papeetepatrick

I just watched the Leslie Howard/Wendy Hiller film last night for the first time. Lerner's book follows it closely, but everything is hugely elaborated and made bigger--there's no Ascot in Pygmalion, and there's no big moment that parallels 'The Rain in Spain'. For those of us who know 'My Fair Lady' first, 'Pygmalion' is lovely, but seems very abbreviated from what we're used to. I had thought someone said Eliza ended up with Freddie--well, if she does, she drives off with him but then shows up at Higgins's just like in 'My Fair Lady', and he demands the slippers. Without the music, it's not a remake of 'My Fair Lady' even if they call it that. And that needs no remake either: I saw that also again about 3 weeks ago, and it has aged marvelously. It's not perfect, but close to it. I see it as the best of all the big Broadway adaptations (except 'Call Me Madam', which was perfect), the show is the best ever made for Broadway to begin with IMO, and while there is something to the imperfect matching of Marni Nixon to Audrey Hepburn (it is not as seamless as Deborah Kerr), the restored version is primarily at fault for leaving the verse of 'Without You' in Audrey's voice, and then the body of the song all of a sudden in Nixon's. I've never been more convinced, though, that the casting was absolutely right and that it is Audrey Hepburn's best picture. Except that, even so, Rex Harrison, is the star. He is simply perfection in my book. The main flaw with the movie to me is too long a number for 'Get Me to the Church on Time'; that should have been cut in half. But the Howard/Hiller movie is also very good, with some casting not sparkling enough in the supporting roles--I missed Gladys Cooper enormously, who is so perfect as Higgins's mother, and Mona Washbourne as Mrs. Pierce. Colonel Pickering, though, is wonderfully handsome here, in the person of Scott Sunderland, and David Tree is very cute as Freddy, but he doesn't get to be quite as thrilling as Jeremy Brett, who makes 'On the Street Where You Live' appear as something unexpected but ineluctable all the same. But--I don't care too much what they do. Unless it's very surprisingly cast, I wouldn't see it, because I don't see it as needing a remake. Edited to add (from wiki): "Despite the intense central relationship between Eliza and Henry, the original play ends with her leaving to marry the eager young Freddy Eynsford-Hill. Shaw, annoyed by the tendency of audiences, actors, and even directors to seek 'romantic' re-interpretations of his ending, later wrote an essay[1] for inclusion with subsequent editions, in which he explained precisely why it was impossible for the story to end with Higgins and Eliza getting married. Some subsequent adaptations have changed this ending. Despite Shaw's insistence that the original ending remain intact, producer Gabriel Pascal provided a more ambiguous end to the 1938 film: instead of marrying Freddy, Eliza apparently reconciles with Henry in the final scene, implying that they probably will get married. The musical version My Fair Lady and its 1964 film have similar endings. However, some productions of the play have emphasised that Eliza does marry Freddy." It's interesting that Shaw was right that marrying Freddy was actually the less romantic alternative (he didn't know about 'ON the Street Where You Live'), but I was surprised that the ending to Howard/Hiller was essentially the same as that of 'My Fair Lady'.

While I think Daniel Day-Lewis is a great actor and I trust Rob Marshall I sure wish Javier had not dropped out. Both Broadway versions were magic. I have high hopes for the film. I don't. I think it will be overproduced and overdone and maybe even self-congratulatory. They are now making more of these things with too many giant stars, ever since Kenneth Branagh's 'Hamlet' and that 'Midsummer Night's Dream' with Michelle Pfeiffer, Rupert Everett, Calista Flockhart, Kevin Kline and others. They never really become characters when there are only giant stars, rather it becomes another kind of 'Ocean's 11'. I believe Sophia Loren is still listed, and Judi Dench and Nicole Kidman. Other examples are Sean Penn's 'The Pledge', with mostly Jack Nicholson, but absurd long episode-cameos by Mirren, Redgrave, Shepard, Del Toro and others (and they never reappear after these little semi-soliloquies). These things are just commercial product when they do this. I haven't seen an American musical film in the 00's I thought anything of aside from one that isn't traditionally a musical, but did adopt some musical comedy production numbers--Kevin Spacey's 'Beyond the Sea', his valentine to Bobby Darin, and which consisted musically mostly of Bobby Darin songs. By now, even 'Hairspray' has evaporated for me, except for Pfeiffer's amazing harridan. It was well-made, but not good enough material and an inferior score, better than I'd seen it onstage, but still little more than a trifle. There was, on the other hand, Alain Resnais's extraorinary 'Pas Sur la Bouche', which had no run at all in the U.S., and which is based on an old operetta. Best musical film since 'Hair' IMO. 'Nine' should have been taken seriously artistically instead of just getting marketable big names. It's a better property, needs a certain amount of intimacy, and doesn't need stars that are not suited for it (Penelope Cruz among several), will overact, will in many cases not be able to sing, and will not be able to slip their big Hollywood personas into the characters. Anyway, unlike Glebb, I don't trust Marshall at all, having thought 'Chicago' enormously overrated, and stuffed with non-dancers. They're afraid to take any chances on untried actor-product by now. At this point, it's not as amusing to enjoy 'sell-out products', because too many of them are playing it safe. If it wasn't nearly all the time, it would be different.

