A baby faced Marcello lights up the screen with a cheesy grin against
one of Luchino's cardboard recreations of Venice in the 1957 Le Notti
Bianche from Dostoevsky. The screen is from a new Cristaldi Blu-ray,
Italian friendly only, no English subs. So this can be no more than a preview
of what might come from an English friendly label down the track.
I have never cared much for the film, ranking it at the bottom of his
pre Vaghe Stelle dell' Orsa (1965) period. This new transfer
really showcases the totally studio bound artificiality of the production,
which could only have been as resonantly powerful on the big screen. It looks
amazing, like Kubrick's studio recreation of Greenwich Village in Eyes
Wide Shut. On my own big screen and a projection setup all this sumptuously
lit artifice, along with a poignant and stinging Rota score and a very
deliberately and theatrically staged and blocked mise en scene is trying to
persuade me to like this much more than formerly. And I am enjoying it very
much. But there remains an insurmountable problem with the casting. Marcello at
this point needed a few years more of experience and a relatively cruel
director like Fellini in La Dolce VIta to get smart enough to
play alienation. In this adaptation of a neurotically brooding short story from
the master of blackness he looks so ingenuous all he seems to need to
immediately cheer up is a football to kick around the set. Far FAR worse
however is Maria Schell who plays it like Bambi without her chewing gum on the
set of a William Asher Beach Party pic. The one actor who can
and does resonate with the material, albeit for only the few seconds he appears
is Jean Marais, elegantly dubbed and disturbingly still for his few shots.
Visconti's film barely whispers the noia until Marais steps into frame and he
commands DP Rotunno's most shadowy lighting. One yearns for more of him and
less of the kids.
The source for this 1080p is not a new restoration like the recent 4K
from Ritrovate for Rocco, but an older, very fine 35mm resto from
Cristaldi, which was almost certainly performed around the same time as the
same studio executed a gorgeous new 35mm of the contemporaneous Bellissima (1954).
Now there's an early Visconti we should all be lapping up in HD.
...and some conversation...
Peter Kemp Wonderfully written
account. Thanks for posting.
David Hare Where do you rate the
movie Pierre?
Peter Kemp Never saw - Just love your
playful, evocative analysis of it. Yet another film I have to see. At some
future stage. I like MM in just about anything except a non-starter he did with
Julie Andrews called TCHIN TCHIN directed by Bea Arthur's closeted hubby Gene
Saks (no auteur by anyone's standards). Hardly a film to clink glasses over!
Noel Bjorndahl You are such an
elegant and incisive writer, David. I remember loving this film so I can only
hope that one comes out with subs in my fast diminishing lifetime.
David Melville Wingrove The studio
recreation is not of Venice but of Livorno (aka Leghorn) - a workaday Italian
city full of canals (or 'scali') and shrouded in mist. The 'studio bound
artificiality' was a deliberate choice by Visconti. He wanted to pay homage to
French Poetic Realism and and give the feeling of an entirely illusory world.
Maria Schell's performance may seem overly cute to modern viewers but she was a
huge star at the time and audiences found her work genuinely moving. It may not
be a masterpiece like VAGHE STELLE and others, but the dance scene with Dirk
Sanders is one of the most disturbingly erotic sequences in Visconti's output.
Are you not being just a bit too harsh?
David Hare Thanks for the correction
on location David. The Venice of Senso compared to this is a mixture of
location and soundstage and also bears little resemblance to the Livorno
presented here. But the LIvorno of Notti is emblematic surely, and its fog
and shadows are equally
emblematic. It should be said VIsconti probably still felt the need to showcase
his cred as a studio director and completely shake off the terminally limiting
(and invented by American writers) moniker of so called neo-realism. The movie
is still among his worst IMO along with another disastrously written and
conceived high toned literary adaptation, Lo Straniero/L'Etranger/The
Stranger adapted from Camus in 1968, again starring a Marcello who's
left even more at sea than he is in this picture. Visconti's downfall and
artistic collapse which shades all his films after 1965, seems to me to be the
need to abandon personal expression to court the arthouse audiences and pander
to these realms of "good taste" and "High Culture" all
better left to a totally shallow director like Zeffirelli. He parallels Losey
during his Liz/Burton phase in that sense. V's films from this period are empty
chambers of decor and costume and production design literally trampling over
the elements of narrative or mise en scene or genuine feeling. Notti is the
earliest of such "contrivances" and it still fails for me, alas, even
in its relatively simple aims. As a mood piece saluting the Realisme Poetique
of Carne et al the movie is certainly salvaged by Rotunno, Rota and Visconti's
own decoupage. But in the terms of Susi Cecchi's and V's screenplay it never
comes to term with what Schell's character actually is - a totally central
pivot for the story - an existential Femme Fatale who has no role besides being
a phantom? or Visconti's' own heterosexual panic projected into that phantom?
