Swann in Love (1984)

 Mrshall Fine's comments are insulting and stupid
It's unbelievable that Amazon would sanction Marshall Fine's comments. In fact, there are thousands of serious readers who have read Proust's work. There is an online Proust discussion group with hundreds of members who have read In Search of Lost Time several times, both in the original French and in a number of recent translations. Mr. Fine's characterization of reading of Proust as something that needs to be faked tells us a lot about his failings, but sadly it also tells us something about Amazon.

As for Volker Schlondorff's film, it's adequate. Jeremy Irons is the visual embodiment of Swann (the French dubbing doesn't really help), which is about all we really need to know, although Raul Ruiz's Time Regained is a more ambitious and satisfying work. March 20, 2008

 gorgeous for the eyes, not so for the ears
I loved the look of this film. The interiors of the mansions are gorgeous. The antiques are impressive. The women's costumes are fabulous. Jeremy Irons looks like Swann as I imagine him, and Alain Delon is perfect as the decadent Charlus. Notice how when we first see him, he is eyeing the footmen at the salon gathering, not just eyeing them, but seeming to drink them in like a thirsty pilgrim in the desert.

I didn't like the disembodied voices that we get because of the dubbing. And I didn't like the music. They should have used real music from the era, the music that Proust himself would have heard. Henze is not a favorite composer of mine, and his work here reinforces the dislike.

And speaking of music, I am going to nitpick on what is probably a very trivial point, and I might even be wrong about this, but I remember reading "Swann in Love" in college, and... as an opera queen... I loved the detail that Odette was going to (pardon me, but I can't get the accent marks to work) the Opera-Comique with the Verdurins to see Victor Masse's "Une Nuit de Cleopatra," and Swann was dismayed because both the Masse opera and the Opera-Comique venue were just too low-brow for his refined taste. In this film, it looks like the opera is being performed at L'Opera, which is a totally different matter. Swann would have approved of their going to the higher-class L'Opera. Since detail of society happenings is so important in the Proust novel, it wouldn't have hurt to have had accurate detail in the film version thereof. Once this film was over, all I could think of was how this project would have been more satisfying as a 12-part series for Masterpiece Theatre. March 24, 2007

 How it could have looked like
Let's get what's bad out of the way.

There's no point in whining about what Schloendorff got wrong in his adaptation, or what he left out. For instance I didn't much like how the famous last line of "Swann in Love" was rendered ("To think I've wasted the best years of my life..." etc.). But let's face it: you can't take a two-million-plus word novel and turn it into a movie without losing _something_. Just accept it.

My other gripe is that neither of the two lead characters say their own lines. Jeremy Irons (English) and Ornella Muti (Italian) are dubbed by French actors. Most Europeans would have seen a dubbed version anyway given how unpopular subtitles are in Europe. To a non-European, it's silly to have a movie dubbed even in the original language, but I suppose it's part and parcel with the European Union's subsidized financing of culture.

That aside, the adaptation is far from being all bad.

Alain Delon as Charlus is especially good. Despite being dubbed, Jeremy Irons looks spot on as Charles Swann. He's got the right balance of haughty manliness and effeminate aristocratic French charm. Ornella Muti is lovely as the cocotte Odette, except that I was disappointed for personal reasons. I saw Muti in a later film, where she was breathtakingly stunning as housewife to a French lawyer ("Un Couple Epatant"). As beautiful as she was at 28, she was ten times more beautiful twenty years later at 48.

As a period piece, the film shines. Swann's tuxedos, the Guermante's Salon, the stone paved streets, the horse drawn carriages, the lady's dresses.

Much of the dialog is lifted straight out of Proust, almost word for word although the context is sometimes changed. For example, Swann is gathering information on Odette from a prostitute who relates how she has seen Odette with another woman in Nice. In the book, the prostitute's words are actually taken from a letter by a servant taking the testimony of a laundry girl for the narrator of a later book in the series who is investigating his own lover, Albertine, some twenty years later.

Schloendorff's film is a dreamy rendition worth seeing on its own, and if fans of the book lower their expectations, the film is a masterful visualization of Proust's "monde".

Vincent Poirier, Tokyo November 14, 2006

 An intense love story

Obsessive love is the theme of this movie, based on the book by Proust (SWANN's WAY). Set among the idle rich in 1890's Paris, Jewish aristocrat Swann (Jeremy Irons) is in love with courtesan Odette (Ornella Muti), who is obviously beneath him in station. Racked by jealousies and fears of not being able to win her (probably most who have ever been madly in love with someone who didn't quite love back at the same intensity can relate to this), one wonders if his agonies are worth it: even if Odette decides to marry him it's doubtful she'll ever remain faithful. Like ULYSSES, its near-contemporary classic by Joyce, it's almost an impossible novel to adapt to the screen, though director Volker Schlondorff does a credible job. Beautifully photographed, the movie is an eyeful of aristocratic France; the musical score adds much to the flavor. As to be expected, feelings and nuances predominate. February 11, 2006

 Music is so REMARKABLE
I am not sure how much the film's value would be. Slightly sure, this is not the best of Schlondorff's ever.
However sometimes a film could value more than itself. I think this is one of them.
The story is about a noble man who has suffered in mad love with a beautiful, attractive and provocative prostitute. The man, Swann, was acted by Jeremy Irons who often takes this kind role.
Schlondorff chose Hans Werner Henze to express this mad love atomosphere, it is so amazing.
I knew Henze by this movie, feel like I met him there. Although I was so impressed the music in the movie I missed to check the composer's name. It passed almost 10 years when finally I found out that Henze. His music is so variety but this sound for the film is, I think, the Henze world. It is like, hardly to say, like sweat, better, and strange sound. Not just beautiful but in a way beautiful.
The film itself is not bad;all star casting, beautiful costumes, and some erotic scenes. I love Fanny Ardant acted a countess in it. September 27, 2005

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