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Maria (2024)
I don't think Callas would have appreciated this
Let's start with the pivotal performance of the title 'character'. Angelina Jolie is almost always exquisite to behold and listen to, especially on the big screen, and while she certainly delivers a prima donna performance here, it is only two thirds Maria Callas AT BEST, and at LEAST a solid one third of just Angelina being herself and using the 'character' of Maria to express her own emotions. Yes, it is an ultimately unwieldy and inconsistent performance, although she does rise to the occasion many times, because while she usually does a highly commendable job of mimicking the idiosyncratic accent and speech patterns of Callas, this is typically only achieved when there are reference points that she can use from interviews and similar footage of the late diva (i.e: Callas being sarcastic, Callas waxing lyrical about opera, etc). When there are no direct video or audio references for Angelina to default to - namely when 'Maria' is very upset or very angry in the film - Angelina merely reverts to her OWN way of getting emotional or 'dramatic'.
There is an angry outburst at an outdoor cafe, for instance, where she actually reverts to her MALEFICENT persona, replete with the British accent that was not at all appropriate for Callas (because while Callas alternated between the American and British pronunciations, she never sounded "English"). Later in the film, there is a rather sad discussion between 'Maria' and her sister, and Angelina seems to forget that she is even PLAYING Callas by the end of that scene as she breaks down into tears and speaks her lines through sobs; we get a good glimpse into the wounded and frightened little girl inside Angelina JOLIE there, but *NOT* the aching child within Maria Callas because Angelina expresses herself entirely in her own manner of speaking and emoting. These are GLARING ERRORS at heightened and climactic moments in the story! There are other moments like that too, although I cannot get into all of them without spoiling the movie.
This is always the danger when it comes to the Modern "Method" of Acting, where the director leaves it entirely up to the star to do what they want to - and in moments of doubt, will instruct the Actor or Actress to have recourse to what Method Acting Teacher Lee Strasberg referred to as 'Emotional Recall' (getting the Actor/Actress to recall emotional experiences from their OWN life and channel THOSE *PERSONAL* EMOTIONS, which of course may not be appropriate at all for the CHARACTER, because the way two people express sadness or anger is naturally going to be very very different). CLASSICAL Acting Techniques are always superior - although almost never used today - because they require the Actor/Actress to use their *IMAGINATION* instead of their own experiences and personal emotions. Angelina Jolie should have IMAGINED how "LA DIVINA" CALLAS would have acted/reacted in those key scenes - even if she didn't have video reference on Youtube. I guess it's a sad state of affairs indeed when even A-list Hollywood Celebrities are unable to use their imaginations, and cannot conjur up any scenario that they cannot pull up on their iPhone.
This is especially a problem in a film like this when Angelina is playing arguably the most famous operatic soprano in history, and yet she "breaks character" and USES HERSELF when the character is at her angriest or saddest or most vulnerable - it's almost as if she was using the most raw scenes in the film to work out her OWN issues and exorcize her PERSONAL demons, rather than conjuring up the demons that were so specific to Callas and the CALLAS temperament!! No actor/actress should use a character for their own THERAPEUTIC or CATHARTIC purposes, especially when the character is a real-life person that is known to so many people (at least the more cultured people in this world).
Mind you, I am not even necessarily the biggest Callas fan - I am much more partial to Nellie Melba and Rosa Ponselle when it comes to Operatic Sopranos - but a lot of the issues in this film also have to do with the SCREENPLAY itself and the way it was shot by the director. Angelina Jolie said in a Q&A that the screenplay wasn't even written when she agreed to play the role, and I must say it is an EXTREMELY SHODDY script. There is so much time wasted that could have been used to reveal more dimensions of Maria - one of the most multi-dimensional artists of any genre in history. Instead, the film is ultimately a VERY REDUCTIVE portrait of Callas, and makes her two-dimensional AT BEST. Even a friend of mine who went to see it with me the 2nd time I was invited to an Advance Screening said that it shows ALMOST NOTHING of the personal joys and personal triumphs of Callas, beyond flashbacks of the audience applauding her at the end of big arias. In the film, Callas says at one point that Happiness never produced a Beautiful Melody and that Music is born of Pain and Tragedy, but this does not jive with what I have heard the real Callas say. The real Callas was insistent that even when a singer uses musical ornaments like Trills to embellish a melody, there were different ways to do a trill depending on the emotion required by the composer (i.e: Fear versus Joy).
