Callas Forever
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Movie Reviews of Callas Forever
Movie Review: Diva Fantasy Salvaged by Real Opera Production and an Inspired Ardant
Summary: 3 Stars
Gallic actress Fanny Ardant is an inspired choice to play Maria Callas, and with her uncanny physical and likely temperamental resemblance, she plays the legendary soprano with real brio and scenery-chewing style. I would not have expected anything less in such a fanciful telling of a what-if scenario that sprouted out of director Franco Zeffirelli's fertile imagination. Zeffirelli is no stranger to the extravagant and visually resplendent as he helmed the Burtons-at-play 1967 "The Taming of the Shrew" and the much-beloved, age-appropriate 1968 version of "Romeo and Juliet". His long-time professional relationship with Callas provides the basis for this fantasy where in 1977, she is drawn out of self-imposed exile and into the limelight one last time by a fictitious concert promoter, Larry Kelly, who had long ago decided to forego opera for the more lucrative world of punk rock. Sporting a silly ponytail, Jeremy Irons portrays Kelly as a predictably irascible character who mercurially worships and degrades her as the circumstance dictates, a variation on the character he would play in "Being Julia". This time, his character is gay, of course, probably to avoid any element of romance that would detract from Callas' obsession with preserving her legacy.
Kelly's idea is to film her while acting out famous operatic roles on a sound stage and lip-synching the words, whereupon sound engineers would graft her recordings of some 22 years earlier onto the sound track. The series is to be called "Callas Forever" and starts with Bizet's "Carmen". After a rapid series of contrived scenes that resuscitate Callas from her Paris apartment seclusion back to international press attention, the film finally catches fire with the scenes that create the opera production itself. This is where Zeffirelli really shines as he makes Ardant look and act strikingly like Callas at her most passionate and charismatic. She is, of course, adored by her colleagues (in particular, an admiring young tenor playing Don Jose, as embodied by Gabriel Garko) and seems on the brink of a renaissance. Alas, it is the completion of this production that inspires Zeffirelli, along with co-writer Martin Sherman, to take the plot to the height of soap opera banality. Basking in her newly reborn confidence, Callas wants to take on Puccini's "Tosca" with her real voice, an idea supported blindly by Kelly but rejected by her backers. Instead of being crushed, she seems resigned to her legacy and insists that her "Carmen" be destroyed as she deems it a fraud.
That she comes to this realization after the fact is one of the central conceits of the film since it implies she has been cavalier about the efforts around her who did believe in her, but I suppose that is what diva behavior is all about. After all, at the beginning, Callas is portrayed as a pill-popper who feels sorry for herself as a has-been, her voice shot during an infamous tour in Japan, and as the rejected paramour of Aristotle Onassis, who cast her aside to marry Jackie Kennedy. Throughout the movie, she is haunted by her former voice with ghostly visions of her stage triumphs. These kinds of excesses seem appropriate to this kind of tribute film, but it all feels so predictably over-the-top. Sadly, Joan Plowright stereotypically plays a music journalist as a wisecracking, truth-bearing confidante that Thelma Ritter would have played with greater aplomb in the fifties. There is a persistent clunkiness to Zeffirelli and Sherman's screenplay and an overall lack of subtlety that can only be blamed on Zeffirelli's heavily ornate, Baroque filmmaking style. The DVD is short on extras as there is no audio commentary track, but it does include a brief making-of featurette, additional interview excerpts with Zeffirelli and the principal players and several trailers including the one for the movie.
Movie Review: Entertaining Misfire From Someone Who Knew Her Well
Summary: 3 Stars
The facts of the last years of Callas' life are well known. After an endless concert tour (1972-1974) which was a financial success but an artistic disaster, her voice gone, Onassis, the great love of her life, dead, she rarely received guests, and went out less frequently. Locked away in her palatial apartment on Avenue Georges Mandel in Paris, she preferred to play cards with the butler and chauffeur, tended to by her faithful maid, Bruna. Although she had patched up the famous quarrels with her mother and sister, they remained on the periphery of her life. Her friend, the pianist Vasso Devetzi, who has been accused by many of the financial mismanagement of the Callas estate (and by Zeffirelli of murder !-only hinted at in the film) was her only regular companion-she doesn't even appear as a character in the film. Callas died in her apartment in 1977. The official verdict, a heart attack, despite persistent rumors of suicide and Zeffirelli's claim of murder.
Zeffirelli, the director of many of her stage triumphs, and an estimable film director, seems to have misfired with this film. A big part of the problem is that he disregards the facts and opts for a fantasy plot where the diva is coaxed out of retirement to do a film of Bizet's CARMEN using her 1964 recording as a soundtrack. (Way back in 1964, Zeffirelli had been the catalyst in a TOSCA film for Callas, indeed her stereo re-make of that opera was recorded to be the soundtrack.The film was never made.) A film about a very famous woman who becomes a recluse and why that might happen could be very interesting. A film that indulges in a game of 'what if' is very much less so. It IS very entertaining, but the known facts could have made for something much deeper.
Fanny Ardent is very appealing as the great diva, and even succeeds in looking like her. (Although she doesn't have those enormous and hypnotic Callas eyes.) She doesn't even attempt the Callas speaking voice, part upper-crust English, part Washington Heights. Her French accent is disconcerting. Although she is not the actress I would have chosen for this role, she does fine work.
