papeetepatrick

Although this is not the main topic, I do admit to having some problems with this in 'Rosenkavalier', because I haven't seen one in which there is even any effort to make Octavian at least look somewhat masculine. This is annoying, because while one knows it is a woman, and is a woman only so that the music can be written this way, to emphasize the look of femininity by putting a female singer in tight pants makes it seem desexed. I've mentioned this before in another thread, I think, but I also have seen 12th Nights when Viola/Cesario is dressed so that even though you know it is a girl dressed as a boy, it still looks like a pretty boy, not any longer a girl. Yes! and this was pure Casting from Heaven, dirac, because this is one of the most perfectly-suited roles Martins ever got. There's a sense, especially from Martins and Von Aroldingen in that filmed version, of an Ingmar Bergman atmosphere, as if parts of 'Davidsbundlertanze' are 'Scenes from Marriages', as it were, and a distinctly northern European feeling. When he swings offstage with Watts (I believe it is), there's this marvelous sexual fire, which has to do with the choreography, of course, but also with the dancers--and the costumes for 'Davidsbundlertanze' are simply out of sight, one of the effects of which is to bring out the Scandinavian-ness of Martins in an especially brilliant way.

I've wondered about d'Amboise in 'Davidsbundlertanze'. It's touching if you know who he is and was (including previously with Farrell), but did it just naturally come out that way? I assumed that was what was wanted, even though unconventional, because it's powerful that way, and makes Farrell's part seem younger and almost teen-agerish (I liked this) than it did when I saw it live and with someone else. I've watched the video a few times recently, but can't remember who I saw in 1986 do it (I know it wasn't d'Amboise, though), so that I imagine the effect is much different with any younger dancer. I hadn't as much against Von Aroldingen in 'Emeralds' as most did, but didn't care for Ashley in it at all. This is for the wrong reasons, surely, as Von Aroldingen has a more noble and strong face than most ballerinas, with whom you notice the face less even if they are greater dancers; so sometimes when she was just being stately and tall I like to watch that, although I didn't see her do it in person. Don't care for Viviana Durante as Aurora, though. Are the roses always so brusquely jerked as she did them? I remembered some of the old New Age talk about 'flowers screaming when picked'. Well, I agree with Bart about Alicia Alonso, but I don't know if she convinced me that, when 'waning', her will triumphed in 'Carmen'. I just couldn't get into it, too much law of gravity at play from one step to another.

Except this is also true of Streisand, which is why she inhabits 'Hello, Dolly!', the dinosaur, as if it were a mere trifle. That's why I'm still one of the few glad she did the part--production too big for other ladies, including Carol Channing, who doesn't look so great on film in 'Thoroughly Modern Millie', only thing I can remember her in, and can't stand it. And I think most of Streisand's films are not big enough for her; her best performances are in the big ones (she was right about her labour of love 'Yentl', and she did pull it off), even if the movies are not so hot. But then there are different kinds of 'big' in these performers, and I know mostly what you mean about Ethel in movies, although she is very funny in some of them (isn't she in 'Love Your Neighbor?' or some such nonsense?) However, can you seriously imagine what the world would be like without her in 'There's No Business Like Show Business'. I even like Monroe a lot in it, but there is no movie without Merman doing that song. It's so beautiful I could scream, and when I do watch it, I go around singing it for a few days, and as a result I always get a star hung on my dressing room...

She was great in 'Miracle of Morgan's Creek'--literally an original piece of performance. Also great in 'Annie', I thought. I liked Ethel better later in the TV version (with 'Old Fashioned Wedding'), but Hutton might have been better for the movie than Garland (that should have been Ethel too, though, shouldn't it? Almost anything should have, if it needed tough and hard) What is terrible is that I thought she had been dead for 25 years. But I'm glad she hadn't, both for the obvious reasons and because it seems she did have some worthwhile years after the addiction period and did some good, if less glamorous, work.