Instead, the director seems to think that Opera is SIMPLY TRAGIC and that Callas is a TRAGIC FIGURE like Norma Desmond from 'Sunset Boulevard'. They even introduce a much Younger Leading Man who follows Angelina Jolie around throughout the film, evoking the William Holden/Gloria Swanson May-September dynamic from 'Sunset Boulevard', which struck me as ridiculous and GROSSLY INACCURATE because the REAL Maria Callas was NEVER attracted to younger men. In fact, when Barbara Walters asked her in 1974 - just a few years before she died - whether she thinks she could still meet her Prince Charming, after breaking up with Aristotle Onassis, the real Callas specifically said that AT HER AGE she could not expect 'Prince Charming', but that she hoped to find a good man who could understand her. That COMPLETELY FLIES IN THE FACE of what the director tries to do here - suggesting that Callas was fantasizing about a younger man being enamored of her, just to boost her fading ego.
There are a few sequences that were shot in glorious colour, but are presented in DULL BLACK-AND-WHITE here - presumably to hit the audience over the head with the fact that they are 'flashback' sequences - but when I saw the STILLS in dazzling colour, only to be reminded of how DREARY the Black-and-White 'flashbacks' were (especially the First Meeting between Callas and Onassis), I realized that the director SHOT HIMSELF IN THE FOOT by trying to be too artsy fartsy. Black-and-White simply does not look good or classy in modern times, because for one thing they are shooting with COMPLETELY DIFFERENT CAMERAS and COMPLETELY DIFFERENT FILTERS than the ones used during the Classic Hollywood Era. What looked artistic, elegant and classy in the 1930s and 1940s can NEVER be recaptured today. There is a reason why those films are 'classics'. This director wants so desperately to make the film a timeless work of art, but it ultimately comes across as disrespectful to Callas herself, while making many of the key creatives involved in the film come across as self-indulgent. Returning to the Black-and-White issue for a moment, the only times when that WOULD have been justified is when they had flashbacks of a TEENAGE MARIA - played by a young actress - although even the historical veracity of those sequences are a bit questionable I would say. But artistically or cinematically speaking, it made no sense to show the Callas and Onassis sequences in black-and-white when Onassis was ultimately the love of Maria's life, like it or not.
They also keep talking about how ugly Aristotle Onassis was, but the footage of the 'real' Onassis that is displayed during the end credits ALONE should remind the viewer that the real man was FAR FROM UGLY. He was a very charismatic, even sexy man - Modern Moviemakers seem to think that any older man who doesn't resemble George Clooney is ugly. I was also APPALLED that they didn't show a SINGLE FLASHBACK of Callas doing Masterclasses at the Juilliard. Those sessions are still available on YouTube in many instances, and the AMOUNT OF KNOWLEDGE she so willingly passed down to younger singers is one of her GREATEST LEGACIES - and yet, this film COMPLETELY IGNORES all of that. Surely, one would think that in her final days, Callas would have DRAWN *SOME* COMFORT from recalling the work she did with the young Juilliard singers.
Last but not least, as an Operatic singer myself, I found it laughable how the filmmakers seemed to have NO UNDERSTANDING of how the Voice actually works. Why even MAKE a film about Opera if they don't bother to learn the basics? It is suggested here that Callas can wake up and sing CASTA DIVA from Bellini's 'Norma' - one of the most difficult coloratura arias ever written for a soprano - FIRST THING IN THE MORNING, without even warming up. Callas wouldn't have been able to do that even in her PRIME YEARS in the late 1940s and 1950s, and yet here she does exactly that in the late 1970s. Sure, it's not meant to sound brilliant in the context of the story, but there is NO WAY Callas would have even ATTEMPTED that. The director also doesn't seem to know that even AFTER warming up - a concept that is never ever even hinted at here - a middle-aged soprano in vocal decline like Callas would NOT sing complicated coloratura arias; in fact, she NEVER sang such arias in the 1970s, and instead stuck to pieces that did NOT require the agility and flexibility of Florid Coloratura. Again, the real Callas categorically told Barbara Walters in 1974 that there was no way she could do then what she did 20 years back.
