Un amour de Swann

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.

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.

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.

Let's face it, Proust's monumental "A la Recherche du Temps Perdu" is probably unfilmable. The Chilean director Raoul Ruiz had a commendable shot at adapting the final volume "Time Regained" in 1999 that achieved a certain measure of critical acclaim in spite of being rather diffuse with not all the characters clearly presented. ( I think you have to know the novel well to fully appreciate it). A rather more satisfying attempt appeared fifteen years before with Volker Schlondorff's "Swann in Love". By concentrating more modestly on what is really a vignette, a novella tucked within the vast structure, Schlondorf achieved a work with a real sense of cinematic concentration. There is no Marcel, whose endless reminiscences are something of a kiss of death to film narrative and no confusingly vast set of characters to get to grips with. There is simply Swann, the man about town, his obsessive pursuit of the whore, Odette, and the characters he bumps into during the course of a short space of time and a brief epilogue some years later. It is a very free adaptation. I cannot remember the Baron de Charlus appearing much at this early stage of the novel, but, as he is one of Proust's most fascinating creations, his presence is welcome, even if John Malkovich in the later version is better cast than Alain Delon. What strikes most forcibly is Schlondorff's unflinching look at a thoroughly decadent and degenerate society. In studying only the rich he paints a portrait of the lengths they are prepared to go to satisfy hedonistic pleasure and, in the case of Swann, lust. In an amazingly frank scene he sodomises a prostitute but is obviously more interested in obtaining information about Odette from her than in what he is doing. Sven Nykvist's camera glides through salons stuffed with rich objects and people: this is a world where the poor simply do not exist. All around however are flunkies whose sole purpose in life is to serve their masters uncomplainingly. Just occasionally a look, such as the coachman Remi's, when he is ordered by Swann to drive him half the night in his pursuit of Odette, says it all.

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.