Thanks for that, Mashinka, and that makes it all the more complex. Because the dancers I knew who used drugs quite freely were themselves, on the other hand, not nearly so promiscuous as Nureyev was. They were even faithful to their lovers, etc. They were not, however, using cocaine, which does seem to be the one that has caused the most trouble with some dancers, or it has been publicized as such the most. And it always has to do with the physiological and mental makeup of the person--which is why I never used LSD even though offered it me by one of these people (although they didn't insist on it), because I thought it would be terrifying for things to seem to change that much. What has always interested me, though, is people who don't seem stoned, who you can't even tell are high. They don't change at all after smoking, but someone like Kirkland who had a lot of problems was bound to have the most serious reactions. And someone mentioned Jaffe, I hadn't known she'd ever had a brush with drugs. I would imagine the discipline of a ballet dancer will usually allow them to limit the damage, and stop using, because they already have support from what they are doing, by its very disciplined nature. So that real breakdowns and overuse are probably the exception rather than the rule among dancers who have experimented.

I knew a group of dancers in the early 70s who were stoned on grass all the time (including when they danced), and dropped a lot of acid. They were not also drinkers, though. They were well-known in New York, and include some famous names still. I don't think think it affected the quality of dancing in their case, since the whole company seemed to be at ease with it, and one became one of the greatest dancers in another company (although after that, I don't know what their drug habits were, but there weren't any breakdowns). Artists in the late 60s and early 70s were still using certain drugs as part of their creative processes, and these I'm talking about could certainly 'hold their pot', didn't had bad acid trips, etc. I thought this very interesting, because I certainly did not have a tolerance for these substances, although I tried some of them. It could be different with modern and ballet dancers, although one of these I refer to was trained as a ballerina, and did things like 'Coppellia' with other companies. I think there was some writing about Martha Graham having a drinking period, some critic said something about her even 'dancing when she was so drunk she nearly fell off the stage', but another dancer I knew didn't know much about this. She obviously got over it, though. Then there's just debauchery, which will often include many drugs, although I don't know if kavanaugh mentioned anything during her catalog of Nureyev misdemeanours.

This is a related to some of Nietzsche's ubermensch obsession with 'Zarathustra', an extraordinary text (and not nearly so difficult IMO as some people I know have perceived it), as well as his expressed belief that the Greeks were interesting because conditions allowed them to produce great individuals, and they're not making them like they used to. That's a different meaning from the above quote--which refers to something more humane, but still, there have been Nelson Mandela and Jimmy Carter, among many others-- but either seem sometimes true, sometimes not. Flattening out of society and individuals is often discussed in intellectual circles, and it's impossible not to notice a lot of it. I don't believe it in either case, although there is a lot of trash and mediocrity. Never read any Zola, Dumas or Hugo, and probably won't get to it, but read 'Pere Goriot' around the same time as cygneblanc, and thought it was gripping, as is 'Cousine Bette' . The stories and discussions and popularizations and extravaganzas of Dumas and Hugo, etc., or so all-pervasive that I don't feel the need to read them through (same with 'Don Quixote', most likely, which Martin Amis found the most maddening to ever get through of the old Big "God Books") gven that there are so many other things that seem more crucial, but I do feel the need to get to Stendahl, The Red and the Black, which Cristian mentioned. I've read a fair amount of Dickens, but don't really love any of it but 'Oliver Twist'. Have read most of Faulkner, but 'A Fable' is especially demanding, I may or may not get to it. He's always profound and trenchant, and I think 'Absalom! Absalom!' is the best to see Faulkner at his most magnificently powerful, without some of the difficulties you encounter with novels like 'The Sound and the Fury', although that's worth it too, and 'Light in August' is close to perfect. Doubt if I will care to struggle with 'Finnegan's Wake', but 'Ulysses' is definitely worth tje effort (especially 'Sirens' and 'Circe' and that amazing writing he does for the lame girl romanticizing, 'Nausicaa'), and I recommend Edna O'Brien's excellent book on it in order to get through it.. May want to read Willa Cather at some point, have not done so. Of Dreiser, I have very much liked 'The Bulwark'. Most things I haven't read haven't been because they were ultimately too difficult, but because of lack of time for reading everything. Of difficult things completed, I'd definitely say 'Tristram Shandy' was the most maddening, and took me 3 1/2 years. I read the Recherches of Proust in 2 months, admittedly all of it first in English. But that's several thousand pages; I thought Sterne was much more forbidding, because there is almost no sensuosity to this kind of writing.

