Time for a good movie. Well, more than one, actually. I've seen several films in the latest days. The three ones I'm going to recommend here are totally different one from the other, but each one of them resonated with me for some reason . Mothers and sons? Colin Firth? Romance and school? Here we go.
Let's start with "The Other Son" , original title "Le fils de l'autre", a 2012 movie directed by Lorraine Lévy. Two babies are born at about the same time in an Israeli hospital. One is Israeli. The other is Palestinian. They're evacuated during a missile attack, accidentally switched and raised by each other's families for the next 18 years. The truth comes out when Joseph Silberg takes blood tests to enlist in the Israeli army. He has been raised by a wealthy Jewish family but is, instead, the Palestinian baby of the swtch incident. On the other hand, Yacine , the Israeli by birth, has been raised on the West Bank by Leila and Said. His family is far from rich, but he has been lucky enough to be
It is impossible not to think of war these days. Press and TV news keep our minds and hearts in constant worry. Though I usually avoid writing or
discussing breaking news or politics here on my blog , today I’m going to tell you about this beautiful movie I have just seen, with all my heart to the news coming from the several open fighting fronts.
War is no game. War
leaves a mark. Eric Lomax , like many other surviving soldiers, lived haunted by his war memories all his life
through, as if war never actually ended in his mind and his heart. The Railway Man,
based on Lomax’s autobiography, will
come out in September 2014 here in Italy
as “Le due vie del destino”, but it opened theatrically on New Year’s Day in
the UK and , in the US, in April 2014. It is already available on DVD at amazon.co.uk
and, from August 12, it will
be at amazon.com
too.
I just want to share a link to a guest post narrating an awkward meeting with Mr Darcy in person - in the person of Colin Firth - in my page dedicated to the British actor here at FLY HIGH I know I have been neglecting it for a while but I've just added this lovely blogpost: Kim Izzo, Canadian journalist and writer, met Colin Firth in order to interview him, during The Toronto Film Festival some years ago.
She shares the memories of that moment, which was a bit embarassing but unforgettable, at my Jane Austen-dedicated blog, My Jane Austen Book Club.
Read Meeting Mr Darcy by Kim Izzo and get a chance to read her debut novel, The Jane Austen Marriage Manual. There's a giveaway contest! (Deadline May 23)
It's been some time since I last posted in this series dedicated to my attempt to catch up with the long successful career of Colin Firth. I'm in shameless delay but he is relentlessly overactive! I've chosen to see Mr Darcy lose his "à plomb" and perform in comedy in two films I hadn't seen yet . I 've seen Colin Firth in two of his recent light roles, as Harry in Mamma Mia (2008) and as Richard in The Accidental Husband (2008).
Conspiracy is a 2001 TV movie starring several popular British actors such as Kenneth Branagh, Colin Firth, Brendan Coyle, as well as American film stars like Stanley Tucci. It dramatizes the 1942 Wannsee Conference. The film delves into the psychology of Naziofficials involved in the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" during World War II. It is also a partial remake of the German film The Wannsee Conference (1984). On January 20, 1942, 15 men gathered in a villa on the outskirts of Berlin for a clandestine meeting that would ultimately seal the fate of the European Jewish population. Ninety minutes later, the blueprint for Hitler’s Final Solution was in place. Adolf Eichmann prepared 30 top-secret copies of the meeting’s minutes. By the fall of the Reich, all had disappeared or been destroyed—except one. The Wannsee Protocol, found in the files of the Reich’s Foreign Office, is the only document where the details of Hitler’s maniacal plan were actually codified, and serves as the basis for Conspiracy.
I couldn't resist and went to bed last night, but I truly wanted to watch it live. The Academy Awards Night the show of the Oscars, I mean. It started when it was midnight here in Italy and I really couldn't make it, I had to go to sleep. Colin Firth made his acceptance speech at about 5.30 and I was still sleeping. However , I got up early as usual, checked the news and was so happy at being reassured: Colin Firth and The King's Speech had got what they deserved. They had won!
