Poet Paul Éluard said that to understand Jean Cocteau’s 1946 version of La Belle et la Bête — Beauty and the Beast — you must love your dog more than your car. His comment is baffling only if you haven’t seen the movie.
Once Cocteau’s film is seen, it’s apparent that what makes his version rewarding is that it values the organic over the mechanical — even the special effects are handmade. It refuses to allow the technical aspects of the film to interfere with the humanity of the story.
This weekend Disney will have their collective fingers crossed that audiences will favour their poodles over their RVs as they release the big-budget, live-action version of Beauty and the Beast starring Emma Watson.
Director Bill Condon says the animated 1991 Disney classic was an inspiration for the new film, but adds he also drew from everything from Twilight and Frankenstein to a 1932 musical comedy called Love Me Tonight when creating the look for the new movie.
He also mentions La Belle et la Bête. “A film I really love.” His take on the Beast looked back to the movie, cribbing the character’s combination of ferocity and romance from Cocteau.
Before taking in the new version this weekend, let’s have a look back at the little-seen 70-year old Cocteau classic.
Loosely based on the timeless Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont fairy tale, the action in La Belle et la Bête begins when a poverty-stricken merchant pilfers a rose from a grand estate owned by a strange creature. The Beast strikes a deal with the man.
He’ll spare the life of the merchant in return for the hand of one of the man’s daughters. Reluctantly the merchant offers Belle, a beautiful girl who had been courted by the oafish Avenant.
At first she is repulsed by the Beast, who looks like the love child of the Wolf Man and Mrs. Chewbacca, but over time his tender ways and nightly offers of marriage warm her heart and she learns to love him for his inner beauty.
Cocteau’s version strays from the original story and Condon’s adaptation with the addition of a subplot involving Avenant’s scheme to kill the Beast and make off with his treasures and an unexpected magical personality switcheroo.
It’s meant to be a happy ending, but not everyone loved the new coda. When Marlene Dietrich saw an early cut of the film at a private screening, she squeezed Cocteau’s hand and said, “Where is my beautiful Beast?”
Other audiences embraced Cocteau’s vision. In his diary the poet wrote of a test screening held for the technicians in the Joinville Studio were the film had been made. “The welcome the picture received from that audience of workers was unforgettable,” he wrote.
Others criticized La Belle et la Bête for its straightforwardness, complaining that the characters are simply drawn, the story one dimensional. Taking that view, however, misses Cocteau’s point.
At the beginning of the film he asks for “childlike simplicity,” inviting the viewer to connect with their inner child, eschew cynicism and embrace naiveté for the film’s 96-minute running time.
In 1946 the request was meant as a salve for a post-occupation France that was still dealing with the aftermath of a terrible war.
Today, in an increasingly contemptuous world, the message still seems timely and welcome.
Poet Paul Éluard said that to understand Jean Cocteau’s 1946 version of “La Belle et la Bête”—“Beauty and the Beast”—you must love your dog more than your car. It’s a good line that suggests Cocteau’s adaptation values the organic elements of the film — even the special effects are handmade—while refusing to allow the technical aspects of the film to interfere with the humanity of the story.
The same can’t be said of the new, big budget live action Disney version of the story. Inspired by their classic 1991 animated story of belle and beast, the remake relies too heavily on computer generated splendour and too little on the innate charms of the story.
Emma Watson plays the bright and beautiful Belle, the independent-minded daughter of eccentric inventor Maurice (Kevin Kline). She is, as the townsfolk warble, “strange but special, A most peculiar mad’moiselle!” She has caught the eye of dimwitted war hero Gaston (Luke Evans) who unsuccessfully tries to win her hand.
Taking one of his new gizmos to market Maurice picks a rose as a present for Belle but runs afoul of the Beast (Dan Stevens). Once a self-centered prince, he was changed into a part-man, part-wolf, part Chewbacca creature by a witch as punishment for his hedonistic life. The only way to beak the spell, she cackles, is to find someone to love him before the last petal falls off an enchanted rose. “Who could love a beast?” he asks.
Enter Belle.
