Un amour de Swann

For a long time I've thought that the Nobel Prize should go to a filmmaker, and who better than Volker Schlondorff. He has taken so many literary classics and turned them into fine films--Young Torless (Musil), The Tin Drum (Glass), Coup de Grace (Yourcenar), Michael Kohlhass (Kleist), The Ogre (Tournier) and many more. He has worked in Germany, France and the US and shows great ability and imagination always. This is the first film adaptation of Proust and it is wonderful in many places. The long sequence at Odette's house when an hysterical Swann goes on a rampage--looking for the source of the sound he imagines he hears--only to drive Odette into a fury as she smashes a vase is a classic of modern filmmaking. The pettiness and claustrophobia in the lives of aristocrats circa 1900 is superbly brought out. Sven Nykvist is the cinematographer (deep black night scenes, lovely) and Hans Werner Henze wrote the superb music: it's like another actor in the story; jangled, dissonant sound accompanying Swann's frantic travels through Paris.

According to IMDB this seems to have been the first time anyone ever tried to adapt Proust to the movies. And though flawed, it's not a bad try--kind of languid, but that was probably deliberate. Jeremy Irons is one of the best at portraying repressed longing, and Ornella Muti is exquisite enough to explain Swann's amour fou.

In Volker Schlondorff's Swann in Love, Jeremy Irons is Charles Swann, a cultured aristocrat who is in love with Odette de Crécy (Ornella Muti), an alluring courtesan. Much to his undying frustration, however, Odette shares her pleasures with numerous men and women, keeping the passionate Charles at arms length while continuing to take advantage of his cultural and financial largesse. Written by Peter Brook, Jean-Claude Carriere and Marie-Helene Estienne, the film is an adaptation of the second part of Swann's Way, the first book of Marcel Proust's epic seven-volume masterpiece In Search of Lost Time.

Set in Paris in the 1880s, the film is a recollection by a now aged Swann of a single day in his life as he attends dinner parties and salons, mingles with the upper crust, and pursues his courtship of Odette. Though Madame Verdurin (Marie-Christine Barrault), a fixture at the gatherings, sees Swann as unworthy of Odette and has unkind words about him, he evokes sympathy from the Duchesse de Guermantes (Fanny Ardant) who appears to also have designs on him. Swann's love for Odette feels a bit obsessive when he compares her face to a Botticelli face in a painting in the Sistine Chapel, yet we may be able to recall in our own life how love can be all consuming to the point where the lover takes on attributes far beyond the reality of their true nature.

Swann in Love is a valiant attempt to translate a literary masterpiece into film and is strongly supported by the cinematography of Sven Nykvist, yet it fails to capture Proust's depth of characterization, artistic imagination, or poetic sensibility, opting instead for superficial posturing, long glances, and shallow voice-overs. The highly educated and artistically sophisticated Swann, in a lifeless performance by Irons, is depicted as little more than a humorless snob who is rejected by others of his social station because of his love for Odette, but who continues to pursue her out of obsession or sheer obstinacy. In the reality of Proust, however, his love for her is so deep that he can overlook almost any flaw in her makeup, her constant lying, her lack of appreciation of art, music, and poetry, and her broad tastes in sensual pleasure.

There are others ways that Schlondorff gets it wrong. Although Odette is in fact a courtesan with all that it implies, she is hardly the unintelligent tart depicted in Muti's characterization. Also, the homosexual affair of the Baron de Charlus (Alain Delon) does not become part of Proust's story until many volumes later and does not belong in the film. One would think that, at the very least, the director would utilize a late romantic work of Gabriel Fauré or Camille Saint-Saens as the model for the enchanting sonata by the fictional composer Vinteuil that brings Charles and Odette together, yet Schlondorff instead opts for the modern atonal music of Hans Werner Henze, a choice that feels totally incongruent with the place and time. With all due respect for Schlondorff's valiant attempt to translate Proust into film, Swann in Love is one effort that should have remained on the drawing board with a "someday" tag attached.