I couldn't see or listen to the winners' acceptance speeches before the afternoon. I did it and get moved, of course, though none of them sounded unforgettable.
I saw The King's Speech not long ago and agreed with a review that defined it as ..." a speech that leaves you speechless", impossible not to love it.
When there's so much fuss about something I am usually disappointed in the end. Not this time. I saw "The King's Speech", just released in Italy as "Il discorso del re" and nothing disappointed me. Colin Firth even succeeded in touching my heart with his sober but forceful performance, he was the most human king I've ever seen on screen. Excellent! What do you think? Did Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, check how Tom Hooper represented her father in this film and, above all, did she like it? I'm so curious to know her reaction to the movie. I'm sure she wanted to see it. She is lovely represented in it , as a sweet little girl with her sister Margaret.
Do you like re-watching old period dramas for the umpteenth time? Do you like finding links and similarities between stuff you read or watch? I'm almost a maniac. I'm always there noticing analogies, similarities, links and connections while watching or reading. I did the same this last weekend re-watching P&P 1995 and seeing for the first time "12 Men of Christmas". It hadn't been planned as a comparative watching but it came out like that.
In my attempt to catch up with such an incredibly rich and active career as Colin Firth’s, I ‘ve been recently very lucky and managed to watch two wonderful films in one day: Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003) and A Single Man (2009). I really can’t tell you which one I liked more because I did liked both very much though in different ways.
In “Girl with a Pearl Earring” I loved the costume movie and the poetry of colours. Not as much the story, actually. This film, adapted from a work of fiction by Tracy Chevalier, tells about the events surrounding the creation of the painting "Girl With A Pearl Earring" by 17th century Dutch master Johannes Vermeer. Little is known about the girl in the painting, it is speculated that she was a maid who lived in the house of the painter along with his family and other servants, though there is no historical evidence .
The film , set in 1665, is not only about art and the creation of a masterpiece but it is also about exploitation and how a young woman attempts to resist a system designed to make her a vulnerable victim.This was the aspect I most appreciated in the plot . Griet is a Protestant among Catholics, a generous woman in a world of selfish human beings, a poor honest girl in a household full of pretences . But she is strong-willed, only apparently fragile. And she has a gift, she understands art and she has a special sensitivity for colours, this is why Vermeer, the master, choses her. Not for his lust but for his art. Anyhow, Griet feels trapped, not free, like the maid servant ( a dummy) Vermeer was painting among a chair, a table, a window and a wall… Griet dares move the chair from the place the painter had put it. When he asks her why she answers directly and simply , “she was trapped”. In Vermeer’s paintings his maids are quite passive, Griet does not accept her destiny passively.
Griet is despised by Johannes Vermeer’s permanently pregnant wife and by her wicked children. Vermeer as a painter is patronized by the lecherous merchant Van Ruijven who wants Griet in his house and even tries to rape her. But she resists.
She has got a boyfriend, Pieter, the butcher’s son who warns her:
Pieter: Don't get caught up in his world.
Griet: I may only be a maid, but I would NEVER give in to Master Van Ruijven!
Pieter: I wasn't talking about Van Ruijven...
She’s attracted by her master, of course, but even more by the magic he can do with colours and light. Pieter fears he can lose Griet for that.
Griet and Vermeer never go beyond the limits of an emotional relationship. No sexual involvement. Though the scene of master Vermeer piercing her left ear is highly symbolical and extremely sensual. Just as the attraction and the tension between them is palpable while they mix the coloured paints together. Their relationship becomes closer while Vermeer paints Griet for Van Ruijven . Catharina's growing jealousy of Griet becomes more and more apparent, and she finally discovers the theft of her earrings, accusing her own mother of complicity (she had given Griet her dauther's earrings) and ordering Vermeer to show her the painting he and Griet have been working on. It is obscene to her and Griet must leave the house.