The film DOES make a great and very compelling conceit out of Maria wanting to SING FOR HERSELF as her life drew to a close, but unfortunately this is lost among the B. S.
The Sound of Music (1965)
An ULTIMATELY UNEVEN cinematic adaptation of the musical
Most fans give this 10/10 on the basis of nostalgia alone, without any careful analysis of the film's merits and demerits. It is neither a faithful reproduction of the spectacular original musical, like 1964's "My Fair Lady" was, nor does it transcend the stage musical for it replaces 3 amazing songs by Rodgers & Hammerstein with 2 inferior songs by Rodgers (and Saul Chaplin), totally diminishing the pivotal supporting characters Baroness Elsa Schraeder and Max in the process (it is these characters who provide a realistic middle-ground between the piety and optimism of Maria, the nuns and the kids on the one hand, and the atrocity of the Nazis on the other hand).
It is a testament to Eleanor Parker's star power alone that she could make such an impact in a musical without singing or even lip-synching a single note, and that she was able to rise above the fact that the screenwriter weakened the complex, nuanced, multifaceted stage version of the Baroness, reducing Elsa to a third rate soap opera villainess. Had the Baroness been played by someone like Joan Collins, the result would have been totally trashy, due to the dumbed-down screenplay.
And now for the leads! I saw Plummer live in Los Angeles when he did his one man show about a decade ago - brilliant raconteur, but Julie Andrews was an even better raconteuse when SHE did a Q&A in L. A (about 5 years ago). Plummer's performance as Von Trapp is one of the finest performances in film history - I think he and Eleanor Parker are what make the film so priceless in the last analysis. Maybe like Julie said, his cynicism actually HELPED him because his overly enthusiastic screen performance as Hamlet - around the same time - was *INSUFFERABLY HAMMY*. I could not believe that Plummer who was so subtle and real and prefect as Captain von Trapp would play Hamlet like a SCHOOLBOY BUFFOON.
Julie Andrews is definitely the more mature professional of the two, and of course she had the voice of a century, but I much prefer Mary Martin's more soulful and contemplative version of "The Sound of Music" title song - and although Andrews' acting was brilliant in the first two thirds of the film, I feel like she REALLY SUFFERS in the last third of the narrative......Robert Wise seemed to have suddenly stopped directing her and focused all his attention on Plummer at that point, it seems (which is a flaw in the film version overall; Maria is suddenly completely sidelined after marrying the Captain, even though she had driven the narrative up until then).
Overall, I have much more regard for Andrews as an artist, but I don't think THE SOUND OF MUSIC was her finest showcase as a singer-actress overall. It was 75% there at most. I think her finest film/performance overall was "STAR!" which was made a few years later, even though it didn't do well at all in the box office - probably because the character was so radically different from Mary Poppins and Maria von Trapp - but I do think Plummer in "The Sound of Music" gave one of the best Leading Man turns in film history.
Robert Wise and the production team clearly wanted to present the film as a "modern European fairytale", relying on wonderful and evocative cinematography to compensate for a problematic script and lopsided characterizations!
Many cinema enthusiasts who are visually driven above all tend to overlook all kinds of flaws as long as a film LOOKS GOOD - and of course Robert Wise is no David Lean even on that front, although I think Wise did a much better job visually speaking with "Helen of Troy" nearly a decade ago. This film can't seem to decide whether it wants to be a documentary style travelogue of Salzburg, or a typical 1960s soap opera, or a paint-by-numbers song list.
