Word: swann
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...them. Movie adaptations of these monumental fictions often fail because they become mere exercises in interior decoration, searches for the armoire or settee that can serve as the objective correlative for a character's unspoken, perhaps dramatically unspeakable, fears and fancies. One may therefore wish to approach Swann in Love or The Bostonians undemandingly, almost as one would an antique show, browsing and ruminative but not expecting to make powerful emotional connections with the objects on view. On that level, Volker Schlondorffs lightly heated rearrangement and compression of approximately one-fifteenth of Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things...
SCHLONDORF gives an almost relentlessly depressing view of relations between the sexes. Neither Swann nor Odette seem to transcend their own emotional needs when together. Curiously, though, Schlondorf ignores some avenues that might have shed light on such sexual politics. He spends very little time, for example, on the homosexual relationship between Baron de Charlus (Alain Delon) and a young Jew-potentially fertile ground for some parallels...
...most part, however, Schlondorf's direction is skillful filmmaking as well as a compelling adaptation of Proust's novel of the same name. He focusses the camera carefully and uses voiceovers sparingly to reveal Swann's thoughts...
...Revisited. Playing a neurotic isn't easy, but playing him in another language is a real test of skill. To be sure, in the version released in France, Irons' voice was dubbed in, but the American version displays Irons speaking a remarkably fluent French. His accent only adds to Swann's vaguely foreign origins...
Perhaps Schlondorf's greatest accomplishment is his decision to incorporate Proust's epilogue to Swann in Love(not originally included in the story itself) into his film adaptation. The material shows Swann three decades later in life, when the devastating effects of an illness--and his choices--are apparent. Against the background of the new 20th century--epitomized by Odette's rise from risque to respectable--Swann is a decaying relic. Irons gives Swann the appropriate nerve-wracking intensity of a man out of time, whose tastes belong to another era. Through Irons' skillful portrayal and Schlondorf's careful direction...