Swann in Love
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Movie Reviews of Swann in Love
Movie Review: A modern reinterpretation - thanks to the music
Summary: 4 Stars
Terrific costuming and production design, most noteworthy is the luminous camerawork of Sven Nykvist (Bergman/Allen/Tarkovsky and others). The film is paced as languidly as narrative film making will permit, allowing a certain quality of the author's voice to be felt beneath the demands of "storytelling", one of the chief obstacles in adapting this material.
I think that a masterstroke in this film is the music. While it may seem inconsequential, it draws the film into a more complex direction than typical period music would have done. I believe that this allows the film to reinvent the quality of emotional space in the material.
Contemporary composers of modern chamber music like Hans Werner Henze (who'd collaborated with Schlondorff before) were brought into the making of the film. The music succeeds by injecting an atonal, dissonant, aching, atmosphere into the story. The piano and violin pieces work well against typical form and aid the narrative in a superbly contemplative manner. I was reminded somewhat of "L'Année dernière à Marienbad", simply because the musical "cues" were not spelled out in simple terms.
Avoiding kitsch is part of the problem when adapting an author who discusses subjects (in epic detail) which have been filmed a thousand times before - in my opinion, the music permits yet another interpretation of that subject. At first its quietly unusual, becoming a defined, twisting voice, accenting the growing dissonance Swann experiences with Odette and ultimately with society.
It is a beautiful film. My only concerns were the occasionally odd voice-over work, which was a little distracting. Ornella Muti is a knockout, but her beauty seems oddly contemporary - its as if the filmmakers were trying to make the statement that voluptuousness is eternal, while beauty standards shift periodically and culturally. Irons is excellent as Swann. I would highly recommend the film.
Movie Review: Music is so REMARKABLE
Summary: 4 Stars
I am not sure how much the film's value would be. Slightly sure, this is not the best of Schlondorff's ever.
However sometimes a film could value more than itself. I think this is one of them.
The story is about a noble man who has suffered in mad love with a beautiful, attractive and provocative prostitute. The man, Swann, was acted by Jeremy Irons who often takes this kind role.
Schlondorff chose Hans Werner Henze to express this mad love atomosphere, it is so amazing.
I knew Henze by this movie, feel like I met him there. Although I was so impressed the music in the movie I missed to check the composer's name. It passed almost 10 years when finally I found out that Henze. His music is so variety but this sound for the film is, I think, the Henze world. It is like, hardly to say, like sweat, better, and strange sound. Not just beautiful but in a way beautiful.
The film itself is not bad;all star casting, beautiful costumes, and some erotic scenes. I love Fanny Ardant acted a countess in it.
Movie Review: An intense love story
Summary: 4 Stars
Obsessive love is the theme of this movie, based on the book by Proust (SWANN's WAY). Set among the idle rich in 1890's Paris, Jewish aristocrat Swann (Jeremy Irons) is in love with courtesan Odette (Ornella Muti), who is obviously beneath him in station. Racked by jealousies and fears of not being able to win her (probably most who have ever been madly in love with someone who didn't quite love back at the same intensity can relate to this), one wonders if his agonies are worth it: even if Odette decides to marry him it's doubtful she'll ever remain faithful. Like ULYSSES, its near-contemporary classic by Joyce, it's almost an impossible novel to adapt to the screen, though director Volker Schlondorff does a credible job. Beautifully photographed, the movie is an eyeful of aristocratic France; the musical score adds much to the flavor. As to be expected, feelings and nuances predominate.
Movie Review: gorgeous for the eyes, not so for the ears
Summary: 3 Stars
I loved the look of this film. The interiors of the mansions are gorgeous. The antiques are impressive. The women's costumes are fabulous. Jeremy Irons looks like Swann as I imagine him, and Alain Delon is perfect as the decadent Charlus. Notice how when we first see him, he is eyeing the footmen at the salon gathering, not just eyeing them, but seeming to drink them in like a thirsty pilgrim in the desert.
I didn't like the disembodied voices that we get because of the dubbing. And I didn't like the music. They should have used real music from the era, the music that Proust himself would have heard. Henze is not a favorite composer of mine, and his work here reinforces the dislike.
And speaking of music, I am going to nitpick on what is probably a very trivial point, and I might even be wrong about this, but I remember reading "Swann in Love" in college, and... as an opera queen... I loved the detail that Odette was going to (pardon me, but I can't get the accent marks to work) the Opera-Comique with the Verdurins to see Victor Masse's "Une Nuit de Cleopatra," and Swann was dismayed because both the Masse opera and the Opera-Comique venue were just too low-brow for his refined taste. In this film, it looks like the opera is being performed at L'Opera, which is a totally different matter. Swann would have approved of their going to the higher-class L'Opera. Since detail of society happenings is so important in the Proust novel, it wouldn't have hurt to have had accurate detail in the film version thereof. Once this film was over, all I could think of was how this project would have been more satisfying as a 12-part series for Masterpiece Theatre.
Movie Review: Mrshall Fine's comments are insulting and stupid
Summary: 3 Stars
It's unbelievable that Amazon would sanction Marshall Fine's comments. In fact, there are thousands of serious readers who have read Proust's work. There is an online Proust discussion group with hundreds of members who have read In Search of Lost Time several times, both in the original French and in a number of recent translations. Mr. Fine's characterization of reading of Proust as something that needs to be faked tells us a lot about his failings, but sadly it also tells us something about Amazon.
As for Volker Schlondorff's film, it's adequate. Jeremy Irons is the visual embodiment of Swann (the French dubbing doesn't really help), which is about all we really need to know, although Raul Ruiz's Time Regained is a more ambitious and satisfying work.