pops up as a chain-smoking journalist and Maria's dear, concerned best friend.
Obviously Callas Forever was a labor of love for director Franco Zeffirelli, and he explores some interesting issues, especially about the lengths one will go to preserve and defend one's art. For him, Callas was an instrument of god, a beauty divine.
His Callas is a woman blessed, but also cursed by the loss of a unique gift that made her life meaningful and significant. How she comes to terms with this loss and moves on with her life is at the heart of this illuminating and enlightening film. Mike Leonard June 05
Movie Review: A Movie To Be Appreciated "Forever"
Summary: 4 Stars
It is easy to compare this movie to Istvan Szabo's "Being Julia" since both open in Chicago within a month. Both movies are about fading stars, only in this movie's case it is based on an actual person, and tell the story of their comeback. If that is not enough for you both star Jeremy Irons has the man that stands behind them. But the comparison must stop there. I will not make comments on which movie I liked more.
"Callas Forever" is a movie about that great "what if". Directed by Franco Zeffirelli, a long time friend of Maria Callas, the movie, we sense, mixes fact and fiction. Yes Callas was a real person, yes Zeffirelli knew her and had directed her in a TV special "Maria Callas at Convent Garden (1964)", and yes has been forgotten by a great many people but the we will never know if Zeffirelli had plans to direct Callas in a movie. We suspect he might have and maybe the conversations in this movie actually happened.
Irons plays Larry Kelly, a current rock producer, who is a friend of Callas, how much of this character is based on Zeffirelli we wonder, and decides that it is high time the fading and forgotten star make a comeback. The public, particulary the younger generation does not know who she is. They have yet to discover the magic of her voice. But Callas (Fanny Ardent) no longer has the voice she once had. What to do? Kelly plans to film Callas but dub in her old recordings. Now the world will remember her the way she should be remembered.
There is also a subplot going on with the Kelly character involving a romance he has with a much younger man a painter Michael (Jay Rodan) who just happens to be a Callas fan.
It should be pointed out one doesn't have to be a Maria Callas fan to appreciate this movie. I must admit I never heard Callas sing before this movie (the music in this movie is the real Callas singing not Ardent). I had of course heard of her. I saw her in Pier Paolo Passolini's "Medea". Though I wonder if I had more knowledge of her would that have changed my opinion of the movie?
The movie has a beautiful look. The scenes in which we see the movie within the movie, an adaptation of "Carmen", has the look of a Goya painting. It is some of the most beautiful cinematography I have ever seen.
But I must point out one of the film's flaws. Here we have a movie called "Callas Forever" about the life of the singer and yet the movie gets bogged down with scenes involving Larry Kelly and his boyfriend. It slows the movie down. It has nothing to do with the rest of the movie. Or perhaps I just missed the connection. Is the movie trying to show us the way he uses people? But surely if that was the intention they could have shown that in his relationship with Callas. But I don't even think that any explanation for this character was needed.
In the end though "Callas Forever" is a film I recommend strickly for art house movie fans, Maria Callas fans and/or opera fans. I think only a small audience we give this movie a chance. "Callas Forever" is a celebration not so much of a woman, but of a voice. It is a loving tribute made by a person who clearly had the best intentions in the world.
Bottom-line: Entertaining, visually stunning film that has a knockout performance from Fanny Ardent. It is really a loving tribute to a voice that pleased so many people.