Cast: Colin Firth as Johannes Vermeer; Scarlett Johansson as Griet; Tom Wilkinson as Piet Van Ruijven; Judy Parfitt as Maria Thins ;Cillian Murphy as Pieter; Essie Davis as Catharina Vermeer; Anna Popplewell as Maertge
French cinematographer Eduardo Serra and his Dutch collaborators, the production designer Ben van Os and the costume designer Dien van Straalen, have given the movie extraordinary beauty. The landscapes are enchanting. The stern, black-dressed mother-in-law seems just come out of a Rembrandt. The interiors and exteriors of Delft resemble paintings by Vermeer, Pieter de Hooch and their contemporaries brought to life. That beauty will stay always with me. More than the story itself.
• Most of the events in the novel's epilogue, such as Griet's marriage to Pieter and their two children, Jan and Frans, are not shown in the film.
• In the novel, there is a subplot involving Griet's younger sister, who eventually dies from the plague.
• In the novel, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek warns Griet not to get too close to Vermeer, but he is absent from the film and his lines are given to Pieter.
• In the novel, Griet and Tanneke have a difficult relationship, but in the movie, they seem to get along. This is shown by Tanneke's teasing Griet about Pieter and her willingness to chat and gossip.
• In the novel, Griet pierces her left and right earlobe herself. In the film, Vermeer pierces the left one for her, while she does not have to pierce her right lobe
A Single Manpremiered on September 11, 2009 at the 66th Venice International Film Festival where Colin Firth was awarded the Coppa Volpi as Best Actor. He also won at British BAFTA as Best Actor for this movie. He well deserved all the positive responses to his role as George Falconer, because the entire film is emotionally on his shoulders and he gave us a gripping and stunning performance.
The film is based on the novel of the same name by Christopher Isherwood and was directed by fashion designer Tom Ford, who, as a first-time director, had to finance it himself. Colin Firth stars as the protagonist George Falconer, a gay British university professor living in Southern California in 1962, a month after the Cuban missile crisis. The film places emphasis on the culture of the 1960s but most of the lines and the scenes go beyond space and time. They are universal and eternal. I so often wanted to stop the movie and write down what I had just heard. But I didn’t do it. The narration, slow, deep, inolving couldn’t be stopped. I didn’t want to stop it. I ‘ll rewatch it. That’s for sure.
Throughout the single day depicted in the film, and narrated from his point of view, George Falconer dwells on his past, shown in flashbacks, and his seemingly empty future, as he prepares for his planned suicide that evening. He feels lonely and depressed: he can’t forget his lover, who died in a care accident 8 months before. He buys bullets for his revolver, empties his safety deposit box in the bank, prepares letters for some friends, and one with some money for his cleaning woman, and arranges his life insurance policy, other important things such as keys, and the clothes he wants to be dressed in by the undertaker neatly in sight. Everyday things and encounters become special for him, realizing that for each it is the last time, and he is extra nice to people, as he is secretly saying goodbye.
I don’t want to give away much more. I don’t want to spoil your personal watching of this movie. But of course I can’t avoid saying that George is gay and the lover whose loss he can’t overcome was Jim, an architect, who had lived with him for 16 years. However this film is nothing about sexuality and much, much more about love, faithfulness, friendship, loneliness, prejudices, hypocrisy, war and fear. The role of a lifetime for Colin Firth after so many brilliant performances .
Cast : Colin Firth as George Carlyle Falconer; Julianne Moore as Charlotte (Charley); Nicholas Hoult as Kenny Potter ; Matthew Goode as Jim; Jon Kortajarena as Carlos; Paulette Lamori as Alva; Ryan Simpkins as Jennifer Strunk; Ginnifer Goodwin as Mrs. Strunk; Teddy Sears as Mr. Strunk
I want to close this post with an answer Colin Firth gave in a long and interesting interview about this film about his character’s homosexuality:
Reporter: But being a closeted gay man in 1962 makes George more secretive, right?