On the hunt for her father, she makes her way to the Beast’s remote castle only to find Maurice locked up for rose theft. She pleads with her hairy host for a moment with her father, and while giving him a hug pushes him out of the cell, slamming the door behind her. Trading her freedom for his, she is now the Beast’s prisoner. The staff—once human, now transformed into the enchanted candlestick Lumiere (Ewan McGregor), Cogsworth the clock (Ian McKellen), a teapot Mrs. Potts (Emma Thompson) and wardrobe (Audra McDonald) although it feels like a missed opportunity to not have Daniel Craig play a eavesdropping microwave—see Belle as just the person to look past his ghastly appearance and see the true princely beauty within and lift his curse and theirs.
Director Bill Condon has made a classic big screen musical with state of the art special effects. Up front is a perfectly cast Emma Watson, who brings more tenacity to the character than we’ve seen in past versions as well as a considerable amount of charm. She is the movie’s beating heart, the human presence in the midst of a considerable amount of pomp and circumstance.
Condon decorates the screen, over-dressing almost every scene with layers of pageantry and CGI. It entertains the eye, particularly in the Busby Berkeley style “Be Our Guest” sequence but overwhelms the film’s humanity. This is a movie that loves its car more than its dog.
“Beauty and the Beast” is a handsome, straightforward movie that adds little to the animated classic. Some of the details have changed. Belle and Beast mourn their deceased mothers and Gaston’s minion Le Fou (Josh Gad) is now gay but the dreamlike of the 1991 version is lacking. The story just seems less magical when built from a collection of pixels.
Where has Renée Zellweger been? From her breakthrough in “Jerry Maguire” to “My Own Love Song” in she was a fixture on the big screen, making twenty-five movies in fifteen years. Then, in 2010, she disappeared from view.
Zellweger is back this weekend in a big way. “Bridget Jones’s Baby” sees her return to her signature role twelve years after starring in the second instalment of the series, “Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason.”
Released on the 20th Anniversary of the first Bridget Jones novel, the new film has Bridget pregnant but unsure whether the father is her true love Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) or Jack (Patrick Dempsey), a handsome, rich American, she had a one night stand with at a music festival. “This is it!” exclaims the forty-three soon-to-be-mom. “More to the point who’s is it?” The happy trio work through nine months of questions and prenatal classes before the bundle of joy arrives and Bridget’s question can be answered definitively.
The six year vacation has not loosened Zellweger’s grip of her most famous character. She slips back into Jones’s skin and it’s a welcome return. The things that made Bridget lovable in the first place are in place—like the self-depreciating humour—but they are tempered by a contentment, more or less, with her life. The search for Prince Charming continues, but her attitude toward men and their place in her life has developed since we saw her last. Make no mistake, this is a rom com, but, largely due to Zellweger’s charming performance, the emphasis is on the comedy and not so much the romance.
It’s a screwball comedy that relies on coincidences puns, double entendres, slapstick and likable characters for its appeal. Light and breezy, it’s “Sex and the City” with English accents and without the cynicism. Dempsey and Firth are polar opposites, the yin and yang of Bridget’s life, and both bring some funny moments and are good foils for Zellweger. Better yet is Emma Thompson, who also wrote the script, as Bridget’s snarky paediatrician. She pops in and out of the movie, leaving laughs in her wake.
By the time the end credits roll “Bridget Jones’s Baby” begins to feel just a tad over long. It tilts too often toward the corny and crowd pleasing, but, having said that, it’s nice to see the franchise allow Bridget to love herself for a change. Ultimately (AND THIS IS NOT A SPOILER) it doesn’t matter who the father is. The underlying message is one of girl power and empowerment. Bridget Jones has come a long way, baby.
The Legend of Barney Thomson is a movie Robert Carlyle was almost destined to make. The Once Upon a Time star not only plays the lead character, he directed the Scottish black comedy about an awkward barber who unwittingly becomes a serial killer.
“I was offered this four or five times purely as an actor over a period of five or six years,” he says. “I was over here in Vancouver working and a friend of mine said he had a Scottish script that I might be interested in. I said, ‘Of course I’ll read it,’ and it was that again. I can’t get away from it.”
The script is based on The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson by Douglas Lindsay, a novel The Scotsman described as “gleefully macabre.”
Carlyle, a Maryhill, Glasgow native, liked the screenplay but says, “there were certain aspects of Glasgow culture that were missing from it.”