IMDB has a listing for a 1965 British 7-part miniseries and the 1984 Masterpiece Theater version you're talking about. One of the commenters says it's not on DVD.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/07/books/07...?ref=obituaries This is considerably better, will tell those who don't know that much about Baudrillard a lot more than the early one. I was interested that 'The Matrix' referenced Baudrillard, and that he then wrote about their 'series of misunderstandings.' I fully agree (and had somehow missed this, although I've followed Baudrillard pretty closely). 'The Matrix' is easy stuff, but that's not why it's not impressive. There are a lot of reasons. However, Keanu Reaves was well-cast, because his half-there absence/presence was paradoxically 'authentic' for such a half-there, overrated film. I've never seen him give any performance that wasn't pretty slack-jawed and weak, but I haven't seen that many either. He was also 'authentically horrible' in 'My Own Private Idaho' and the deeper textured film partner, River Phoenix, then went too deep, ending in tragedy at or near Depp's Viper Club. Zizek's 'Welcome to the Desert of the Real' takes its title straight out of dialogue from 'The Matrix,' and then proceeds to more or less set out the new direction he will take some of this kind of analysis he's derived from Baudrillard among others, and to corrupt it thoroughly with his own blind ambition.

I think they will, as I should have included that his work with the ideas of 'simulation' (he followed up on a lot of McLuhan's great work) was truly the best that has appeared, and is important for some of us to keep in mind as we learn how to try to manage cyberspace. But I mainly added this to say that he was not especially anti-American, as many of the Continental philosophers are/were much more overtly. He was no French chauvinist, for example, if one takes the title of one of his essays 'Of Course Chirac Is Useless' seriously (I do, and he definitely did). There's no way he could be called a Marxist. His best work was done in analysis of media--a field in which it is very hard to keep your head, to say the least.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/03/06/...Baudrillard.php He was a real hero of mine, a reckless thinker who took chances rather than being as fastidious as some of his peers--he would therefore occasionally come up with the most amazingly illuminating and inspiring things, which could change one's whole view of the universe. It didn't matter if some of his outrageous things were completely crazy-sounding, he was experimenting and working on an idea till he got it. Of interest to artists especially, his work on the hyperreal and emphasis on Warhol was groundbreaking and very useful to many of us. It wasn't 'popularized', but it was comprehensible, whereas much academic serious writing is kept within the academy. Other people could read it, as other people can read Nietzsche, of which he is to some degree a descendant. However, he was in no way a sell-out, which the 'rock star philosopher' Slavoj Zizek seems to many of us to be. Nor was it a matter of obscurantism as with Derrida, with whom you had to wade through to much difficult text to find a pearl or two. Aside from Gilles Deleuze, probably for me the most influential of these last few decades of French structuralict and post-structuralist philosophy.

She got it for Best Supporting Actress, didn't she? I think it was already the usual by then.

Finally finished Mailer's book on Picasso ('Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man'), found it utterly illuminating. When faced with the austere Cubism, before it began to be infused with some colour when the affair with Marcelle began and progressed (and developed into the 'Synthetic Cubism'), I realized more than I ever did at a museum that I considered myself to know nothing whatever about painting. The dark tans, browns, umbers of the first great works of Cubism would not be anything I could really recognize or understand without great help. So therefore, I've gotten a good start, but just those plates made me know more than anything I've ever looked at what a dilettante I am when it comes to the complex works of the modern painters.

And I am going to go to them no more (with one possible exception...). I remember well the dread of what Gergiev might do in terms of not being sensitive enough to the dancers, and I obviously believe that the dance has to come first. But none of the fears of what the flamboyant Gergiev might do proved true; if anything, he was thoroughly heroic, life-giving and transforming. However, my ignorant bliss about NYCB's orchestra was all overcome when Leigh and volcanohunter informed me that NYCB is almost always dreadful; I figured it was just par for the course, mediocre compared to opera and symphony orchestras, but not worse than other major companies. It has been proven to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that people are disappointed with the tired company and the bored or half-competent orchestra. Knowing about the POB, RB and Vienna orchestras, this is now the last straw. I am not going any more till they fix their orchestra problem, I don't care if that's forever. There's obviously no excuse for it, and Gergiev proved it. POB's emerging as a great company is relatively new, isn't it? As of the 80's, mustn't it be? When I lived in Paris in the early 70s, I was aware of them, and saw them once, but I was not overwhelmed by 'Notre Dame de Paris.' I am sure that the playing at the Kirov is a thousand times better than at the NYCB pit, and yet I now am stuck with impractical travel or tolerating disenchantment where I thought all was a more or less normal situation, however mediocre in some ways. The NYCB has become tacky in some ways: That's the one thing ABT can afford to do from time to time, but I don't think NYCB can do it indefinitely, as it quits being the NYCB if it gets more and more infused with settling for what will 'just do.'