Not even pity (well, the whole syndrome of substance abuse, yes, of course, but not applied to this performance exactly), much less hatred. While not recommended by any means (even if you're not performing), but it's, in fact, extremely impressive. Of course, in the long run 'beauty and talent wasted' is correct, but in the short run it gives an extraordinary insight into talent and professionalism. I do wonder what the 'danced beautifully' looked like, though, because it was probably at least different (unless the vodka and pills were every day) from the norm. Canbelto, did it say anything about that specific performance, other than that it was 'beautiful'? I imagine that this has been many times the cause of something in a performance that seemed 'off', although the reason not having been known to the viewer, even if this one happened to have been inspired. They would still have been high somewhat, of course, and obviously the wrist-slashing would have been pretty superficial.

rg--are you talking about the reference and special Lincoln Center collections? I just was talking about general circulation that I can look up on 'LEO', and that said they had 2 copies Reservable Copies 0. Oh, now I looked back and it is not even a vhs, this one, but rather 2 film reels, which I guess you can go over there and watch, but they're not circulating, as I had thought on just quickly looking at first. Man Who Dances does have one circulating copy. No, here is what it looks like: Performing Arts Library - Circulating Collections Y M16 1142 B LPA Young Adult Film 2nd Floor Reserve Film & Video Collection 16MM Film Transfer/Rotation Performing Arts Library - Circulating Collections Y M16 1142 B LPA Young Adult Film 2nd Floor Reserve Film & Video Collection 16MM Film Transfer/Rotation So circulating, but for schools or going over there, etc.

Aha, that got my hopes up, but the copies aren't reservable. Maybe eBay has it, I can have it watched there if not.

Thanks for mentioning this, I just found that NPYL has one single old VHS left, and so I will be able to watch this. I'm looking forward to finally seeing him in Rubies, even if just in excerpts.

Carbro, yes, this is the kind of thing I was getting at. As it is, with Drummer Boy and Odd Couple, I guess the supposition must be that there will be few people seeing these little pieces of old schlock, so most bases are covered. All the other dancers were subject to old forms of reproduction as well, and there would be much more of an outcry if all of them had decided to keep almost all of their work invisible. Of course, he could change his mind at some point.

It can't be bad quality in all cases, because he went to the Walter Reade and let a more-then-usually select audience see it anyway. It certainly seems if it can be shown in a theater, re-mastered, it could be shown in a DVD, and canbelto has already said how good he looks in MND, so maybe he'll make exception for this one. But even the theater showing goes back to 2004. Someone did mention it might go to DVD, but I don't know if Villella's desire to suppress all of these means this one can't either. I wonder how this Little Drummer Boy one managed to sneak through, though. I can't imagine he wanted that, and with that easily available, the policy is a pretty strange sort of vanity--because even that one is worth looking at, and yet as a number, it couldn't be more corny. I'm sure many of the others are not. Mel, do you know anything further about this (that isn't too insider) beyond what rg has told us?

Thanks, rg. I guess that means that some other dancers did do this sometimes, but not nearly so sweeping, i.e., literally all of them in Villella's case. I still hate knowing that I can't see that old Nutcracker again, because I haven't ever liked another one that much.