“In Glasgow we have a way of speaking to one another that is kind of harsh. That was missing.”
He drew from personal experience to find Glasgow sites that “fitted in with Barney’s life.”
“A lot of the locations you see in the film like the Barrowland Ballroom are places that are kind of dying and might not be around for much longer so I thought this was an interesting way of documenting some of these places.”
Initially he signed on only as an actor but soon found himself doing double duty.
“Believe me when I say, it certainly wasn’t my idea. I don’t know if (the idea) came from the financiers or not. I can’t remember but from whichever source it came from it seemed to be an interesting hook to hang this on that not only was I going to be in it but direct it also. That enthused the financiers.”
The first time feature film director says he took his lead for the tone of the movie from the book and the script.
“Let’s not have the camera moving around and spinning around in circles. Let’s spend the time on the performances and not the camera angles, which you end up cutting anyway.”
He recruited an all-star cast, including Sir Tom Courtney, Ray Winstone and his old Trainspotting cast mate James Cosmo. In a casting coup, he hired two time Oscar winner Emma Thompson to play against type as Barney’s monstrous mom.
“Many, many years ago at the beginning of my career she did a piece on Scotland TV called Tutti Frutti,” he says. “She’s played a Scot in that, from Glasgow. I thought, ‘She’s remarkable. I thought she was English.’ Then suddenly I realized, she is English and just did this terrific accent. There’s not many English people who can do a Scottish accent that well.”
The Legend of Barney Thomson has already won Best Picture at the Scottish BAFTAs and Carlyle is keeping busy on the small screen as Mr. Gold/Rumplestiltskin on Once Upon a Time.
It’s his next project, however, that has the Internet buzzing. In May he’ll reprise the role of the pint glass-wielding psychopath Francis Begbie in the sequel to Trainspotting alongside the film’s original director and cast.
“We were all very emotional when we read it,” he says, “even Danny (Boyle), because these four characters have followed us around for twenty years. Where ever I go people are talking about Begbie. It is very close to us.”
Twenty years ago “A Walk in the Woods” would have starred Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon as grumpy old men in a movie that plays like “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” with a dash of the finding-yourself-in-the-woods movie “Wild” thrown in. Matthau and Lemmon are long gone, but in their place are weathered icons Nick Nolte and Robert Redford as old (literally and figuratively) friends hiking the twenty-two hundred mile Appalachian Trail.
Based on Bill Bryson’s 1998 memoir of the same name, the movie sees Redford as Bryson, a travel writer grappling with growing older. In an effort to clear his head and feel alive again he ignores his wife’s (Emma Thompson) objections—“I don’t think you’re too old,” she says. “You ARE too old! Can’t you just do this in the Volvo?”—and embarks on the Georgia-to-Maine trail.
None of his friends are interested in making the five month, five million step trip with him. “Next time asked me to do something fun… “like a colonoscopy,” says one, until Stephen Katz (Nolte), an estranged friend who owes Bryson money from their last adventure, volunteers to go. Is he up for the trip? “I walk everywhere these days,” he says, “especially since they took away my license.”
Despite their age, their differences and the fact that less than 10% of the people who start the trail, finish it, the pair set off on a journey that will give them a deeper appreciation of home.
“A Walk in the Woods” brings Redford back to the light comedy of his early career but he spends much of the film playing straight man to Nolte’s disagreeable Santa routine. Nolte lurches through this movie with all the subtlety of a drunken elephant, filtering his lines through a voice that sounds like a broken whiskey glass. He has most of the laugh lines and displays good comic timing, dropping well placed swear words and gags with precision.
The movie itself is episodic. Every step takes them closer to a new opportunity for a gag whether it’s a collapsing bunk bed or a bit of mild slapstick in a river. While many scenes are left hanging with no resolution and, occasionally, no real purpose, it’s so amiable watching these two (and their stunt doubles) walking through the woods that you’ll forgive the randomness of several of their adventures.
The guys are the focus, to the detriment of Emma Thompson and Mary Steenburgen who aren’t given near enough to do. Only Kristen Schaal as an annoying over confident hiker makes an impression.
