3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Stodgy reworking of a fin de siecle classic novel, April 29, 2005
This review is from: Svengali [VHS] (VHS Tape)
Trilby by George du Maurier was a novel that attained a deal of notoreity in its day -the late Victorian era -for its ripe and overblown air of sexual liberation -that said it is very chaste by today's standards .For me the book is more interesting its portarait of mesmerism ,a Victorian obsession ,in the person of Svengali rather than for it heroine the somewhat wan Trilby .The producers seem to recognise this for they have followed tradition ,and like the Lionel Barrymore version from some years previously ,the book has been renamed after the character of Svengali.
The movie is set in Paris in the late Victorian age ;Trilby is a young woman orphaned by the death of her father and she takes work as an artists model and quickly becomes a popular member of the Bohemian crowd in the city ,She particularly is drawn to Billy Bagot a young and crippled English painter who shares lodgings with two other struggling artists ,The Laird ( Derek Bond) and Taffy (Paul Rodgers).Svengali is a hanger on who insists he can transform Trilby into a great singer by mesmerism or mind control .A great bear of a man -roughly bearded and of pungent aroma -he is ate best tolerated but when pressure from Billys parents causes her to end her engagement to him she is tempted by Svengali's wiles .Under his influence she becomes putty in his hands and a great singer ,When Billy hears of her sacrifice he sets out to win her back .
The art direction is pur 50's kitsch and the acting variable .Wolfit is suitably melodramatic in a role where underplaying would be inappropriate but I was uneasy about his makeup -and the conception of the role borders on the anti-semitic .Hildegarde Neff ,a German ,is miscast as the Anglo-Irish Trilby and is too pallid to be convincing .The other players are competent but no more .The score ,by William Alwyn is excellent and merits a CD re-issue
The movie is an intersting curiousity , a decent spin on a semi-classic novel ,but the definitive movie based on the book has yet to be made
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