The reason I'm giving it 7 stars out of 10 is because the talent involved is ultimately strong enough to make the final result genuinely memorable. This is a musical that works better on stage for me, where the focus can be squarely on the psychology and interior lives of the characters, without the director feeling compelled to broaden the visual scope at every turn (which often happens at the expense of the characters in this adaptation!!). Maria von Trapp is supposed to be a soulful heroine, which really comes through in every good stage production, but here it sometimes just comes across as "good old Julie Andrews" simply singing and doing her thing, submerged by the mountains and the director's desire to go toe to toe with David Lean.
The character of Brigitta is also woefully butchered, diminished and stunted here, which totally dilutes the impact of the children on the narrative - whereas in the stage version, Brigitta first calls out Maria on some lapses of logic during her DO-RE-MI singing lesson (a lapse of logic which is completely ignored in this film), while later on during the party sequence, it is BRIGITTA who originally pointed out the fact that Maria is falling in love with the Captain.
The ending of the narrative is also ruined here by a pivotal character turning out to be a TRAITOR rather than a HERO as in the stage version - thereby making it easier for another character to "move on" from the traitor, rather than have to sacrifice the more heroic version of the same character (which would have made the ending much more bittersweet and touching, versus a stereotypical GOOD VERSUS EVIL ending as provided here).
I could go on and on, but I do think the film is ULTIMATELY OVERRATED. Robert Wise knows how to appeal to the lowest common denominator, but he is always hit-or-miss when it comes to appealing to more discerning and sophisticated people.
Torrent (1926)
One of Garbo's WORST performances, but still a VERY GOOD FILM almost *IN SPITE* of her
I have to preface the review by saying that I have been a very big Garbo fan ever since I saw her in ANNA KARENINA in which she gives one of the finest and most gripping performances ever captured onscreen. In certain films like GRAND HOTEL she veers too much towards an artificial and contrived style of acting, when she plays certain types of characters like the ballerina there (overdoing and overstating the "prima donna" aspect), but still overall I have always included her in my Top 10 list of Classic Hollywood Actresses.
In this film however - the very first she made in America - she is QUITE DISAPPOINTING on the whole, and no her "beauty" alone cannot save her AT ALL here despite what some apparently think. Her facial expressions are sometimes really bizarre, and as the story progresses, she keeps "breaking out" into the SAME quasi-disdainful, quasi-sardonic kind of LAUGH (during her scenes with one particular central character) which becomes SO REPETITIVE AND INSINCERE as to seem both *AMATEURISH* and *BORING*. Surely either she or the director Monta Bell could have come up with different ways to convey her psychological reactions in all those scenes. It might have worked if this was a farcical kind of comedy PERHAPS, but it is NOT that kind of film.
It is also painfully obvious that she is not really singing AT ALL, especially towards the very beginning, but merely moving her lips with ZERO engagement of her body (which is a vital plot point here considering the fact that her character has operatic aspirations). This was a silent film, so she could have just sung something for real, without worrying about what it would "sound" like. Even Audrey Hepburn looks like she's really singing in MY FAIR LADY, and had clearly observed Marni Nixon closely for some physical verisimilitude.
In fact, for much of the film, Garbo looks like she is JUST FAKING IT. There are of course a few scenes where we see glimpses of what would become a terrific actress IN THE YEARS TO COME, but overall she is shockingly GREEN AND RAW and kind of wrong here. Her hand movements look almost laughable in a few scenes that are supposed to be emotionally climactic, completely undercutting the pathos or poignancy meant to be conveyed in those moments. And in the scenes where she keeps laughing that fake He-Man and Skeletor type of laugh from the old Filmation animations, her character comes across as VERY UNLIKEABLE and UNSYMPATHETIC - to the point where the character that we are SUPPOSED to be against emerges in a much more sympathetic and genuinely human light.
I know Garbo was not exactly a very "human" kind of star/actress, but what we see here is not a Sphinx but rather someone who seems almost MISCAST! I swear that Joan Crawford could have done a vastly better job here, or even Norma Shearer for that matter......Constance Bennett, or most other stars-in-the-making that MGM had. Once again, Garbo's mere "look" CANNOT salvage an epic story like this. I wanted so much to fall in love with her from the time she first appeared onscreen as a peasant girl praying in the garden, but she kept making it ever more difficult. I don't want to give away any spoilers, but by the end of it all, I thought she DESERVED her emotional fate (because of the way she played the role) although that's arguably not what the audience is supposed to feel.
