Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0005333, Tue, 11 Jul 2000 08:56:29 -0700

Subject
Re: Novels into films (fwd)
Date
Body
From: TENTENDER@aol.com

A propos of Proust's birthday and speaking of film adaptations of great
novels, I feel that the Raul Ruiz film version of Le temps retrouvé
(currently playing in New York City) is, at the very least, a beautiful
effort, and, despite the extraordinary difficulties, a remarkable adaptation.
The casting is certainly extremely appealing, Deneuve, Malkovich, Perez,
Béart (especially wonderful) all excellent, and as the two Guermantes ladies
Edith Scob (Princesse) and Marie-Laure Pisier (Mme Verdurin) are almost
frighteningly right (and the latter extremely amusing). The Marcel, almost
ever-present, Marcello Mazarella, is also quite remarkable. The art direction
could hardly be better, and Ruiz has come up with some very effective visual
correlatives to the ever-shifting sands of time that are surprisingly spatial
(you'll see what I mean).

The one real weakness (and my own professional orientation only makes it
worse) is that the Vinteuil Sonata is very inadequately composed -- truly a
clumsy bit of work. This has not, however, kept me from seeing it three
times.

Christopher Berg
Tentender@aol.com