So does that mean that any dancer can do that? I asked in the other thread what the legalities are, because I would not have thought that any performers of any kind would have the power to control the evolution of their television appearances. It does seem unfair to the other dancers, unless they don't want them shown either, but I would have thought production people would have the power on these matters. Thanks in advance.

How are these things determined legally, not releasing? I remember the Nutcracker with McBride as a child, and have looked for it several times. So this is not readily available because he wants none of his old TV performances shown? I thought it was the other way around, as with the problems in using Mozartiana for Elusive Muse, and didn't know performers, just by virtue of being one of several in a work, could determine how they must not be released. Does this mean that any of the dancers in Midsummer Night's Dream could make the decision to close that off from DVD, etc., release? And this means that McBride couldn't therefore decide she wanted that Nutcracker released, since Villella has decided it musn't? Or am I missing something here? That particular Nutcracker I saw several times as a child, and is the main thing among these I'd like to see again, along with Midsummer Night's dream. so Villella appeared with Farrell and Kent at the Walter Reade showing of the MND showing, but wants no commercial release of it? I wonder if that's why we end up with a YouTube of Villella dancing to 'Little Drummer Boy' as sung by Perry Como, which looks like a professional swooped into Ted Mack or Dick Clark to make ballet accessible to the heathen teenagers. It's definitely easy enough to see why he'd want that one buried forever, his own technique notwithstanding.

Azulynn--thanks so much. I had looked up an old thread which was not so clear about this, but was also useful about a few other aspects. And while I would have found a truncated story somewhat more acceptable in a ballet, than a film which starts by being a faithful translation of a novel, then whacks itself in half without warning--this makes the ballet more magnetic than ever, now that you have been explicit that the daughter Cathy and 'little Linton' are also in it. I simply loved the few clips I saw of the ballet, and haven't been able to get it out of my mind since. Your report makes it only the more upsetting that I don't know when I can get back to Paris (and time my visit for seeing this), and that it is not yet a commercial DVD although have been televised in France, as we discussed a few months back. Yours and other reports (as well as the clips) make me think this must be a masterpiece, and the 'dark overall' quality is what is needed--even the Lintons would have been just genteel country English, and provincial, they were not sophisticated urban people. This is the kind of work that gives the most hope: I don't see how it could be carried off in this anti-romantic era, and yet it was. And someone had also mentioned those plastic flowers in the set that would pop right back up after rolling around in them. I believe some of those were in the clip I saw--minimalist, but really enchanting, and the ballerina so supple that someone I showed it to who works in animation was even reminded of animation in the free looseness as she was being swung around--magical, without needing a million 'special effects' to make itself marketable.

Thanks for your response. I just wanted to be clear that the New York people skits were in the taping of the radio show at Town Hall, not in the movie (at least I don't recall it in the film), so that was Keilor's stuff, and even though they were doing it in New York, they were doing it for their regular audience, obviously, not for us. So it was strange to see their perceptions and takes on us on our own turf--and here we can talk about accuracy, just for the record--a New Yorker wouldn't recognize those parodies, they were pure Midwestern Tall Tales to us. Yes, I like 'Gosford Park' a lot, esp. for Kristin Scott-Thomas. I think maybe 'Nashville' and 'The Player' are my Altman favourites as whole films. Now back to Mamma Mia.

So glad you brought this up, because this I just keep forgetting to do. Someone please recomend one ASAP, while I still have it on my mind.