Colin : Yeah, but people are secretive about their sexuality, generally, in one way or another anyway, unless they’re Italian. Sorry, that’s a dig at my [Italian] wife. Not everybody flaunts their sexuality, but I take your point. I think certainly in 1962, he’s a college professor, and [his homosexuality] might have made people more suspicious of him. In the ‘70s, when I was a teenage schoolboy, the idea that anybody might be gay also implied that they might be some sort of predator. Those are the kind of prejudices. I think we live with those less now in our society.
I really hope we do, Colin. But I’m not that sure, unfortunately. However, thanks for this beautiful, unforgettable movie and for an awesome performance.
Watch the trailer of the movie - Isn't the soundtrack great, too?
This is not my first post recording my attempts to catch up with Colin Firth's career (HERE is my first post). It is impressive how much I've lost! This weekend I managed to watch two very different period movies, both very good in their very different genres: Relative Values (2000) and A Month in the Country (1987)
1. Relative Values (2000)
Director Eric Styles adapts Noel Coward's play set in '50s British country and, more broadly, gives us another depiction of the complications of romance and marriage. The eligible Earl of Marshwood (Edward Atterton) is expected to marry within his class. His plan, therefore, to wed Hollywood starlet Miranda Frayle (JeanneTripplehorn) is met with consternation. His doting mother, the Countess (Julie Andrews), is advised by friends not to allow her corner of England to be sullied; her personal maid reveals that she's Miranda's long-lost sister and terrified lest their disparate circumstances be made plain; and the staff of Marshwood Hall are dizzy at the prospect of meeting a Hollywood actress. Near-hysteria builds when Don Lucas (William Baldwin), a bigshot actor and Miranda's former lover, turns up wanting her back.
The enchanting location of this movie was an ancient convent in the Isle of Man. It is meant to be a brilliant satire of the changes taking place in post-war society and the resulting conflicts in the 50s aristocratic England. The movie , thanks to its stellar cast and its witty dialogues, is really enjoyable. Colin Firth is Peter Ingleton , the sophisticated and witty nephew of the landlady, the Countess of Marshwood, a role interpreted by Cowan himself on stage in the London premiere of the play he also directed in 1951. This is what Colin himself said about his role in an interview: "Peter basically spends his time hanging around the place. He's a harmless mischief-maker who enjoys the crisis that's unfolding and he treats it all as a bit of a game. I haven't modelled my character upon Noel Coward because it is very important to appropriate a role and make it your own. After all, the delivery of a line now is certainly not going to be the same as it was forty years ago."
Stephen Fry is a fantastic butler and Julie Andrews is stuff of legend. Sophie Thompson (on the right with Colin Firth), who stars as Moxie - Hollywood star Miranda's forgotten poor sister and personal maid of the Countess - is incredibly funny in the scenes in which she has to pretend to be a rich friend of the family. Hilarious. Sophie is Emma Thomson's sister and you surely remember her as Miss Bates in Emma 1996 (the film with Paltrow /Northam as Emma /Knightley) and maybe listened to her as Bella Harlowe, Lady Betty and Sally in Clarissa , BBC radio drama 2010.
2. A Month in the Country (1987)
I was writing about WW1 veterans, shell - shocked ones, just few weeks ago in a post about Pat Barker's Regeneration . This beautiful moving film lyrically deals with the same theme: men broken down by war, WWI. It is based on a very good short novel by J. L. Carr , A Month in the Country (1980, Booker Prize).
The plot concerns Tom Birkin ( Colin Firth ), a World War I veteran employed to uncover a mural in a village church that was thought to exist under coats of whitewash. At the same time another veteran, James Moon ( Kenneth Branagh ), is employed to look for a grave beyond the churchyard walls. Though Birkin is an atheist there is prevalent religious symbolism throughout the book, mainly dealing with judgment. The novel explores themes of England's loss of spirituality after the war, and of happiness, melancholy, and nostalgia as Birkin recalls the summer uncovering the mural, when he healed from his wartime experiences and a broken marriage.