You just put all these elements together and you have the answer. It's just a matter of collective and individual decisions to improve the mess by sustaining discipline or leave mediocre. I'm glad Gergiev delivered, he proved it could be done, with Gottlieb even more impressed than Haglund's. Obviously, the musicians were under a more commanding presence than they are used to, it's normal they'd play better for someone like this; and this may not be something that can be accomplished until a truly great conductor is hired. The dancers are not nearly always consistent either, as is well-known. Of course Gergiev was going to bring out the best in the musicians, just like any great artist is going to get the best results--of course the players are going to respond to a high-energy conductor more than a lower-energy one. It's money, taste, will, and all the obvious things. We'll see if anything happens, that's all. It's probably not going to be possible to figure out how to do without something resembling the Vienna, London and Paris models, but it definitely is at least as much all the house conductors' faults for not being magnetic enough as it is the players. Also, this was made into a special occasion, and special occasions are inevitably going to get more attention. If the company wants a fine orchestra, they can get one. If the powers-that-be don't care enough, they've already proved they can get away with leaving it as it is.

I didn't care if she won, because I didn't watch it and ceased caring long ago, but I too was tired of harassment. At least you saw it. I had to fight off 2 friends treating me like I was a cretin for not seeing it and I'm still annoyed. I didn't even give it any thought, because I like to see footage of the real queen and find her funny. Therefore, I don't believe Helen Mirren was all that good as the Queen no matter how good she was. Both of these obnoxious friends who bugged me hate the real Queen. I'd be much more interested in a short about the 1982 minutes in Buckingham Palace when 'Elizabeth Windsor', as Mirren, being the good sport for America, referred to her, had that little London Club Scene moment with the trespasser who described her as 'a young girl in her curlers'. She 'doesn't smoke', and can't reach her buzzer, but will 'see if I can get one...' [a cigarette]. This was only a year after the Royal Wedding, so she had actually, as being the object of desire by an ex-junkie who had previously gotten into the palace and stolen a bottle of her wine, upstaged her glittering daughter-in-law. The short could be made reasonably lengthy by long tunnel scenes in search of the wine, and research could be done on what the legitimate employees were doing during the various movements toward the high crime, perhaps even a musical number since the royal servants are very obedient, as one observed on the recent PBS thing about Windsor. Even so, the thought of the actual event is more interesting than seeing someone who is merely a great actress play at it. This was hilarious, though, from Christopher: 'Helen Mirren — working the sexy Miss Havisham look. Let the woman wear a tracksuit, now'--worth the whole article...

No worries, Ostrich. I didn't do a lot of it myself, and usually disliked it when I did. It probably depends on the size (and degree of professionalism) of the class whether a real time-beater is needed. Sometimes these can do it with a certain amount of grace. There was a Hispanic woman named Gladys (don't know the last name) who was popular with many teachers in the 70s and 80s in New York. I heard her once; she was precisely a ballet pianist, knew exactly what was needed, and it sounded okay given that the context required that it sound exactly so. It requires a lot of being mechanical no matter what, and Gladys knew how to deal with huge traffic jams such as those at Steps, with odd birds like the late Bobby Blankshine, when the atmosphere was brash and Broadway. Some of them are good enough to become rehearsal and performance pianists too, of course, but there is a sort who does nothing else but ballet classes and they do serve a purpose, because they're totally reliable.

This is very important what Leigh and volcanohunter say. Since I don't get to those companies, they come here rarely, and when I have gotten to London and Paris I've never gone to the ballet, I had not much to compare NYCB orchestra with. In student days I was an usher one summer at the Met, where there were pick-up orchestras far inferior to the NYCB orchestra for companies like Stuttgart and Cuban Nacional, so I didn't know there was a vast difference among ballet orchestras. However, this is material Kennicott should have known to if he was going to write about bad ballet orchestra performance. He should have known everything volcanohunter said about small places like Edmonton, but certainly about POB and RB. If it is true that one of the most unique ballet companies in the world does not have nearly as good an orchestra as it could have -- and this is seemingly well-known, proved by the fact that it has been possible in Vienna, Paris, and London--then it is unquestionably a lesser company than I thought it was, because even if the dancing is the most important thing, a bad orchestra is not excusable in a great company. While this crossing with opera orchestras may be very effective, it still is probably not the only means to get a decent ballet orchestra, and so, if nothing else, NYCB orchestra ought to be pronounced a disgrace. I disagree with Leigh only in that there are only so many times it can be said to be dreadful before you stop including it; if it is that bad, it should be included in every single review. So there is a certain lack of credibility in NYCB if its orchestra is so grotesque by comparison with other major companies.

