Customer Reviews

Torrents of Spring [VHS]

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

 

 

No five star reviews? I looked at the price of the DVD and "Timothy Hutton" as a star warned me away. It looked like trash from the cover of the DVD. I stayed away for 6 years. Well, it is much like reading Tolstoy in that you get a sense that you are there but with all that a shooting location in some very old sections of Eastern European cities and countryside can provide in terms of mind blowing atmosphere. Because it is something like a time machine that displays its world in near real time, you have to have some delight in being brought into such a world as an observer (not just a view of a play or a movie). Like some aspects of "Somewhere in Time" this has a love for a past that cannot be realized in any better way. I have read just enough to know and to feel this is plausibly how it would be to live then and to fall under the spell. Movies of the past now toss aside so much of the feeling that you get from reading a novel of the past. Today's entertainment seems unrealistic to most if it does not have the same issues, pace, relationships. But this movie is looking to be a wormhole into the past, and I say Bravo. I fell into the timewarp and was pleased to find something that echoed in my mind like reading a Thomas Hardy novel would. OK. So back to your new fast paced Jane Austen a La LA stuff. Amazing, not one 5 star review. Now there is one.

I watched this film back in the early 1990's and i must
say that i really liked the film. The movie is about a man,
i believe a russian who is played by hutton and he falls in
love with an italian woman, but hutton decides to have an affair
with a blonde woman which costs him his true love with the italian woman. This is a slow moving picture, and it is long,
but i recommend it because life is not like the movies.
Things go slow, and the ending is quite interesting...
Sometimes love is hard to find, and when it is found sometimes
for the wrong reasons people just let it slip away with sloppy
incidents that really are to negative. Hutton is fantastic
in this motion picture. i believe the author who wrote this
book is russian, great job! I recommend one buying"torrents of spring."

TORRENTS OF SPRING, unfortunately, has perhaps not been

marketed in the ideal manner, for the majority of the

public, because it suggests a narrowly focused film about

a passionate relationship between 2 nobles, the lady

played by Nastassja Kinski, and the man by Timothy Hutton.

In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. This

movie is not narrowly focused on a passion between a man

and a woman. It tells a story that entertains a lot more,

immensely more, from many its many other aspects, that

were crafted into the motion picture. And these other

aspects are what makes this film easily surpass the

commercial, cheap movies, too often manufactured these

days.

It will help, if the viewer can relate to a sentimental

story, enjoys the enormous "eye-candy" of the lifestyle of

nobles (at least as we would have us believe) in the 17th,

18th and 19th centuries in Europe. There's tremendous

filming of historical monuments, castles, the typically

stone-laid streets of cities in France, Portugal, Spain,

Germany, Italy. It really takes the viewer back in time,

in an incredible way, 300 years. In this way, this picture

has an outstanding dream-like quality, for the viewer,

surreal, as well, at times. There are many outstanding,

luxurious, opulent clothes, filming locations (e.g. the

theater, where the two assist a piece) that are

interesting in themselves to those who are not habituals

of those environments. The horse and carriage is the means

of transportation, something no longer seen since 100

years now, in modern civilization.

Next, if the visual beauty of this film is not enough to

satisfy the viewer, recurring over 90 mins (from the

elements previously mentioned), there are the audio

aspects to consider. The music is varied in styles, but

extremely serious, convincing, historical and credible in

its choices, and in the way that it is used in the

picture, such as in the case of the gypsy wedding, the

Slavic folk dances, the chamber pieces that are more

Germanic in nature, etc.

Perhaps the merit of the actors in this movie, is their

moderation of dialogue, and their subtlety. Clearly, the

director understood this movie, was not intellectual in

nature, not at all. It was sentimental, visual, auditive.

Excess talk would distract, and be redundant to the

message conveyed to the spectator, which is to bring forth

a "dream" of times gone by, a utopia perhaps, of what

constituted the life of nobility and / or monarchy.

Kudos to Nastassja Kinski, who not only is effective in

her subtle manner of acting, but she brings forth, to the

screen, the pleasure, a certain thrill of "taking part"

in those scenes, as far as I could tell.

Those who haven't red the book will surely like this film. Absolutely touching and full of drama.In my opinion, the film deviates, in some very important scenes, from the book version and that really disturbed me. Particularly the final scenes. Nonetheless i can absolutely recommend, fans of pure russian realism, to buy and watch this film or at least, to read the book.

'Torrents of Spring' is one of Ivan Turgenev's finest love stories and contains both the exquisite evocation of Gemma Roselli's virginal love and the horrifying picture of the sexual gorgon, Maria Nikolaevna, who steals her fiance, Dmitri, and then discards him after he has served his turn. The novel is also filled with that typically Turgenevian nostalgia for the past and regret for lost youth and lost opportunities. This film is very well cast, with Timothy Hutton (Dmitri Sanin) and Valeria Golino (Gemma) perfectly chosen and presented for their roles. By contrast Natassia Kinski somehow fails to impress as the depraved older woman - the necessary charismatic sensuality simply isn't there. The film makes too little use of Emilio, the brother, but contains superb presentations of the Aspergers Syndrome egoist Herr Klueber and the impudent officer Baron Dornhoff, whose underlying decency emerges at the end of the duel and whose unexpected sadness is apparent whenever he is near the femme fatale. The director has engaged in several daring innovations, such as the balloon ride at the picnic in Soden, having Maria watch the young lovers in the balloon and Sanin at the duel, having her invite Gemma to dinner (to finally detach Sanin from her), having her express sorrow at being unable to fall in love (this longing was apparent when she studied the lovers in the balloon through a spyglass) and having her shown as mocking Sanin most cruelly during a Venetian carnival. Brilliant imaginings by the director, but I think I would have preferred closer fidelity to Turgenev's tale. Anyone who enjoys high quality arthouse films dealing with romantic love in an ambience of beauty and nobility will thoroughly enjoy this wonderfully directed film.

I'm madly in love with Nasstasja Kinsi, I think Tim Hutton is a great actor, and I think Turgenev (who wrote the original novel) one of the greatest writers ever. But this was a slow, slow movie, that I ended up fast-forwarding through.

Any time you take an Italian producer,a Polish director,a Czech film crew,French funding and put in American,Italian and Russian actors,something definitely gets lost in the translation! This film is an absolute embarassment in film making,staging,set design,sound quality and acting.The fact that so much of it has been dubbed and that the original Russian novel was translated into a French screenplay and then mutated into English speaks volumes about this ill-conceived mess.Do not waste your money Period Piece lovers.This one is a mess!

I am not reviewing the DVD of the Torrents of spring with Timothy Hutton and Nastassja Kinsky as it is not the production that I believed I was buying. The details on your websight beside the picture on the DVD refer to a production with Charles Housten, Harry H Corbett, Sandra Dorne and penelope horner. If indeed there is a Dvd of the Charles housten Production I would be glad to have it. AT the least Amazon should rectify their mistake.