If this were the intention then why not take the screenplay and character down
the path of a Schnitzler story, for example? But whatever or however you write
the part there's simply nothing you can do with Schell, an actor with the
charisma of a mosquito and even less talent. Her long career reveals a chasm of
worthless drek- with one single other film of stature in which she is, at
least, credible, Clement's Gervaise. The rest is forgotten and best
so.
Peter Kemp 'the charisma of a
mosquito' - LOVE it!
David Melville Wingrove You obviously
have strong views on Maria Schell. Have you seen her in the Alexandre Astruc
film UNE VIE, based on the novel by Maupassant? It's a great film and she is
simply stupendous in it. Personally, I loathe Neo-Realism (or, indeed,
realism of any sort) so Visconti's
later films are the ones I truly love. Zeffirelli a shallow hack? Well, at
least his films look good and reflect his own tortured gay Catholic
sensibility. I do agree though that LO STRANIERO is ghastly!
David Hare David life is too short
for me to have any views on Maria Schell. She is simply appalling in this which
is nothing more than part of an analysis of the film and one of the prime
reasons it consistently fails.
Bruce Hodsdon Geoffrey Nowell-Smith
Cinema One book on Visconti in my view still the best writing in English I've
come across on V, even if it has subsequently been qualified by the
author. N-S sees WN as an extreme example of the anti-realism tendency that
runs deep in V, "its spiritual descendants are to be found in Jacques Demy
(Lola, Umbrellas of Cherbourg) and Last Year at Marienbad." In V's work
N-S sees aspects of the same tendency operating in Senso, notably "in the
way the world of art (opera and painting) is used as an ideal image and a
corrective against which actuality can be judged." N-S concludes that in
other aspects WN links most closely to Vague Stella/Sandra. WN was widely
attacked at the time as a sign of V's abandonment of realism but N-S points out
that this begins with his use of semi-expressionist techniques in La Terra
Trema and "the creation and manipulation of a bizarre social world in
Bellissimo." N-S makes a case for WN "being absolutely central to V's
oeuvre."
Bruce Hodsdon Don't
think I agree with you about Schell based on viewings of the film 20 yrs ago.
Aren't you confusing the performance with the role David? Based on my now
distant recollection I think I would agree with N-S who notes that "on the
level of actuality Natalia is an hysterical little bitch...The
extraordinary thing in the film is that she is allowed to triumph, that the ideal
becomes a reality. WN is not a sentimental film. On the level of observation it
is lucid and even realistic."
David Hare Bruce,
I am preoccupied with things relating to capitalism and finance at the moment
but I think' you've said several crucial thing about V and critical frameworks
responding to him which I will try to address tomorrow when I'm less fraught.
Bruce Hodsdon More
passing on fragments of N-S's analysis David. I would rank Visconti's oeuvre as
one of the most difficult to unravel which N-S has substantially done for me.
The
knockout Ascot sequence from Cukor's film of My Fair Lady (1964) with
incomparable production desisgn by Gene Allen and Cecil Beaton. This is the
absolute high point from the spanking new Robert Harris 6K restoration mastered
on a new Paramount Blu Ray which now sets a quality benchmark for the film's
value and longevity.
