Newsgroup: it.arti.cinema
Titolo: House of mirth a Locarno (batutti sul tempo i fan di GA:-D)

http://news.pardo.ch/vediconf.cfm?id=177
The House of Mirth - 1988 Golden Leopard Terence Davis Returns to Locarno
(Piazza Grande)
An Edith Wharton classic is brought to the giant screen
British director Terence Davies first came to the fore with the
semi-autobiographical Distant Voices, Still Lives, a portrait of
working-class life which won the Golden Leopard at Locarno in 1984. Never a
prolific director, Davies has brought to this year's Festival his third
feature film since that Locarno triumph. To date, however, the lengthy
gestation of his works has always appeared fully justified by their quality,
with the complex interweaving of plots and the carefully reproduced
painterly aesthetics of his visual style. While the intervening films The
Long Day Closes and The Neon Bible continued to be focused on memory through
flashbacks and recollection, his latest is a new departure: an adaptation of
the Edith Wharton novel The House of Mirth, her penetrating account of a New
York socialite destroyed by jealousy and hypocrisy. This splendidly staged
production - actually shot on locations of turn-of-the-century splendour in
Glasgow, Scotland - follows in the wake of Martin Scorsese's lavish 1993
adaptation of another Wharton novel, The Age of Innocence.
The opening scene, in which the heroine Lily Bart emerges through an
Anna-Karenina cloud of locomotive steam to encounter the man who will be her
only true (and unfulfilled) love, sets a tone of audacious romantic drama in
the grand tradition. The script was written by Davies himself. He was
especially concerned to maintain Wharton's very particuar voice, even when
expanding the novel's original dialogue: "The story is absolutely relevant
to today - surface beauty, venality, money and position. But no attempt was
made to deliver it in such a way as to seduce the audience. I said from the
word go it's formal and I want that formality never broken.". As a result,
the spoken forms and behavioural etiquette of the actor's performances echo
the elaborate, lavish milieu in which they live, creating the splendid
social façade behind which lurk the darker emotions of pettiness and greed.
Painted Woman
There is a connecting thread to Davies' previous work, and it's a visual
one. The Neon Bible attracted attention for its meticulous recreation of the
aesthetics of American painter Edward Hopper. For his new film Davies has
again modelled his compositions on an American artist, this time the society
portraitist John Singer Sargent. Even leading lady Gillian Anderson (from TV
's The X-Files) was cast for her looks as the perfect Sargent sitter: long
(LONG? Ma se e' alta un metro e mezzo! Bah, potenza del grandangolo<BEG>,
n.d.c.), fine features and graceful deportment. Davies was particularly
concerned to imitate Sargent's play of light and dark, making it a visual
metaphor of the
unpleasant truths hidden beneath the dazzling surface of Belle Epoque
society. "I think I've achieved the wonderful look of those society
portraits," says Davies, who was helped by the huge Sargent exhibition held
in London during pre-production, "I had to get not just his attention to
faces, but also the wonderful clutter of furniture and objects they had in
their houses - I wanted that suffocating leftover from the Victorian era".
Director of photography Remi Adefarasin made a vital contribution to
capturing the painterly aesthetic, having worked on period adaptations such
as Emma and Onegin, as well as winning a BAFTA award for the sumptuous
colourism of Elizabeth. "I'm a great admirer of Remi's - he's a poet,"
confirms Davies. "He and the production designer John Taylor, with John Bush
who designed the sets - they were crucial. You can't reproduce that texture
of diffused light or of light on material, but you can get a cinematic
version of it and John Singer Sargent was our template. But I didn't want to
reproduce a particular painting, so much as absorb the feel of his work and
let that come out through my own psyche - reflected and changed and, I
think, enriched. It's not just straight imitation". The resulting celluloid
picture is sure to be one of the finest to grace the Piazza Grande screen
this season.
John Young
The House of Mirth, Sat 5 Aug 9.30pm Piazza Grande
--
Mel
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*TACI, che lo sai cosa mi è successo!


Oh, manco una parola sul fatto che ho farwardato una rece positivissima?
Manco un grazie, un buffetto sulla guancia?
voi fan di GA siete degli ingrati;)
Mel

 voi fan di GA siete degli ingrati;)
Grazie Mel!!!! Grazie grazie grazie!!!! Sei stata di una par condicio
esemplare!    :)))
Scusa, ma ho un diavolo per capello. Essermi persa Locarno è solo la punta
dell'iceberg di un periodo schifoso.
A proposito: Film Review dà 3 stelle a "Return to me"! Ho ricambiato il
favore!!!

 A proposito: Film Review dà 3 stelle a "Return to me"!
Tre stelle su 10? :-))))))
Mel


Daily Variety? Già letta. Ma scusa, il recensore non ha capito i due
personaggi principali! Indica come due pecche del film quelle che in realtà
sono due caratterizzazioni perfette (dato che il film vuole essere una
trasposizione fedele del romanzo.) Ma poi, perchè ti leggi tutte le
recensioni di THOM? Mah...
Comunque: 3 stelle su 5! WOWWWWW!!!!!  :))))))

 Comunque: 3 stelle su 5! WOWWWWW!!!!!  :))))))
A Return to me?
Mizzica, quanto 'hanno pagato?
:-DDDDDD
Mel

 perfetto;)
Ma perchè devi giustificarti?? Non ti piace LA AUTRICE, bene, punto. Non è
un alibi per accanirsi a dimostrare a priori che il film non sarà poi
granchè. Certo, se a interpretare Selden fosse DD...      :pppp
Ciao!
Attila

Certo, se a interpretare Selden fosse DD...      :pppp
E' notoria la sua capacita' di rendere inguardabile qualsiasi cosa
interpreti. Non sai che stanno facendo una speciale versione di XF su DVD
dove la sua faccia sara' sostituita da un puntone nero e la sua voce verra'
coperta da un fruscio?:) <------ notare faccina, please!