'Swann in Love' did have plenty of things going for it. Really like Marcel Proust's writing, and 'Un Amour de Swann' of the massive 'Remembrance of Things Past' is a masterpiece. Sven Nykvist was, and is still near-universally considered as, one of the all-time greats when it came to cinematography, particularly notable in the films of Ingmar Bergman. Love period dramas and always have. And am a fan of Jeremy Irons, and have liked to loved most of his work even in projects that are beneath him.

After finding and watching it, 'Swann in Love' as has been said already is a brave endeavour in adapting source material that is very difficult to do so, close to unadaptable actually. Proust in general has a sophisticated and subtle style of writing too that is not easy to translate to film or any visual media. 'Swann in Love' doesn't completely succeed and is not the masterpiece level that the book is (that was inevitable though), but there are a lot of good things here, really do applaud it for its noble effort and can really see that a lot of work was put into it.

Will start with what 'Swann in Love' does well. It is a thing of beauty visually. The costumes and settings are as sumptuous as one can get, never looking too fussy, and a lot of homework was clearly done in making the recreation of the period as evocative as possible. Nykvist's cinematography is a wonder, then again with such an amazing and influential cinematographer like Nykvist one doesn't expect any less. To me, the music fitted very well, especially with Swann's travels that are far from settled, and was used in a way that wasn't constant or over-powering. It is also a pleasant score to listen to like the use of strings, even the more atonal (not a fan of this in general but appreciate its musical importance) parts don't jar that much but can understand if anybody doesn't find it to their taste.

There is sophistication and subtlety here (not in Proust's way but in a general one), if not any reminicent parts which wouldn't have worked because they would make the film screech to a halt, and the story absorbs on the whole. The unflinching and claustrophobic portrayal of society and artistocrats is particularly striking, while the aforementioned Swann on the rampage scene, while too long, is a masterly visual and dramatic achievement. The obsessive moments have the right amount of intensity. Irons doesn't give one of his best performances here in a very early film role, but there is authority and conflicted pathos in his Swann which reminds one of the type of characters Irons was best and one of the best at doing it at, upper class characters with a dark or conflicted side. Ornella Muti is quite ravishing and portrays the seductiveness and at times smuttiness of her character expertly. Alain Delon has a lot of fun as the flamboyant artistocrat.

Not without its caveats however, 'Swann in Love' that is. There could have been more depth, it tends to be quite surface-level here, and more passion. A tighter pace, the deliberate nature is taken to extremes here and it can drag, and less scenes that go on for too long would have helped.

It also has some quite distracting and unnecessary over-dubbing, Irons has an amazing and easily recognisable voice that is wasted here.

Overall, not entirely successful but with quite a lot of virtues and a valiant effort. 7/10

I really admire the work of Volker Schlondorff, I think he is one of the best German director nowadays with Wenders (although in a very different style). His adaptation of Proust is quite good but several things really annoyed me.

_first, the soundtrack: why using an atonal composition of Henze when Proust, who loved Wagner, filled his novel with specific musical references? It simply does not fit the atmosphere! Any chamber music of the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries would have been better!

_second, the acting: I am french and I really think Alain Delon is way overrated, he's simply mediocre. However, I really like Jeremy Irons, and Ornella Muti is usually quite good, but their dubbing is absolutely awful and ruins totally their acting! So I understand that Irons would have had a very strong English accent if he had been asked to act in french but if Schlondorff decided to shoot the movie in Paris with 90 percent of the cast being french, why in the hell didn't he choose two other french actors for the leading roles? I have nothing against English actors, on the contrary, but then, he should have shot the movie in English rather than dubbing miserably these good artists.

_Third, the movie is sometimes a little slow. Usually, Schlondorff does a much better job with the editing. If you want to discover the terrific job of this great director, you should rather see "The Tin Drum", "The Ogre", "The Handmaid's Tale" or "Death of a Salesman" before this one.