If only
the rest of the movie had the same bite as the Ascot material however. I've
never cared much for the title amongst Cukor's work, and it certainly doesn't come near his only other "real" musical,
Les Girls for personal expression. Ever lumbered with the "big
assignment" dead weight this managed to escape almost all of Jack Warner's
bloody minded casting and production ideas, save for one crucial and horrible
mistake which undermines the entire picture, and the considerable pleasures one
can otherwise draw from the flawless performances of Rex and Audrey - Marnie
Nixon. Despite Audrey's superb handling of a wildly superior Cole Porter score
for Funny Face six years earlier, and her extant live-to film mezzo singing for
the early part of the picture, Jack Warner handed the rest of the vocals over
to Nixon who, apart from being the world's most boringly pneumatic soprano is
far less capable of handling the Cockney twang than Audrey demonstrably does,
when you hear her pitch perfect line readings. What remains in the vault of
Audrey' criminally discarded mezzo tracks are included amongst a copious second
BD of supplements that comes in this deluxe silver and black boxset. Harris'
work on vision and audio is benchmark gold standard and could not be bettered
-they even made a 65mm Eastman Kodak preservation print as well as the 6K and
4K downrez used for Blu mastering and theatrical DCP. So for Cukor completists
and fans of the Lerner and Loewe canon, if not necessarily at the top my pile.
...and some more conversation...
Geoffrey Gardner You've
made known your enthusiasm. Thanks for the all the info re the specs as well.
One memory is that there was criticism of Rex Harrison for 'talking' his songs
in the film version whereas he 'sang' them on the LP original cast recording
that was in every household in the late 50s. There was also some suggestion
that Cukor was not happy with Beaton, who came as part of the part of the
package and wanted his usual George Hoyningen-Huene to rethink it all but no
dice
David Hare Referring
back to the (not always reliable) Lambert on Cukor THE director bristles when
Lambert brings up the Jack Warner "High toned" choices for the
adapatiation BS. He then goes on to reveal how much he enjoyed making the show,
especially with Rex whose "parlando" singing as he calls it was all
recorded live to body mike. This practise alone enabled Rex to grow his
character into something one never usually sees in straight productions or indeed
the 1939 Pygmalion - a strong man with a driving obsession. He is far too
apologetic about Audrey, as though Jack was wrong to choose her over Julie
Andrews (the only good decision Jack made IMO). Watching her performance anew,
especially with a couple of the early songs sung by her, and her dynamic with
Rex is quite stirring. I have never run hot on the movie but this presentation
of it warms me somewhat. As for Warner throwing Dame Cecil Beatoin into the
mix, who seems to have duchessed all over everyone, Cukor pays him some credit
for taste relating to Edwardiana, and one can certainly now clearly see how
much Cukor and DP Harry Stradling have worked around the rather cloying high
queen brown and red stuffiness of Beaton's Edwardian decor for the Higgins house
- it is now visibly evident Stradling uses unusually short lenses on the
mediums not only to focus on the foreground and the players but layer the sets
with incredibly beautiful depth and lighting. These visual elements of the
production are now completely gorgeous. If only someone would give the some
deluxe 6K treatment to Chapman Report, Let's Make Love, Bhowani Junction and
Justine.
David Hare I commend this
appreciation from Carlos Clarens' more contemporary summation of the film in
his Cukor, for Secker and Warburg/BFI (1976). "At its best, the filmed My
Fair Lady demonstrates that Shaw can do very well without all the Lerner and
Loewe embellishments. The after-the-ball confrontation between Eliza and
Higgins, when they allow themselves for the first time the luxury of baring
their feelings to each other, she berating him for his lofty disregard for her
humanity, he striking back at her calculated taunt that she must not be allowed
to keep his ring is transposed almost intact from the original Shaw, and calls
neither for music nor the conventions of the musical comedy. The director's
response to the material is also visible in the film's other highlight, again a
non-musical scene, and one that recalls similar situations in other Cukor
films. Standing on the stairway, above her sponsors. dressed for the ball where
she will get to dance with a prince. silent , tremulous with fear and
anticipation, Eliza shares her fragile obsession with other Cukor heroines from
Mary Evans on; who, in a splendid moment of illumination, discover a certain
greatness in themselves."
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