By stark contrast, in ANNA KARENINA almost a decade later, she MADE my heart go out to her even though she was playing a selfish adultereress who walked out on her son. I guess she really really needed TIME and a more genius type of director to bring out the kind of performances that would make her an enduring legend.
All this being said, the REST of the cast is PRACTICALLY PITCH PERFECT!!!!! Everyone else is 1000% committed to their characters, and brings out all the psychological and emotional dimensions of their roles to such a degree that Garbo looks like they cast her ONLY for the way she "looked" and not for any acting capabilities she had at the time. The actress who plays Dona Bernarda acts with a superlative degree of NATURALISM for instance, which makes you feel like you're watching something made decades into the future!!!!! That's just one example. The entire supporting cast WORKS WONDERS to make the story come to life and make you believe the illusion that this is really a Spanish village and not just an MGM production!!
The special effects and the torrent sequence are also *ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT*. I imagine it must have struck the 1926 audience as the TITANIC OF ITS TIME.
Hats off to MGM who did not always do this kind of film.......it really does hold up even a century later EVEN THOUGH the leading lady here shockingly turned out to be the WEAK LINK. I don't blindly "worship" any star, however much I may like and admire them overall, and so I will repeat that Garbo is A DISAPPOINTMENT here as an actress. Doesn't matter what she looked like. I don't watch films to see models on display after all!
But it's a MUST SEE film for all classic film buffs. I had to deduct 4 stars for Garbo's performance but it's a REALLY SOLID film in and of itself.......if it was made today it would doubtless be 2 hours or even 2 and a half hours long because of the story's SHEER SCOPE, but for a silent film, it leaves you wanting more which is actually a good thing. Most silent films of the time spanned 60-70 minutes, and even though this is 90 minutes long, it really does leave you yearning for more story. :) It will make you think a lot about the decisions human beings make, and the way we navigate through the vicissitudes of life.
Strawberry Shortcake: The World of Strawberry Shortcake (1980)
One of the greatest animated introductions to any franchise!!!
First of all, I did not grow up watching or even being familiar with Strawberry Shortcake, so this review is 100% objective. I watched this TV special for the very first time last night, at the age of 34, and was absolutely blown away by how marvellously it still holds up. There is nothing the least bit forced or strained about the innocence and cuteness and wholesomeness of the title character and her friends - it is all very genuinely and purely presented, which cannot be said for the crassly commercial Rainbow Brite franchise from the 80s (which was an attempt to ride on the coat-tails of Strawberry Shortcake). I was also very surprised at how exceedingly eerie and creepy the Peculiar Pie Man was - a far cry from many of the generic cartoon villains of that era, and also a villain who fits most organically into THE WORLD OF STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE while still instilling a legitimate sense of menace and dread in the hearts of children. I love how it's the supernatural forces of goodness that take on physically "monstrous" forms here to help the heroine and her ensemble, while the villain's monstrousness is essentially internal - children are reminded that looks can be deceiving, which is a lesson that resonates all the more in our current age of fake social media. The MISE-EN-SCENE is absolutely exquisite here, with an ambience that evokes the traditional nursery rhyme landscape that children are (or at least used to be) familiar with, while ingeniously incorporating American Greetings' own innovations. There is a very authentic, home-grown sensibility to this franchise, in its original form, which again stands in stark contrast with the blatantly manufactured nature of Rainbrow Brite.
I am shocked at how there are no other positive reviews here - I would have expected a more loyal fanbase for Strawberry Shortcake, but I suppose the world has unfortunately grown so horribly cynical that the majority of people cannot appreciate the innocence and charm and 'old world' values which are encapsulated and represented here. My heart genuinely went out for Strawberry Shortcake and her friends when the Peculiar Pie Man tricked them and victimized them, and the resolution of the terrible conflict was emotionally satisfying. Yes, this may be a whimsical world at the end of the day, but the characters themselves ring true - with palpable hearts and souls. It does not feel like merchandise being shoved down children's throat.