I really don't care much for this guy's writing, now that there's been a bit more discussion. While I'm no big fan of Minkus and Adam, it is absurd to say 'ruin bad music and who notices?' What a toffee-nosed thing to say, show off all that high-toned taste. Of course, even mediocre music can sound light years better with a good orchestra than without one, and this is obviously not confined to ballet. Opera is full of trash, and it can be enjoyable if well-performed. Drigo's 'Corsaire' things are hokey and they sound wonderful if well-played even though they might be used at the circus quite effectively (the choreography is pretty corny too, but so what if it's not 'Agon'? I think with Minkus and Adam, those are really the kinds of scores to speed up, if one makes certain to not start racing the dancers again. And it's all a matter of opinion anyway: I love Tchaikovsky, but Pierre Boulez says 'I hate Tchaikovsky and so other people can conduct him'. I assume this would mean he wouldn't worry that 'artistic mischief' had been done, if it's a composer he literally claims to 'hate.' I also don't think the NYCB orchestra is nearly always 'beyond embarassing', although I have decided that people will write anything. The levels of journalism I'm seeing at many big-name journals are beginning to floor me with their twitty pretentiousness and downright stupidity. And Delibes's score for 'Copellia' is not trash, by any means. And there's even the 'trash' of the concert hall. The piano concertos of Saint-Saens are all considered 'trash' by many highbrow types--not one of whom can toss them off with such aplomb as Aldo Ciccolini so that such idle talk would never even come to mind. It's also, for example, much more common to hear talk about Liszt's various works of 'trash' by critics than it is from professionals. They're involved with doing a good job of making it work. Bart--I don't think most players in a ballet orchestra consider it at all a demeaning job, but it is obviously not going to be the thing to aspire to any more than a young ballet dancer aspires to spend her entire career in the corps if she could be a soloist. That's just reality. The problem I think comes more from the heads, the ballet masters themselves, and then the conductors, not demanding or not having the time to demand and give priority to the music. In that case, they need to ask for expert advice, and all the big companies could definitely have first-rate orchestras if they gave it a high enough priority. There's also exhaustion, lack of rehearsal, just as there is for the dancers. But the Heads of the Ballet Companies would have it in their power to do some improvement, if they themselves can hear the need and have the taste to give it proper attention. It's simply not realistic to expect a ballet orchestra to ever be able to maintain the level of a symphony orchestra, because the music is never featured in the same pure way; it is secondary to dance.

I'm not quite superannuated, but the ones who are are 'not deaf' and they are doing what they have been told to do. That remark about the 'superannuated pianists who are too deaf to hear' is objectionable. I've been fired from doing ballet classes because I wouldn't do the hokey cornball stuff a lot of ballet teachers want; it's their decision, and they like those old-timers who bang it out. These dance class pianists are not at the top of various musical fields, but they are the ones the ballet masters like; I think Helene mentioned something a few months back about Dianne Chilgren, formerly of NYCB and now with PNB, describing how Balanchine even wanted a different kind of sound for the 'all-business' or rather 'technique-focussed' aspects that are part of dance class. Also, this accounts for none of the audience, it accounts only for those who were in 'ballet class studio' situations, so it accounts only for the dancers themselves who may well like a lousy orchestra better than the pianist who made it possible to keep in time properly, when they weren't able to do it any other way. It also seems to assume that there is a sizeable group of balletgoers who never heard any other music except what they heard in ballet class and then at the performance with the mediocre orchestra. .