“A Walk in the Woods” won’t ever be mentioned in the same breath as any of Redford or Nolte’s classic films—it’s too silly and the message of leaving home to appreciate home is too obvious—but watching these two charismatic actors onscreen it’s not hard to remember what we liked about them in the first place.
Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death has more in common with its predecessor, the 2012 chiller Woman in Black, than just a title and source material.
The first film starred Daniel Radcliffe, Harry Potter himself, in the lead role. The spooky new movie about the strange goings-on at a haunted house during World War II co-stars Potter alum Helen McCrory and Adrian Rawlins.
McCrory, who plays Angel of Death’s uptight schoolmarm, was pregnant when Potter producers offered her the role of pure-blood witch Bellatrix Lestrange in Order of the Phoenix. She passed and the part went to Helena Bonham Carter but two years later she jumped at the chance to play Narcissa, Bellatrix’s sister and the mother of Draco Malfoy, in The Half-Blood Prince.
Co-star Rawlins is the shadowy Dr. Rhodes in Angel of Death, but is best known as the father of Harry in seven Potter movies. Years before playing James Potter the actor starred in the original Woman in Black TV adaptation as Arthur, the role Radcliffe played in the recent remake.
Over the ten years they were in production it seems like the Potter films employed almost all of the British Actors’ Equity Association. Everyone from Ralph Fiennes, Richard Harris and Gary Oldman to Maggie Smith, Imelda Staunton and Emma Thompson appeared in the series. When Bill Nighy was cast in The Deathly Hallows he said. “I am no longer the only English actor not to be in Harry Potter and I am very pleased.”
Less well known than the British superstars that peppered the Potter cast are some of the supporting players, many of which have gone on to breakout success without Harry.
Tom Felton will likely always be associated with cowardly bully Draco Malfoy, so it’s not surprising he played the spineless bad guy utters the famous “damn dirty ape” line,” in Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
Before he starred opposite Rachel McAdams in the time travel romance About Time Domhnall Gleeson was Curse-Breaker Bill Weasley in The Deathly Hallows. The son of actor Brendan Gleeson is on his way to household name status with a role as an Imperial officer who defects to the Republic in J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
The biggest breakout Potter alum has to be Robert Pattinson. He’s best known as sparkling vampire Edward Cullen in the Twilight franchise but he first appeared as Cedric Diggory in The Goblet of Fire. “The day before [the movie came out] I was just sitting in Leicester Square,” he said, “happily being ignored by everyone. Then suddenly strangers are screaming your name. Amazing.”
By and large romantic comedies are the domain of the young. Sally was 28 when she met Harry and Julia Roberts was just 23 when she starred in Pretty Woman. A new movie called Last Chance Harvey sees Stranger than Fiction co-stars Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson—aged 71 and 49 respectively—bet that audiences will want to see a slightly more mature romance play itself out on screen.
Harvey Shine (Hoffman) is the kind of guy who always looks like an unmade bed. He’s been beaten up by life, and if it wasn’t for bad luck this guy wouldn’t have no luck at all. In the past twenty-four hours he’s been fired from his job, missed a plane and been told that he won’t be walking his daughter down the aisle at her wedding. Meanwhile Kate Walker (Thompson) is an unhappy single woman with a boring job and an overbearing mother. Her best friend Una, who tries in vain to set her up on blind dates, says that the endless phone calls from Kate’s mother are “human contraception” and the reason she can’t find love. Kate and Harvey couldn’t be any more different, he’s a brash American, she’s a blunt, but reserved Brit, but when they meet perhaps opposites will attract.
Last Chance Harvey is a slight movie. It follows the conventions of romantic comedies we’ve seen a thousand times—two unlikely people beating the odds to become a happy couple by the time the credits roll. Dorky Harry meets beautiful Sally. Pretty Woman of the Night meets and is seduced by suave rich guy. You get the idea. You usually know how the movie will end before it even starts, so the challenge for filmmakers is to keep the journey interesting. How the lovers wind up together is as important as why.
To that end Last Chance Harvey does a charming, if slightly forgettable job of bringing these two together. Their courtship is fast paced and not without its roadblocks, these are, after all, two older people who bring a lifetime of baggage to the relationship. Unlike most romantic comedies in which happily-ever-after absolutes are woven into the story, these two are mature enough to know that their romance might not be forever. When she asks how their relationship will work, he says, in a refreshingly honest bit of romantic comedy dialogue “I have no idea.”