Among the several reviews I've found for this film I particularly agree with this one: "Permeated with a sense of isolation and regret that ultimately gives way to the comforting embrace of forgiveness, this is an unusual and unyielding film, one with the hushed fervor of a silent prayer".
It is a highly poetic, symbolical story: Birkin restoring the painting in that isolated country church is actually restoring his own self.
In the cast Natasha Richardson as Mrs Keach, who adds a touch of romance to Birkin's stay in the village, and Patrick Malahide, as Reverend Keach, representing strong divine love, faith and religion, something Birkin really can't believe in any longer after the atrocities he had to witness.
Don't worry, I'm not starting a long sermon, nor a novel. This is just a short preface to my DVD reviews. You know, I'm on an educational journey. Since I started blogging I 've been learning very much and every day I want to learn more. For instance, I know many of you admire and love Colin Firth and consider him the ultimate Mr Darcy. Well, don't laugh out loud, please! but I saw him in Bridget Jones I & II, Shakespeare in Love and The Importance of Being Earnest at the cinema without knowing much about him, precisely without knowing he was Mr Darcy. My first P&P adaptation was 2005. Yes, I know, unforgivable. Now, since thanks to blogging I've also met very good friends who love Colin Firth and know everyhting about him and his career and, since I absolutely don't wan't to lose or disappoint them, I'm working hard to reduce my ... ignorance. Of course, I've seen Pride and Prejudice 1995 now, how couldn't I? But Colin Firth worked in so many other interesting films, that I decided to see at least some of them . So I started my Firthian education. In brackets: dear RA fans, don't worry, I'm a very faithful woman, ... one and for life!
ANOTHER COUNTRY (1984)
Cast - Colin Firth (Tommy), Rupert Everett (Guy), Anna Massey, Robert Addie, Tristan Oliver, Michael Jenn, Cary Elwes, Frederick Alexander
This text was adapted for the screen by Julian Mitchell who had previously written it as a play. It tells about the lives of a group of brats from British aristocracy and is set in one of the most exclusive male public schools in the 1930s. Two protagonists: Tommy Judd and Guy Bennet . One of them , now a spy for KGB living in Moscow, recalls those years in a long flashback : dandism, marxist ideals, homosexuality, repression, hypocrisy and cricket characterized the protagonists' youth.
This film was presented at Cannes Festival in 1984 and signed the beginning of two really promising careers: Colin Firth's and Rupert Everett's.
I liked it. How couldn't I? Period film, amazing locations, 1930s England , great acting. Only that after watching Maurice or Dead Poets Society it seemed ... already seen. Then themes like marxism or homosexuality are dealt with in a rather rethorical, obvious way.
I loved Colin Firth's character though. Tommy is an interesting teenager, rather unusual. Colin was already 24 when he played the part of this 17-year-old boy ready to bear scorn , unfriendliness and isolation in the name of his ideals. He is firmly attached to those ideals , at any cost. Uncommon young man, wise , smart and terribly witty.
Some of Colin/Tommy's lines are unforgettable:
1. Devenish : "I don’t see why you have to be against everything"
Tommy: "I’m not. I’m for revolution"
2. (in the cricket chhanging room)
Wicked Fowler asks Tommy : " Are you trying to be clever or something?
And Tommy "I don’t have to try: I AM clever"
Then Fowler: " I’ve half a mind to ask Barclay for permission to beat you"
And Tommy: "Well, you’ve half a mind, we can all agree on that!"
FEVER PITCH ( 1997)
Cast: Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Sarah Hughes, Holly Aird
There are at least three good reasons why I should have seen this film before.
1. It is based on one of Nick Hornby's works, he also wrote the screenplay. I love his humour and have read several of his novels.