It's inevitable. As sz told us when some of us were complaining about 'Nutcracker' tempi, the dancers even in NYCB have no say regarding the music--when it is a matter that ought to concern their ability to dance to it. Singers would necessarily have much more power to make suggestions and demands in opera and anything else sung, there is a sense of greater importance to other musicians than dancers, no matter what anyone says. Most of the dancers are also not going to be concerned about the performances of the music other than those which affect their own efforts, i.e., the troubled horns they'll hear but these will not haunt their nights. The other side is the musicians' side: This is not very nice to say, but if this is the case at that most music-oriented of ballet companies, the NYCB, then there is still, relatively speaking, also some sense that the music is accompanying the dance, that it is secondary. In fact, there is not even 'some sense', it's a fact and it's always been lived with. The musicians may be fine players, but they do not consider it to be the great job working for the big orchestras would be; and they would be right. There's no such thing as a James Levine making a seamless golden orchestra for a ballet company. As to whether it's actually getting worse, I don't have any opinions except for not expecting all that much ever from the ballet orchestras, and being disgusted at undanceable tempi. If Gergiev turned out to be a happy surprise, nevertheless he was a guest conductor, and Haglund's reports that it was an upgrade, but not that much more. Articles complaining about this, if numerous enough, may help, but I doubt it. I don't like to hear messes at the ballet, but I have never held ballet orchestras to the standard that one holds a symphony orchestra or great opera house orchestra, and it is not even realistic to do so. There is never going to be a ballet orchestra to achieve what one finds at Bayreuth or even in the Los Angeles Philharmonic, so it's best to go on and keep complaining and criticizing and hope that they will get at least slightly less sloppy.

No time now, but Salonen is having a lot of success with contemporary music as conductor of LA Philharmonic. There was a long article in NYTimes Magazine in 2006, so search that for a good example of where it is working.

I'll just continue in a second post so the extra part doesn't disappear. There are several songs for Rhett and Scarlett besides 'How Often, How Often', including 'Two of a Kind', 'Marrying for Fun', and the concluding 'It Doesn't Matter Now.' Like much of Rome, these are pleasing and few, if any, ever become hits. The film version of 'Fanny' only used themes from the Broadway musical in form of background music. 'Blueberry Eyes', sung by Isabelle Lucas and Marion Ramsey as Mammy and Prissy, is another folksong thing, and is quite pretty. 'A Time for Love' is for Belle Watling and Rhett, and is fairly insignificant. 'Bonnie Gone' is beautiful if somewhat stereotyped song for a big black Mahalia Jackson-sort of voice, and Isabelle Lucas makes it effective. The recording was made June 18, 1972, at EMI's Abbey Road studios in London. It's chief interest is the few really beautiful Harold Rome songs--this means the ones sung by Presnell and Lucas, although the other singers are unusually good, more than adequate. I like Presnell perhaps even better than Raitt and MacRae, perhaps he was the last genuine artist in that tradition of big Broadway hero, and all of his songs sound like pure gold. One thing I noticed, not having listened to the album in a few years, is that this is not really something possible, and yet this was a good attempt as far as you can tell from the score. Rome's scores are excellent even if they don't quite reach hit status with individual songs. This particular score is reminiscent of some Broadway scores that were being written at that time in the early 70's, like Claibe Richardson's 'The Grass Harp', an enormous flop that nevertheless has been preserved in its often lovely score on record as well--it's hard to believe it starred Barbara Cook, Karen Morrow, and Carol Brice and lasted maybe 20 performances. Mainly, I think the things the made the film of 'Gone with the Wind' possible due to perhaps bad social conditions during its time were already a bit sterilized in this early 70s production; but to do it now just seems so silly, even though such silliness could be said to match the times. I wouldn't go unless paid to any new version of 'Gone With the Wind', it will inevitably be a cartoon. Edited to add: Amazon.com has the 1970 Japanese recording and there is also a book by Florence Rome called 'the Scarlett Letters' that the NYPL has. I looked at it a few years ago, skimmed it, it's like Diana Vreeland or something, lots of Park Avenue types who could still be famous then in a more old-styled way, but I didn't find it of much interest. All these types, even when they still exist, are not publicized in the same way that big media figures are, but I was still surprised Mrs. Rome's book seemed so frivolous.

I just remembered there is an excellent example of the conflicting styles of American and English acting techniques in Mailer's 'Marilyn'. In 'The Prince and the Showgirl' section, it is all laid out and detailed beautifully by Mailer. Years afterward, if I recall correctly, Olivier, not having been so impressed at the time, is full of praise for Marilyn's presence in the film.