Jeremy Irons plays a character named Larry Kelley, who seems to represent Zeffirelli himself. An entrepreneur and agent, it is he who orchestrates the diva's comeback in the film. (The real Lawrence Kelley, who was involved with Callas' appearances with The Dallas Opera and her appearances in Bellini's IL PIRATA with the American Opera Society in the late 1950s had passed out of her life many years before the events in this film.) Irons, is an estimable actor and he has some really fine moments here.
Joan Plowright as Sarah, a journalist and publicist who is Callas' friend provides a down to earth foil for the melodramatics of Ardent and Irons.
Jay Rodan, as Michael, Kelley's hearing impaired gay lover is the most appealing character in the film, and his difficult relationship with Kelley is admirably portrayed.
If you love Callas, you will be entertained, but as a dramatic recreation of Callas' last years, clearly there are other films to made !
Movie Review: Phenomenal Fanny!
Summary: 3 Stars
Since opera itself presupposes a suspension of belief - to sacrifice reason for the glorification of the passions through music and spectacle, Zeffirelli's premise in "Callas Forever" is easier to swallow. Maria Callas, that diva extraordinaire of the 1950's, became a Paris recluse in the 1970's with the death of her beloved Onassis and the loss of her beloved voice. Zefferelli asks, "What if" she could have been persuaded (as he attempted in real life) to step into the limelight once again? And so he invents a representation of himself under the guise of Callas' former business manager/promoter, and presents the Maria Callas of 1977 with an offer: Using modern recording technology, create a filmed presentation of Bizets Carmen while simultaneously dubbing the soprano's current voice with that of her former greatness. Since Carmen was an opera she sang but never performed, this could be a fresh approach to introduce one of yesterday's stars to a modern audience. Is this a fraudulent trick? Perhaps, but nonetheless the voice is Maria Callas, and so too the presence the audience will see on the screen. But still this disingenuous ruse poisons Callas' integrity, and her desire to perform once again falters. "Once there was a voice," she says with the glimmer of past glory, which fades as she solemnly closes the lid to her piano. Since Zeffirelli himself was involved in many of Callas's greatest successes, he becomes as much a part of "Forever Callas" as the cast of characters within, and so "Callas Forever" becomes a cinematic love letter and an expression of his loss . . . his longing to bring Callas back from the dead. "What if she had accepted his offer?" And Fanny Ardant's absorbing performance goes a long way toward putting flesh to the legend, and her success was so complete that Zeffirelli himself has stated that his recollections of the real Callas were being absorbed by Ardants performance and he was no longer certain who the real Callas was anymore. Still, the greatness of Ardant's performance and even the beauty of the soundtrack (the real Callas!) cannot make up for the films many weak subplots. It's as if Zeffirelli put all his creative energy into the realization of Maria Callas, forgetting that he was also making a movie.Movie Review: Captures the Emotions not the Life of Callas.
Summary: 3 Stars
There is not a whole a lot to be said about this film since it's brief, low-key, overly-conversational, and not biographical enough to provide the viewers a vision of how the Diva of the century rose to the top and became depressed and lost her passion for singing in her later years. Fanny Ardant gave a convincing performance of Callas, but it's unfortunate the role is limited to doing some lipsynching and display of the Diva's temperaments. Callas still hasn't come to terms of with her last "shameful" performance in Japan before going into a near 20 year hibernation mode, and resisted the outside world including her loyal gay manager played Jeremy Iron. She thinks her career is over while he relentlessly tried to revive her and convince her to make her comeback by making an opera film named Carmen which would not used her current singing voice but would dubb it with her singing from her early works. Well, things didn't quite turn out the way everyone wanted, and certainly the Diva didn't want to fool the world with Carmen, and demanded to have the film destroyed...
While the performances from both Iron and Ardant are touching and funny at times, the film is still rather dull even for if it's made for TV. The set design and costumes were quite an eye-candy. several of her Callas greatest hits were used in this film. Joan Plowright is unerused as the self-proclaimed "vampire" publicist. It could've been a very powerful and inspirational experience if the film had explore the overall lifetimes of Callas and not just one chapter. I am left unsatisfied by the lack of knowledge and music provided by Callas Forever.
Movie Review: CALLAS MEMORIES
Summary: 3 Stars
There are two excellent things about this movie: Fanny Ardant as Maria and the remastered recordings of the Callas arias. The director obviously chose the ones showing the voice at its prime.
There are also two bad thngs about this movie: The gay life of the character that Jeremy Irons plays (why was it necessary?) and the Joan Plowright roll. What was that all about?
It's obvious that Franco Zeffirelli had a deep love and respect for Maria Callas. It shows in every frame. He was lucky to have gained her confidence and friendship. I had a memorable, but brief encounter with Callas on her ill fated tour with di Stefano. After the San Francisco recital, she gave me an autographed picture which I shall treasure all my life. There was hardly anyone in the opera house for her appearance.
This DVD is worth watchng. I only wish Zeffirelli had gone deeper into Callas the woman and Callas the singer. It left me wanting more!