2. I'm surrounded by male human beings suffering from high fever pitch.
3. I am a teacher and the protagonists of the film are also teachers
Now I know what I lost. Great fun and sensitive dealing with contemporary society's obsessive manias, as usual in Nick Hornby. Hornby tried to self-analyze his soccer - mania in this story with irony and intelligence.
But how could Colin Firth move from calm and collected Mr Darcy to a coarse soccer hooligan like Paul Asworth?
Nick Hornby himself writes:
"Listen, it wasn't my idea, OK? I didn't insist on having Mr Darcy play 'me'; Liora Reich, the casting director, suggested it...though I immediately saw that she was right.
I felt I had heard and made every joke it is possible to make on this subject within about ten minutes of Colin Firth's name first being mentioned; suffice to say that, yes, I am bald and he is not, he is tall and I am not, my ears and stomach protrude more than his ears and stomach, he looks good on Tv in a wet white shirt and I ...well, nobody has ever given me a chance, actually, so I'm not conceding that one. The trouble is the TV and film actors look better than the rest of us - it could be argued that this is the whole point of them - and , in any case, physical verisimilitude was never a prerequisite. We were more interested in acting and stuff, and nobody can deny that Firth is one of the best actors of his generation. At Christmas 1995 , when we were casting, Pride and Prejudice was being watched by 13 million people, and it was hard (for us anyway) to see Colin swapping from Austen breeches for the Arsenal boxer shorts". (from Nick Hornby, Fever pitch: The screenplay, London, Indigo, 1997)
Yes, Mr Darcy accepted, it seems ... he is a terrific Paul Asworth and he has a bald friend, Steve, played by Mark Strong.
FEVER PITCH is an enjoyable romantic comedy about a man , a woman and a football team, Arsenal. It is only loosely based on Nick Hornby's best selling autobiographical novel. Paul Ashworth is an English teacher who believes his long standing obsession with Arsenal serves him well. But when he meets Sarah, one of her colleagues his world of certainties starts cracking. Their relationship develops in tandem with Arsenal's roller coaster fortunes in the football league...
Thank you, Mr Firth. It was a great pleasure to watch these two movies. A great pleasure, indeed. Now, what's next? What are the unmissable ones in a good Firthian Education? I guess there are still many yet to go.
A full immersion into the world of libertinism. I don't know whether to worry or not: I went on and on with my sudden - recent but intense - interest in libertines.
Yesterday morning I woke up as early as 7 but I didn't feel like getting up so soon, since it was Sunday. So I remembered I had just got VALMONT DVD (1989) from my " fairy Merryweather", who had suggested me to watch it after she heard I had appreciated Lord Damerel (G. Heyer, VENETIA) and am appreciating what Richard Armitage is doing with his Lovelace (Richardson, CLARISSA, BBC4 radiodrama ). And there I was. 7 o'clock in the morning: coffee, laptop ... in bed with the first libertine of the day: Vicomte Colin Valmont.
A very young ( and incredibly gorgeous ) Colin Firth, performs as the Vicomte in 1989 Milos Forman's film version of Les Liaisons dangereuses, the French epistolary novel by P. C. de Laclos .
The 1782 four -volume novel is the story of the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, two rivals (ex lovers) who use sex as a weapon to humiliate and degrade others, all the while enjoying their cruel games. Milos Forman's made it a comedy cleaning it from the tragic and cruel details.He created a charming portrayal of the French society at the end of the 18th century with wonderful costumes and locations but brought the human comedy of loving, seducing, betraying, competing, winning and losing beyond time and context.
Colin Firth's Valmont is smart, disenchanted, joking, handsome and charming, daring and cheeky, amoral but smiling and tender. What he lacks is the devilish perversity, the tragic calculation and cruelty of the other
Valmonts. Forman's protagonist plays the libertine as a joyous game of extreme freedom and his seductive schemes are often depicted as comic. Even his final death in a duel becomes comedy.
