Showing posts with label France. Show all posts
Showing posts with label France. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Hunchback of Notre Dame (TV, 1982) and Hallmark Hall of Fame series

I was watching this movie just as entertainment, not intending to write about it.  But I found myself very moved by Anthony Hopkins’ performance. And it gave me memories of the Hallmark Hall of Fame productions and what a big deal they were when I was a kid in the 70s and 80s.
Hallmark Hall of Fame began as live-taped programs including Shakespeare plays, in 1951 and may have been the longest running anthology series on television, running approximately 58 seasons. Shows like these were an important part of not only entertainment, but culture and literacy in rural parts of the country. With movies like The Winter of our Discontent, All Creatures Great and Small, and Anastasia, Hallmark Hall of Fame introduced areas without libraries and with only one or two available television channels to great works of literature and history that they may not have otherwise even heard of. A complete list of the Hallmark Hall of Fame movies can be found here.
Victor Hugo, who is beyond compare when it comes to detailing the grimy, destitution of the human condition, wrote a much darker story than Hallmark chose to put to film, though.  John Gay did the teleplay for this version, and if you’re at all familiar with made for TV movies back when they were good, he did nearly all of them. The popular Dial M for Murder (1981) and the absolute best versions of both Les Miserables (1978, TV) and A Tale of Two Cities (TV, 1980) were just a few of them. He also wrote screenplays, including The Courtship of Eddie’s Father (1963), Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), and No Way to Treat a Lady (1968). Michael Tuchner, who also worked mainly with TV, directed.

Anthony Hopkins is the main reason to watch this movie. He plays Quasimodo and is brilliant. It’s so hard to tell that it is even him. The way he moves, holds his mouth, even his speech pattern is perfect. I found this a very different and moving role for him. Derek Jacobi is fairly good as the Archdeacon. Leslie-Anne Down, who plays Esmerelda, is very pretty, but her acting falls flat. She also cannot dance and it is painfully obvious when she is supposed to be dancing in the street for money. John Gielgud, Nigel Hawthorne, and Robert Powell all give the movie atmosphere and depth in smaller rolls.
Archdeacon of Nottingham, Claude Frollo, falls inexplicably in love with a young Egyptian woman caught dancing for money in the streets of Paris. He lets her go rather than sending her to the Bastille, and is haunted by her from that moment forth. Consumed by a passion he can only explain as bewitching, the Archdeacon continues to pursue Esmerelda despite her putting him off and despite her marriage- of-convenience to a penniless poet. The Archdeacon decides to handle the problem of Esmerelda by sending out his deformed ward, Quasimodo, to bring her to him. When Quasimodo is captured for kidnapping the girl and assaulting a Captain of the royal archers, the Archdeacon does not go to his rescue, letting him be flogged and left for public ridicule in the courtyard.


In an act of selfless kindness, Esmerelda approaches the bound Quasidmodo and offers him water when no one else dared, creating yet another admirer for herself.

Unable to put aside his physical need for the gypsy woman, the Archdeacon chooses to hand her over as a witch.
This movie is all about the set. It could have been made on any Renaissance Faire site throughout the world, with faire participants as extras, but that is what made it feel so authentic. What better place to find medieval/renaissance authenticity Nazis than at Renaissance Faires and SCA groups.


The movie lacks the tension and horror of the earliest versions of the film from the ‘30s and 40s, and is played more as a romance, but the real focal point is the small sections of set that make the movie stand out among other made-for-TV nonsense. Effort was made in costuming Paris of the period, although there was a little bit of reliance on the generic “medieval man” costume like you would find at costume shops.

The monks and the band of thieves seemed most authentic. The only downside to this was that Leslie-Anne Down stuck out to me like a sore thumb, proclaiming that she was a woman of the 80s. The hair bugged me a little on her, but mostly I think it was the makeup. I always applaud actresses who go for less-is-more in historical pieces where make-up is concerned. This was not one of those times. Every other woman in the movie looked like a woman. Leslie-Anne Down looked like a walking Mary Kay billboard. I don’t think I ever once saw her, only slashes of blush and lipstick walking down the street on a pair of legs.

I recommend this movie mostly for fans of Anthony Hopkins. It doesn’t bring much new to the story and while the other stars are all wonderful and the extras are perfection, it’s still a fairly typical romance.

