Customer Reviews

Duet for One [VHS]

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I frankly don't see why people have overlooked this film or given it bad critiques and reviews. I think it's magnificent. I watched it the very same day I got it, and Ms. Andrews gives a magnificent performance. I foud tears on my own face at times, while Stephanie's struggling with her life. True, I'd never heard Ms. Julie use so much profanity, but everyone does it-she's a human being too. And a very wonderful human being, might I add. I know that in preparing for this role, Ms. Andrews spent time in a hospital, observing those with multiple sclerosis, and she did a wonderufl job portraying Stephanie. Perhaps another reason why I like this movie is because one of my friend's mother has multiple sclerosis. In a way, "Duet For One" has helped me to better understand what Kathryn goes through with her mother, who is also wheelchair bound. It must be frightful for someone to see their life ending that way. Anyhoo, the movie's great, and I really recommend it. It's very drammatic, very well done, and Ms. Andrews' performance sparkles.

It is so sad that this film remains little seen and little known. Clearly, Julie Andrews gives the best performance of her career (where was the Oscar nomination she deserved?) as a world- class violionist stricken with multiple schlerosis at the height of her career in this film based on a play by Tom Kempinski. Max Von Sydow plays her psychiatrist (scenes between Sydow and Andrews are powerful) and Alan Bates plays her philandering husband. Also features early performances from Rupert Everett and Liam Neeson. A heavy film, and a shattering, dynamic, tour de force for Julie Andrews.

Julie Andrews gives the performance of her career as a virtuoso violinist stricken with a degenerative and crippling disease, which destroys her complacent life. Tom Kempinski wrote the script from his play giving it greater depth. Alan Bates and Max von Sydow give excellent performances, as they must deal with Andrews as fate takes its toll. A difficult film to watch, but Julie Andrews' performance is so thought provoking that it just makes you stop and take account of things. This 1968 film was produced by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus and directed in England by Andrei Konchalovsky. Look for a young Liam Neeson.

An understated film about a concert violinist's struggle with the physical and emotional traumas of multiple sclerosis is given life by Julie Andrews' performance, the best dramatic portrayal of her career. Her ability to reveal the character's motivations, fears and character traits, warts and all, is illuminating and rewarding, particularly in her scenes with husband Alan Bates, and protege Rupert Everett.

Julie Andrews makes the most robust performances on screen through this vivid, intimate and sadly adaptation based on a true and sensitive testimony of the real life. She is attacked by a degenerative sclerosis that eventually will lead to the grave. She plays the role of a famed violinist (in the real life she was a very talented cellist) who suffers this awful penury, nevertheless she possesses that untamed will, materializing this epic fight against the destiny. Backstage his husband a director is cheating her with another woman, artist too. Fine performances of Alan Bates and max Von Sydow.

Julie gives the best dramatic performance of her career - she just gives it all and excels in the delivering.I went to the UK opening and I cried and I enjoyed the impact this film had on the audiences. Julie IS the best.

Julie Andrews gives a performance of amazing depth. A wonderful movie with a cast that includes Rupert Everett as her protege and Liam Neeson whom she has a steamy affair with. Not to be missed.

At first she denies there is anything wrong with her, but eventually she must admit that she has multiple sclerosis and that although there will be good days when her talent seems to have returned, she will be able to depend on her body less and less as the days go by.

That is the starting point of "Duet for One," and we may think we can predict where the movie will go, but we will be wrong. This is not a recycled version of all those countless other disease movies in which there is either a miraculous recovery or some sort of transcendent symbolic victory over death's dominion. This is a quirky movie about a woman who is stubborn and angry and confronts the disease in her own particular way.

The character is played by Julie Andrews, who brings a certain haughty confidence to this violinist, who is good and knows it. There are a few people she has allowed to become close to her: her husband (Alan Bates), her manager (Margaret Courtenay), her old accompanist (Sigfrit Steiner), her gifted student (Rupert Everett). As her disease progresses, she will have to redefine every one of those relationships.

Her husband, weak and alcoholic, will leave her. The student will find it difficult to deal with her illness and impossible to accept the demands of his talent. The old accompanist will die and then reappear in the movie's most mystical and effective scene.

But Andrews' life is not limited to these intimates, and the most interesting relationship in the movie is one she has with a rough-hewn junk collector (Liam Neeson), whom she takes to her bed for raw, unapologetic sex - sex that she finds is an affirmation of her passion and the fact that she still lives and feels.

If "Duet for One" were wholly true to the spirit of the scenes with Neeson, it would be a great movie, touching the anger with which we all cry out against the fate of death. Those scenes are painful but very honest. They are messy, and not very nice, and not uplifting, but they reflect exactly what Dylan Thomas meant when he advised us to "rage, rage against the dying of the light." Unfortunately, some of the other material in the movie is less focused. Maybe there are too many characters. Maybe the screenplay has not been pared of everything that was not really necessary.

The most crucial weakness is in the character of the husband (Bates), a composer who feels insecure in his wife's shadow and finally incapable of coping with her illness. The character is not well-defined, and Bates, usually so confident, does not bring much definition to it. Right at the center of the movie, there the husband stands, a confusion.

What I do remember is the tenderness of the relationship between the violinist and her old accompanist, and the roughness of her need in the sex scenes, and the very last scene, in which she stands outside a house party and looks in through the windows at the people she loves and at the life she may have to leave.

"Duet for One," based on the play by Tom Kempinski, was directed by Andrei Konchalovsky, the Russian exile whose previous two films were "Maria's Lovers" and "Runaway Train." There is a strength and a mysticism in his work that is always compelling, even when the stories seem untidy. "Duet for One" is a flawed movie, but it has moments that really touch what it means to know that your soul still sings but your body has abandoned you.

Tom Kempinski's play "DUET FOR ONE" was originally a two -character drama between Stephanie, a world-famous violinist who is stricken with multiple sclerosis, and her psychiatrist. The film opens the story up considerably to include many people in Stephanie's crumbling life. Julie Andrews' performance as Stephanie is a major dramatic revelation. Max Von Sydow reprises his role from the stage version (very reduced in the film) as her psychiatrist, and Alan Bates plays her philandering musician husband. The scene between Bates and Andrews in the car after a picnic is full of dramatic fireworks and painfully sad.
The film also features early performances by Rupert Everett as Stephanie's pupil and Liam Neeson as Harry, a man Stephanie has an affair with after her marriage ends. But the film belongs to Julie Andrews, who gives a tour-de-force performance that completely shatters her "Mary Poppins"/"Sound Of Music" stereotyped image.
The film is sometimes dire and often depressing. It also pulls no punches in its brutally honest, realistic portrayal of living with a disability. When her psychiatrist mentions she has choices in life, she responds, "You're right. There's crippled, very crippled, totally crippled, and dead. I just haven't made up my mind yet." To her lover Harry she says, "You like me because I'm a cripple. Come on, admit it, it turns you on. What's your speciality; paraplegics?" Stephanie does attempt suicide in an especially harrowing scene, but, thankfully, she is saved by her loyal housekeeper.
As soul-wrenching as it all is, this overlooked drama is extremely worthwhile-- worth it for the strength of Julie Andrews' performance alone. It's a crime that Andrews did not receive the Academy Award nomination she clearly deserved for her work in this film. I found this film on Amazon Marketplace only on VHS. I hope it will someday be released on DVD.

I give it 5 stars because of Julie Andrews' performance in this movie. Her acting talents are often overlooked. The movie is quite depessing and isn't for everyone. But if you're looking for a powerful movie this one is worth watching.