I simply found it delightful and loved watching this movie though I noticed some little flaws and a "hole" in the script: why does Valmont accept to seduce 15-year-old Cecile when he refused at first? (the book explains)
I unwillingly slipped off the blankets at 9.30 . There was a huge ... no, not a huge carriage... a huge ... no, not a huge 18th century palace... just a huge pile of laundry to be ironed waiting for me! Could I lose all the previous magic atmosphere like that? Not at all. So, I played on the first two episodes of BBC4 Clarissa (The Pursuit, and The Flight) to get ready to listen to episode 3 in the afternoon. Ironing in such company became less boring.
Then after lunch, at 4 p.m here in Italy, live on BBC4 episode 3. The Imprisonment. Soon after that, BBC 4 Open Book in which Mariella Frostrup interviewed the director of Clarissa, Marilyn Imrie, about the dramatisation.
The libertine in Clarissa by Samuel Richardson ( epistolary novel published in1748 so earlier than the French Liaisons) , is Robert Lovelace. His stubborness at seducing good -hearted, innocent Clarissa resembles Valmont's persistent attempts to win Madam de Tourvel, who is very young and naive, very religious and good-principled and , especially married and faithful to her husband. But Lovelace owns a histrionic duplicity of behaviour which Forman's Valmont does not have: wicked Lovelace is stubbornly persuing his aim of ruining Clarissa's honour taking her virginity, he's cunningly planning a false marriage to trick her and overcome her refusal, but he plays the convincing passionate / tender lover and ... what is more he is really convinced that he IS in love with "his charmer, his angel" , that he is HELPING her to escape her unfair family's grasp.
Richard Armitage gave another brilliant sample of how talented he is at using his wonderful voice: he whispered seducing "please" or "I love you" and threatening "you must", parodized an elderly gentleman, played the drunk boasting rascal and a post boy, was the patient unrequited husband in tears, the tender lover expecting his reward and, finally, the devilish rapist convinced of making love instead ... and all that impeccably.
At the end of the episode I was so thrilled and anxious that I found it difficult to calm down and listen to the following interview. The final scene, the rape, had been different from the one I had read in Richardson and even from the BBC miniseries, but so disquieting. Despicable rake! I needed a break. Stop with libertines. At least for a while ...
After dinner out, at my mother's, and some chat with the whole family before the fire, I was back home. 11 a.m. I didn't feel like reading nor sleeping. A movie? From my costume drama collection? Which one?
Just the right one to complete the route : Stephen Frears, Dangerous Liaisons (1988) . And I was again in bed with a libertine: Vicomte John Valmont.
A curiosity: Milos Forman had alredy started working at his Valmont and was still filming it when Stephen Frears's movie came out in 1988. Forman was such a perfectionist that ... it took him too long! So, when his Valmont was released, it was either ignored or criticized for repeating the same plot of a widely popular and appreciated film that had just come out one year earlier
Anyhow, Frears's Dangerous Liaisons is astonishingly beautiful! John Malkovich 's Valmont is cold and fiendish , and the decadence, the tragicality, the perversity of the original text are all there to an extremity. Like in the book, the fragile victims are sacrificed and suffer much: in this movie , young Cecile (Uma Turman) gets pregnant and suffers a miscarriage, she doesn't end in marriage to an important man and in the Royal Chapel like in Forman's movie; madame De Turvel (Michelle Pfeiffer) suffers Valmont's violent rejection and consumes herself to death, she isn't forgiven and helped by her old husband like in Forman's film; the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont are trecherous, perfidious, cold, greedy, devilish. There is no joy in their being out of any rule and completely free to break them. The whole film is rather dark and tragic, in fact. But it is definitely a great costume movie. An excellent one.
P.S. Chevalier Darceney, Cecile's young music teacher and lover, is Keanu Reeves in this film.
Tonight I want to invite you to re-read my favourite pages from PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. Last Wednesday 16 December, it was Jane Austen’s birthday so let’s go on celebrating her.