~"That's not a wart, it's an egg! With the devil inside!" nun present at Quasimodo's birth~




Friday, September 11, 2009

Vatel (2000)


Director: Roland Joffe (The Killing Fields, Fat Man and Little Boy)
Writer (English Adaptation): Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Brazil, and where the name of my blog comes from)

As the movie begins, the Marquis de Lauzun (Tim Roth), is sending a letter on behalf of King Louis XIV (Julian Sands) to the Prince de Conde. The Prince de Conde is played by Julian Glover who's been in a bizillion things, but one thing that I thought was interesting (mostly that I didn't know it already of which I'm ashamed) was that he was the voice of Aragog the spider in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. The King is inviting himself and about a hundred courtiers to spend three days at the home of the Prince and Princess de Conde. The preparations to entertain so many people put the already bankrupt Prince in a terrible bind. But there is nothing to do but find a way. Thanks to the prince's master steward, Vatel (Gerard Depardieu), the King is impressed with the spectacle, and oblivious to the poverty stricken commoners who are footing the bill for the party, already destitute and starving.

Throw into the mix Uma Thurman's character, who seems to be an afterthought. She is some insignificant courtier noticed by the King, and by Vatel, and by the Marquis. Enter the ill-fated love interest that has no bearing on the plot and no interest to the viewer. Richard Griffiths plays the Prince's physician. And the most notable character in the entire movie: the brother of the King, "Monsieur" Phillipe d'Orleans played by a very interesting person, Murray Lachlan Young. Young has only appeared in bit parts in about 3 movies. He was a successful performance poet in the 1990's and even produced an album of his material. He plays his part to perfection and is the only one in the movie who does. His part is small, but he is wickedly good. Monsieur has a well documented love of little boys that in this script is attempted to be transfered to middle-aged French men. He has some of the best lines and looks absolutely insane in some of his scenes. I don't know how this guy hasn't done more. He was captivating. He looked like a maniac. I think he was my favorite thing in the whole movie.


There is a little bit of uninteresting
court intrigue, lots of money problems, and a bunch of nothing. The food and food preparation scenes are fun, as are the scenes of how they set up the 3 day party. The scenery and costumes are breathtaking and have a very real feel to them. The story is based on a reality, loosely, but is not even an interesting enough story for me to look up the facts on it. Julian Sands playing the King was a fairly small role but I didn't even recognize him until halfway through the movie and still had a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact it was him. He was better in this than in nearly anything else I've seen him in, which is to say, he didn't seem like an overgrown toddler or a corpse.


Tim Roth made me grin. He was hilarious in a few of his very few scenes. When you first see him interact with Uma Thurman when the courtiers get to the Prince's home, he is fabulous. I had expected to see him in the movie a bit more than he was, since he was featured foremost on the cover of the DVD, but was sadly mistaken. He was only a bit better than a cameo. Adding to the picture is the fact that while all the other wigs are just gorgeous, his looks like a rooster, which doesn't help the fact that his face sort of looks birdish anyway!



There was a special feature called "The costumes of Vatel" on the DVD and I settled in for a good, in-depth feature, but it was about a five minute thing with a couple interview clips of a couple of the actors talking about costumes. It was disappointing.


The movie was considered a great failure. French audiences hated it, with reporters at Cannes when it opened trashing it and Gerard Depardieu. I agree with them in that sometimes it does seem as if he is lost in either the plot, the scene, or what the words mean that he's supposed to be saying. I had to turn on the subtitles a few times to understand what he mumbled. Despite the trash talk of Depardieu, I found Uma Thurman much harder to take. Not only did I feel her part was just tossed in to create a love interest, but she was wooden as usual. She has the look for period pieces, that's for sure, and while I don't think she's particularly pretty, she has something interesting about her face that I sort of cut her inability to make me believe her some slack. I don't understand, though, why movie makers cannot make a movie without turning it into something sappy, at least in parts. It's alright if it fits, but usually it just messes up a strong plot line. It does that here. Although calling this a strong plot line might be a stretch. There are a few places that the movie could have taken a better turn and a handful of plot threads that went nowhere would have been more interesting than what finally came out.

Concentrating either on the court intrigue, the love triangle, well it would actually have been a...quadrangle... is that a word?...or concentrating on the exploits of the courtiers while on the short holiday with more humor in it would have been better ideas than trying to throw all of those things into a movie that ended up feeling jumbled and lackluster when you got below the wigs and powder and costumes. Gosford Park did a better job of what it felt like these people were trying to accomplish.



The movie is great if you're watching it for the costumes and the setting, or for the actors that are in the smaller roles. Expecting something entertaining out of it is going into it with the wrong attitude. In fact, unless you want to check out Murray Lachlan Young, or you are into costumes, this blog is probably all you need to know about the movie.