I am 50 years old, and have been a professional musician most of my life. Cole porter's heyday was long before I was around, but I was instantly attracted to his music in my youth, and that love for his compositions has never ceased.
I know many here are bad mouthing the movie "De-Lovely", and they shouldn't be. There are so many unwatchable, ridiculously bad movies being released nowadays, that De-lovely looks like Gone with the Wind compared to many of them. We have several generations of young people that do not have the benefit of the diverse media many of us older people had when we were young. Back when radio and television use to thrived on diversity. They are now totally market driven toward youth, and offer little diversity. The re-birth of the musical these past few years, is introducing youth to a quality of art that most were not even aware existed. The influence movies like De-Lovely could have on young artist should not be under-estimated. I remember many musicals in my youth that greatly influenced my future career as a musician.
I found De-Lovely to be a delightful movie. I found both Kline and Judd to be excellent in their roles. While the story has taken some lead way with the facts, they got the majority of important points across, and with a lot of style in my opinion. The makers of this movie had to do a balancing act between biography and entertainment. Between telling the story of Porter's life, and paying tribute to his incredible talent as a song writer. I left the movie theater feeling upbeat and inspired. That told me they balanced the two very well.
While I might of chosen a few different singers to sing Porter's songs in the movie, I realize that using known, modern singers helps get youth into the theater, and that's important. The artist they choose to sing Porter's music in the movie, did a wonderful job. While some renditions are a little too modernized, any influence his music has on today's youth is a good thing. Our young people need to know that real works of art take skill, training, talent, and time. Much of todays music is aimed toward an audience with a very short attention span, wanting instant gratification, and to counter that with the music of Cole Porter is a wonderful gift to an entire generation.
This movie works on so many levels. The music, the period, the love affair, and the pain. The story is about Porter looking back at his life during his last moments on earth, he sees it as a theatrical production. Because of this, the songs are not all in chronological order. A few of the songs were placed out of sequence to fit the story line. This idea works splendidly, and it is beyond me why some reviewers seemed to miss this concept completely, and thought the writers messed up. The truth is we really don't know that much about Cole porter. He was not fond of the press, and the relationship between his wife Linda and him was very private. We do know Cole was gay, but loved Linda deeply his entire life. The movie raises more questions than it answers, as it should. Cole was a complicated person, and lived a complicated life. This is movie making at it's best, folks. I recommend this movie highly. I hope Hollywood keeps the musicals coming. It's about time.