Elizabeth has now definitely formed her opinion of Mr Darcy, not at all a positive one. She absolutely hates and despises him:
first of all he said she is just of tolerable beauty, he didn’t want to dance with her at Meryton, he cheated Wickham on inheritance matters, influenced Mr Bingley in his decision to turn her sister’s Jane down. What more does she need to think he is the last man in the world she would want to marry?
But totally unexpected Mr Darcy’s proposal comes … Listen to Dominic West reading it.
Now the same scene from the 1995 BBC adaptation starring Colin Firth as Mr Darcy
and Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth
If you are, instead , a fan of the 2005 film adaptation maybe you want to see Mr Darcy's first proposal under the rain again. ( click here )
Matthew MacFadyen and Keira Knightley
How would you react if you were Lizzie? Just the same? Definitely not in that way? Don’t cheat … we know more than Elizabeth about Mr Darcy ! So, to be precise, what would do if you were her, knowing what she knows, thinking what she thinks of him?
The Picture of Dorian Gray was aesthete Oscar Wilde’s only novel, although he wrote a number of poems and children’s stories before it was published in 1890 (in Lippincott’s Magazine). Like much of his work and life, the Gothic novel Dorian Gray was controversial. In his preface to the book he famously wrote that, "There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all". The novel is a brilliant portrait of vanity and depravity tinged with sadness. The picture of the title is a splendid work painted by Basil Hallward of the orphaned boy Dorian Gray who is the heir to a great fortune. Lord Henry and Hallward discuss the boy and the remarkable painting. Dorian in front of his own portrait sees his beauty for the first time and declares he would give his soul if he were always to be young and the painting instead would grow old. As the story pans out, Dorian leaves his fiancée - the actress Sibyl Vane - because through a single bad performance he claims that she has ‘killed’ his love. She kills herself with poison and Dorian is unaffected. So begins the tale of the boy’s descent into low society in London while still giving dinners and musicals for high society. He is inspired by two things: the book Lord Henry sends him that seems to predict his own life in dissecting every virtue and every sin from the past; and secondly the picture of himself which grows steadily older and more vicious looking compared to his own mirror image which remains young. Fanatical about the portrait, he is driven to murder and deception. As others are drawn into this web of evil Dorian himself longs to return to innocence but his method is horrific and tragic.
PART II - BACK FROM THE MOVIES
So, at last, I succeded in watching this movie! It was not that easy. For example, we had to drive for 72 km, to Rome, to see it. Then, after queueing for quite a bit, (did all those people really want to see that film?) we were said there was only a seat left and we were TWO (my husband and I!). We drove to another cinema fearing it was too late, and , finally, we managed to find two comfortable seats. First of all, I didn't expect such crowded theatres. Usually when I go to the cinema to see period movies I'm interested in , I comfortably sit among very few people. Moreover, among that noisy (too noisy) crowd, there were many teenagers... I really don't know if it happens also in other parts of the world but Italian young people can be rather wild mannered in public places. Briefly, they thought they were at the stadium watching a match: they commented loudly, they shout at the actors on the screen, they clapped and ... laughed were there was nothing to laugh at!
Apart from all the unpleasant happenings before and during the film , I was rather interested and not at all bored while watching ... I was so busy discovering the (SO MANY!) differences between the novel and the movie! I 'm not going to list them: they are numerous, so numerous, I'd rather say: are they sure they read the same novel I read before writing the script?
I know they needed to add blood, sex, action , creepy devices, to get the modern watcher involved but there should be a limit! The story has been completely transformed, even its key ideas.
Did I like the movie? Not so much. Would I have liked it if I hadn't known the book so well? Neither. Not the sort of movie I'd drive to Rome and bear a crowd of noisy teenagers!
Do you want me to find at least one thing to save? I'll give you two: Colin Firth and Dorian's ... clothes!
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