Dirac--will do. In more detail tomorrow or Sunday, and will simply add to this entry here. In the meantime, there are very many pretty songs and almost all extremely well-sung. The loveliest is probably 'How Often, How Often' sung by Harve Presnell and June Ritchie, who plays Scarlett. There are montages of Appalachian/Scottish type songs juxtaposed next to Scarlett singing of Tomorrow is Another Day and the household staff singing a Tra la la song for Christmas. Weakest in the Rome score are attempts at the big signatures of the film--a song called 'Tara' is not bad, but is not nearly as effective as when Scarlett's father goes into a mere few words of verbal rapture about 'the land!' in the film and Scarlett can almost be seen to absorb it, with the image dissolving in ways not seen much since--much more rapturous there, to be sure. You hear her singing of 'never going hungry again', etc., not terrible though. The one actually very bad thing is the Overture, because there is the attempt to do something to catch the spirit of 'Tara's Theme' without, of course, overtly imitating, and the result if dreadfully flat. In fact, it cannot be said that even with Rome's lovely music there is ever anything that is as stirring as those chimes that open the credits for the theme of the movie. But there is a song for nearly every character, including Frank Kennedy, Scarlett's father as mentioned, Melanie and Ashley (this is very nice), and even Belle Watling and Rhett. I'll go through it song by song tomorrow or Sunday.

Fox News is hardly to be believed, well they're not supposed to have decent fact-checkers, I suppose--it maybe wouldn't even go with the territory: 'Gone With the Wind' has been a musical since the early 70's and has a charming score by Harold Rome. It was a Japanese production first and there was always talk of opening it in New York. In London, Harve Presnell was Rhett, and the venerable Bessie Love was Aunt Pitty-Pat. I am not even guessing anything here, as I have the LP of the London Cast Recording. So maybe they're using somebody else's book and music, but I'm not looking forward to it and frankly even hope one of the big department-store musical people will write it. I can hardly think of a less appealing idea at this point.

But it's possible to approach this very closely by doing what I mentioned above--reading in English and then in French if it's a book--and also by watching a French film several or many times. In 2000 or so, I recall watching 'Ma Nuit Chez Maud' making sure I read all the subtitles to make sure I fully understood everything. Then I turned the television around and just listened to the entire movie, and my partial-French was adequate enough to then hear it all in French, because I already knew what the sense was. I could have done this in a cruder way with German and Italian, it's just according to if and when you can take the time to do it. If you know 'Phedre' very well and then see it at the Comedie Francaise, you can also know it to a great degree in French--but it's very possible to 'do a movie' at home like I described with 'Ma Nuit Chez Maud' and then begin to hear it as well as experience it on other levels. I highly recommend it, including to myself, because I haven't thought to do it for awhile. Edited to add: Also a few years back I came across a VHS of 'Two Women' which had no subtitles. While I don't know Italian, it was very interesting how much I felt I did understand, and this was by no means an exact kind of procedure I did with 'Ma Nuit...' I never did this before or since, but I was very surprised at how you can experience the language in an aural and musical sense, even though you don't know the grammar or most of the words--period.

I think it is, even if not as much as the native-born Frenchman. Such standards would be very limiting to appreciation of art. I know French fairly well, but if you watch a favourite actor like Huppert or Deneuve or Daniel Auteuil a great deal, you enter into their rhythms, tone, accent and other aspects of language in the same way as a non-dancer who doesn't know the grammar of ballet can appreciate Balanchine with enough exposure. Acting is not all language anyway; and in that case, although I would not be qualified to do something professional in terms of being a French or German movie critic, an American cannot necessarily grasp what a British actor is doing nearly as well as someone English. British English is not the same as American English. Britons and Americans often feel quite qualified to judge each other even if they're not as astute as they might be. Of course, what you may be referring to is Racine in particular, which is generally thought to be not fully appreciable except in French--but even this is relative. I have often read French works in English first so it wouldn't be so arduous, and then gone back to read them in French when I already knew what the text was essentially--in this way you get the flavour. But that's still not the best example. The best is the non-dancer or the non-musician who can never understand certain aspects of the work, but nevertheless can be some of the most truly devoted protectors and lovers of these works by their individual probing. Of course, there are nuances I may miss in a Huppert performance, but then I might miss it in a Mirren performance. I'd just rather see Huppert and therefore do follow her work and not Mirren's. It's also true that someone who is focussing on an actor in his/her native language may not know all that much about acting itself, so even if he appreciates nuances of language, another film actor who doesn't even know the language may pick up things he cannot--the whole grammar of acting, which the non-actor can only know second-hand. I wouldn't quite term the best French acting 'chic' (although the worst sometimes comes under at least that category perhaps more than others due to stereotyping), but I'd agree with 'understated.'