Hoffman has the schlep routine down pat but it is Emma Thompson who eats this movie like Pac Man. She’s better than the script, bringing an emotional honesty to a thinly written character.
Last Chance Harvey is a schmaltzy little movie, but is buoyed by the work of these two old pros who add considerable charm to the hackneyed proceedings.
If Mary Poppins and the Supernanny had a love child it would be Nanny McPhee.
Actress Emma Thompson wrote the screenplay—adapted from the book series Nurse Matilda—and plays the title character, an intimidating nanny who tames the seven wild children of Mr. Brown, a widowed undertaker played by Colin Firth.
Emma Thompson may have her name above the title in Nanny McPhee, and she is very good, but the real stars here are the kids. Each of the brood of unruly kids are good performers in an unprecocious way and lend the movie much of its charm.
Then there is the Nanny. Without explanation she arrives—much like Mary Poppins without the spoonful of sugar—in a mysterious cloud, covered in warts and carrying a big stick that seems to contain the answers to the children’s discipline problems. No, she doesn’t beat the kids with it, but stamping it on the floor unleashes magical spells that teach the kids valuable life lessons. Thompson is perfect as the stern mistress, anchoring the film with a still performance that appears to consist entirely of long disapproving stares.
Nanny McPhee is an intelligent, unpretentious modern fairy tale with a plot that would make Roald Dahl proud and a cast that thoroughly enjoys themselves. It should keep the younger kids busy until the next Harry Potter movie hits the theatres.
Imagine Mary Poppins with a W.C. Field’s nose, a fanglike front tooth and earlobes big enough to land a 747 on and you have Nanny McPhee, the magical babysitter who shows up only “when you need her but do not want her.” She teaches each of her family’s five lessons and with each lesson learned one of her facial markings disappears until she ends up looking like Emma Thompson (who also wrote and produced the film) by the time the credits roll.
Set in wartime Britain, “Nanny McPhee Returns” revolves around Isabel Green (Maggie Gyllenhaal) a young mother of three trying to raise her kids and run the family farm while her husband is off at war. She’s also trying to keep the farm out of the hands of her scheming brother-in-law (Rhys Ifans) who will stop at nothing to convince her to sign over her half of the land so he can pay off gambling debts. Add to the mix two snotty cousins from London, some acrobatic pigs, an unexploded German bomb and you have a family primed for spinster Nanny McPhee’s unique brand of care giving.
“Nanny McPhee Returns” is a fantasy for kids that is more about the life lessons than it is about the title character. The kids learn about good behavior and cooperation while McPhee lurks in the background, almost disappearing completely from the movie for a long stretch in the middle. Which is just as well. As wonderful as Thompson is, a little of the Nanny goes a long way, but luckily the movie is brimming with appealing character and winning performances.
As Isabel, Gyllenhaal proves she has a Gwyneth Paltrow-like facility with English accents. She’s wonderful as the kind hearted but frazzled mother, but really delivers in the movie’s emotional moments. She brings a realism to certain scenes that isn’t often found in kid’s entertainment.
At the other end of the scale is Ifans who, as the villain, seems to have lurched off the stage from the local Christmas pantomime. He plays Uncle Phil as broadly as possible, but somehow it works. The subtlety and nuance of his recent work in movies like “Greenberg” is absent, replaced with a delicious sense of fun. If this was a live show the audience would boo every time he stepped on stage.
The real draw, however, is the kids. As Cyril, a pompous little twit who learns to be… well, less of a pompous little twit, Eros Vlahos is a mini Benny Hill in the making, with great comic timing and a way with a line. The other kids, Vincent (Oscar Steer), Norman (Asa Butterfield), Megsie (Lil Woods), and Celia (Rose Taylor-Ritson) more than capably hold the screen, playing against Oscar winners and heavy weights like Ralph Fiennes and Maggie Smith.
Even though “Nanny McPhee Returns” gets a little CGI silly near the end it is a crowd pleasing mix of gentle humor, fantasy—check out the pigs as they take a page from the Esther Williams playbook—and family fun.
