Customer Reviews

Swann in Love

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

I rented this video because I had discovered Ornella Muti in the small role of Mercedes in the recent French miniseries of The Count of Monte Cristo and wanted to see more of her. The movie is well-worth seeing for her alone. She is amazingly beautiful, although in playing Odette de Crecy she combines powerful sensuality with a slight vulgarity that seems appropriate to the character she is playing, even though it detracts a little from her beauty.

One of the reviews jokingly suggested that seeing this movie would allow you to pretend that you had read the novel. I strongly disagree. I suspect that anybody who has not read the novel would find this movie pretty hard to follow and even harder to like. It's probably true that Proust is an essentially unfilmable writer. But, having conceded that, it is surprising how much subtlety and insightful reading is displayed in this movie. I am generally a pretty careful reader, but in watching this movie I had the experience several times of seeing things that I thought were changes from the novel and then, when I went back to the text I found that they were there all along and I had simply missed them.

This is mostly true in Muti's portrayal of Odette, which is not only much more sympathetic, but also much more complex than the view of her I remembered from reading the book. In fact, for me, the subtlety of Muti's performance has opened up a whole new possibility of interpretation of the role in the Proust novel of a character who is normally treated by readers with the same kind of contempt with which she is regarded by many of the novel's characters, including (most of the time) Swann himself.

Now, on the negative side: I found the portrayal of Swann much less successful. The problem is not so much with Jeremy Irons' performance, which more than adequate, but what the screenplay leaves out in his case. Apart from Swann's jealosy and longing, which are fully in evidence here, Swann's character in the novel is presented mainly through his interest in art -- his unfinished writing on Vermeer and, most of all, his very complex responses to music.

Therefore, the treatment -- or, rather, mistreatment -- of music is the most serious failing in this movie. One Amazon.com reviewer said that the music in the movie was by Cesar Franck. I only wish it were so. If that is what he heard, he must have listened to a completely different sound track from the one that I heard. According to the credits, Hans Werner Henze was responsible for the music, and three other contemporary composers are also credited, but Cesar Franck is not mentioned, and the music I heard sounded like a bad imitation of Debussy. But, in addition to the poor quality of the music, the movie is completely unsuccessful in conveying the central importance it has in the novel. And, to make matters worse, when the music is for piano, it is played on pianos that are grotesquely out of tune, as if the director thought that having the pianos out of tune added to the period authenticity of the movie!

Notwithstanding all of that, this is a movie I would gladly watch again. It is thought-provoking and it has one truly great performance -- that of Ornella Muti.

It seems Marcel spent a great deal of time writing "Remembrance..." and I spent almost as much time reading it-but it was worth it. As difficult as the novel is to read, one doesn't have to get too far into it to realize that the author was a genius with words. I think to have any appreciation for the movie and for Jeremy Irons performance, it's best to have read the book. Otherwise you might find Charles Swann completely insufferable and the movie boring. But for those who have read it, I think you will find Irons performance maddeningly perfect. Ornella was beautiful,and I agree with the reviewer that the movie, at the very least, gives one an idea of the fashion and style that made up the early years in young Marcel's social life.

Let's get what's bad out of the way.

There's no point in whining about what Schloendorff got wrong in his adaptation, or what he left out. For instance I didn't much like how the famous last line of "Swann in Love" was rendered ("To think I've wasted the best years of my life..." etc.). But let's face it: you can't take a two-million-plus word novel and turn it into a movie without losing _something_. Just accept it.

My other gripe is that neither of the two lead characters say their own lines. Jeremy Irons (English) and Ornella Muti (Italian) are dubbed by French actors. Most Europeans would have seen a dubbed version anyway given how unpopular subtitles are in Europe. To a non-European, it's silly to have a movie dubbed even in the original language, but I suppose it's part and parcel with the European Union's subsidized financing of culture.

That aside, the adaptation is far from being all bad.

Alain Delon as Charlus is especially good. Despite being dubbed, Jeremy Irons looks spot on as Charles Swann. He's got the right balance of haughty manliness and effeminate aristocratic French charm. Ornella Muti is lovely as the cocotte Odette, except that I was disappointed for personal reasons. I saw Muti in a later film, where she was breathtakingly stunning as housewife to a French lawyer ("Un Couple Epatant"). As beautiful as she was at 28, she was ten times more beautiful twenty years later at 48.

As a period piece, the film shines. Swann's tuxedos, the Guermante's Salon, the stone paved streets, the horse drawn carriages, the lady's dresses.

Much of the dialog is lifted straight out of Proust, almost word for word although the context is sometimes changed. For example, Swann is gathering information on Odette from a prostitute who relates how she has seen Odette with another woman in Nice. In the book, the prostitute's words are actually taken from a letter by a servant taking the testimony of a laundry girl for the narrator of a later book in the series who is investigating his own lover, Albertine, some twenty years later.

Schloendorff's film is a dreamy rendition worth seeing on its own, and if fans of the book lower their expectations, the film is a masterful visualization of Proust's "monde".

Vincent Poirier, Tokyo

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.

A reasonable effort by Volker Schlondorff to film the unfilmable. It's valuable mainly for giving a reader of Proust some idea of the costumes, houses, and mannerisms of late 19th-century Paris. Ornella Muti fits Odette's character perfectly, and the dapper Alain Delon gives a face and figure to Baron Charlus. Helpful extended criticism of the film can be found in Roger Shattuck's "Proust's Way: A Field Guide to 'In Search of Lost Time'". He provides some insights into Jeremy Iron's performance that those who don't speak French will find illuminating. I enjoyed the movie before I read the novel although it was a bit confusing, but the confusion impelled me to attempt Proust if only to find out what was going on. I hope it's reissued on DVD soon.

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.

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.

Marshall Fine doesn't know what he's talking about: Swann is not a French aristocrat. He may have money but he's a perpetual outsider in fin-de-siècle Paris because he's Jewish. The film itself is visually stunning, but because Jeremy Irons is dubbed, it feels fake at its core.

This is one of my favorite films. I prefer period films in a beautiful setting, with a sophisticated sexuality & sensuality dripping in every scene! It is full of erotic beautiful scenes which are unforgettable. Jeremy Irons, who seems to always play this type of character (I don't want to give any of the plot away) does an awesome job & Ornella Muti is perfect as his gorgeous temptress, one of the most beautiful women ever filmed!