Sandy, I think anyone who likes Keillor's things would like 'Prairie Home Companion'. I saw him recording his radio show at Town Hall in 2002, and there was little difference between that and the film, which I thought had little Altman to it (I like a lot of Altman myself, as well, from 'Thieves Like Us', 'McCabe and Mrs. Miller', to 'Nashville', 'The Player' and some of 'Short Cuts'). In the show at Town Hall, he had Kristen Chenoweth and Odetta, both fine performers, but there were also things that reminded me of the girl who had the dream, or something like that, about how some Keillor joke wasn't funny. My friend that had tickets and I just didn't find this sort of thing funny, that's all, and the movie was the same. In the show, there were skits about skits of New Yorkers, none of which had anything recognizable to do with any I've ever known in over 40 years; I don't think they were especially even trying to be accurate that way. There were the Powder Milk Biscuit ads, etc., and little musical interludes, and Keillor seemed to in both show and movie to just be rattling off something in a mechanical way. I only watched it because I love Lily Tomlin, who was friendly with Altman and I suppose with Streep and Kline. I would be interested to know what you thought Altman brought to it, though. What did seem strange was that the show seemed still to be thriving in 2002, and I wondered if the movie was about the actual end of Keillor's broadcasts, I don't know if they've ended or not. I love Tomlin in 'I Heart Huckabees' as well as old things like 'Nashville' and she and Waits are the best thing in 'Short Cuts', she and Scott Glenn are hilarious in their little 'noir' thing in 'The Player', but if you want to see something really amazing, check out the YouTube clips of Tomlin and Hoffman and David Russell cussing like sailors on the set of 'I Heart Huckabees', they are the most outrageous violent things you'd ever imagined big movie pros getting caught doing. Anyway, NYTimes loved 'Prairie', and plenty of smart people I know personally as well. I think it's according to whether you like Keillor more than anything else, Altman seemed mostly to have left it alone, with some of the usual Altman signifiers in there. He probably just loved Keillor himself, being a Midwesterner, and this was probably a homage. This also from Corliss: "The great American songbook of Geshwin and Porter and Rodgers standards can sound positively atonal to teen ears, just as hip-hop seems melody-deficient to the folks with hearing aids." This is so totally sloppy in terms of what 'atonal' means and what 'melody' means that I thought, only finding this write-up because someone put me on to it, that it was written by someone 25 or so, phrases like 'trending down' and 'heartache you could disco to'. All this MySpace, FaceBook kind of slangy shtick-lexicon is now learnable by 65-year-olds, it seems, as Corliss is a senior critic, but now often called 'soft-headed' by his colleagues. I sometimes think, when I see this sort of thing, that editing is now reduced to proofreading for spelling mistakes and subject-verb agreement.

Do you really think there's a good likelihood? I mean, since the event was already almost 4 years ago? I'm still hoping for POB's 'Wuthering Height's to become available, but, besides that, I can think of no ballet performances I'd rather see get to DVD than this.

The composer of 'Diversion of Angels' for Martha Graham, among much other music, has died. There are some interesting stories of Martha and Norman's meeting, Norman's daughter, and a dancer who did Diversion at a site called Chorus Gypsy. I'd put the link, but I'm not sure it's allowed to link to that kind of site, so you can key those in and find it.

'Wuthering Heights', as per my paragraphs under the 'What are you reading?' thread. This is probably to me the most overrated of all those considered classics--many Oscar nominations including for picture and actor. It follows the story faithfully, whacks it off in half, leaves out several of the most crucial characters; and has none of the desolate spirit, brutal and even morbid (Heathcliff digs up Cathy's grave after 15 years or so, claims 'she still has her face') of the amazing book. Plus Olivier does Heathcliff very little differently from Darcy in 'Pride and Prejudice'. And even though the part of the story that is told is very faithful, it's boring because there is no atmosphere of fearsome landscape except for the big snow at the beginning; and the balls at the Lintons look like something out of Bette Davis's 'Jezebel' or Garbo's 'Anna Karenina'. Going to ask here as well: How does the POB piece treat the story? Is it like the movie, just a doomed-love-story about Heathcliff and Cathy? That might make sense as a ballet (while it was just weak as a movie)--even if only because the movie already gets us used to this truncation, which falsifies Bronte, but could also seem more natural an excision for a ballet than a film adaptation of a book. I don't like 'You Can't Take it With You' either. It's like early-hippie, flower-child-commune stuff, with Ann Miller being 'creative' dancing in the house, I think that's what it was.

Where did she mention that? I thought that when the film was made the two were still married. Me too. If it had ended and she mentioned it, allusion to it was so subtle I totally missed it, but I only watched it once. And I think it is two years before the divorce, isn't it? I thought she just referred to Mejia as 'somebody I loved' ,referring to early 70s, etc., the whole conflict time.

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Mel, this is something I've wanted to ask about for awhile, and may need a new thread. I didn't know till reading this just now that SB was evoking the court of Louis XIV, but since he is so famous for being a ballet dancer (I guess one calls him that), what are other appearances of him in the ballet repertory. Also, is there a ballet with Louis XIV himself as a virtuoso dancer, or even just a main character, all about the Sun King? It just had occurred to me that I can't imagine there wouldn't be, and that OTOH I don't know of any. Thanks.

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