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calimacI rented this DVD because, no surprise, I'm interested in Igor Stravinsky. I hardly know anything about Coco Chanel, and didn't feel much more enlightened by the movie.
Once the affair between the two begins, the film turns tedious and predictable.1 But it is worth seeing for the remarkable scene near the beginning, devoting a full ten minutes2 - an ocean of time by movie standards, and over a quarter of the length of the actual full work - depicting the legendary first performance of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps. As far as I could tell, it fits the known facts accurately, and felt more realistic than other accounts I've seen, even some memoirs by people who were there. The conductor looks like a young Monteux, the actual conductor. The costumes and makeup on the dancers resembled photographs of the originals, and the dancing consisted mostly of hopping in time to the music, which feels to me like the appropriate activity. The audience doesn't riot, exactly, but shifts uneasily in its seats, mutters to itself, calls out rude remarks. Bits of it walk out. Other bits applaud vigorously.3 That feels right too.
Meanwhile, Coco remains in her seat, fascinated. Cut to seven years later - seven years during which a lot of water went over the bridge, including, oh, a world war which goes almost unmentioned, and a major shift in Stravinsky's musical style which goes entirely unmentioned - and Coco enlists herself as Igor's financial patroness and then as his lover, and just when she's got him seriously interested in her, she walks off, the way femmes fatale in movies like this always do.
In the course of this, we see much of Coco working - looking models up and down, denying them raises, cutting fabric, choosing a perfume sample from an array (at which her perfumer murmurs, "Number five, then," in a tone suggesting that if she'd chosen another one, the entire future of the world would be changed) - while we hardly see Igor working at all, and when he is, he's mostly sitting at the piano, apparently re-composing Le Sacre, bits of which he plays over distractedly. Did the film-makers think he got stuck in a rut there or something?
The actor playing Stravinsky is made up to resemble Stravinsky, but looks so unlike him in terms of facial bone structure, etc., that at first I wasn't sure it was supposed to be him.
I give the ballet concert scenes the highest rating. As for the rest - sacré bleu, it's another serious French romantic movie.
1. The sex scenes in particular are almost gymnastic in their sheer dullness. I took to fast-forwarding through them.
2. Not counting another ten minutes depicting the pre- and post-performance scenes.
3. Led, in fact, by Maurice Ravel, though the film does not mention this.
Once the affair between the two begins, the film turns tedious and predictable.1 But it is worth seeing for the remarkable scene near the beginning, devoting a full ten minutes2 - an ocean of time by movie standards, and over a quarter of the length of the actual full work - depicting the legendary first performance of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps. As far as I could tell, it fits the known facts accurately, and felt more realistic than other accounts I've seen, even some memoirs by people who were there. The conductor looks like a young Monteux, the actual conductor. The costumes and makeup on the dancers resembled photographs of the originals, and the dancing consisted mostly of hopping in time to the music, which feels to me like the appropriate activity. The audience doesn't riot, exactly, but shifts uneasily in its seats, mutters to itself, calls out rude remarks. Bits of it walk out. Other bits applaud vigorously.3 That feels right too.
Meanwhile, Coco remains in her seat, fascinated. Cut to seven years later - seven years during which a lot of water went over the bridge, including, oh, a world war which goes almost unmentioned, and a major shift in Stravinsky's musical style which goes entirely unmentioned - and Coco enlists herself as Igor's financial patroness and then as his lover, and just when she's got him seriously interested in her, she walks off, the way femmes fatale in movies like this always do.
In the course of this, we see much of Coco working - looking models up and down, denying them raises, cutting fabric, choosing a perfume sample from an array (at which her perfumer murmurs, "Number five, then," in a tone suggesting that if she'd chosen another one, the entire future of the world would be changed) - while we hardly see Igor working at all, and when he is, he's mostly sitting at the piano, apparently re-composing Le Sacre, bits of which he plays over distractedly. Did the film-makers think he got stuck in a rut there or something?
The actor playing Stravinsky is made up to resemble Stravinsky, but looks so unlike him in terms of facial bone structure, etc., that at first I wasn't sure it was supposed to be him.
I give the ballet concert scenes the highest rating. As for the rest - sacré bleu, it's another serious French romantic movie.
1. The sex scenes in particular are almost gymnastic in their sheer dullness. I took to fast-forwarding through them.
2. Not counting another ten minutes depicting the pre- and post-performance scenes.
3. Led, in fact, by Maurice Ravel, though the film does not mention this.
