Diva (1981 film)

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Diva

Film poster
Directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix
Produced by Claudie Ossard
Irène Silberman
Serge Silberman
Screenplay by Jean-Jacques Beineix
Jean Van Hamme
Based on Diva 
by Daniel Odier
Starring Frédéric Andréi
Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez
Richard Bohringer
Music by Vladimir Cosma
Cinematography Philippe Rousselot
Editing by Monique Prim
Marie-Josèphe Yoyotte
Studio Les Films Galaxie
Greenwich Film Productions
Distributed by Lionsgate[1]
Release dates
  • 11 March 1981 (1981-03-11) (France)
Running time 117 minutes[2]
Country France
Language French
English
Budget about 7.5m FRF[3] then about $1.5m (USA)
Box office $2,678,103 (USA)[4]

Diva is a 1981 French thriller film directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix, adapted from the novel Diva by Daniel Odier (under the pseudonym Delacorta). It is one of the first French films to let go of the realist mood of 1970s French cinema and return to a colourful, melodic style, later described as cinéma du look.

The film made a successful debut in France in 1981 with 2,281,569 admissions, and had success in the US the next year grossing $2,678,103.[5] The film became a cult classic and was internationally acclaimed.

Plot

Young postman Jules is obsessed with Cynthia Hawkins, a beautiful and celebrated opera singer who has never consented to have her performances recorded. He attends her performance, secretly and illegally records it, and steals a gown from her dressing room.

Unknowingly, Jules also comes into possession of another important tape: the testimony of a prostitute, exposing Saporta, a high-ranking policeman, as the boss of various rackets. The prostitute drops the recording in the bag of the postman's moped moments before she is murdered.

In danger from Saporta's enforcers as well as from Taiwanese gangsters seeking the Hawkins tape, Jules seeks refuge with his new friends, the mysterious bohemian Serge Gorodish and his young muse Alba (the central figures of a series of novels, including the one upon which the screenplay was based). Gorodish acts as a deus ex machina to manipulate Jules's enemies into destroying each other. Meanwhile, a romantic relationship between Jules and Cynthia develops, emphasised by the piano instrumental 'Promenade Sentimentale' of Vladimir Cosma as they walk around Paris early one morning.

Jules returns Hawkins' dress out of guilt after stealing it. Although she is initially angry, she then becomes amused and somewhat moved that she has such a fan. The two have breakfast together and Jules is given the privilege of hearing her practice her singing. Their relationship becomes somewhat strained however, when Hawkins hears that a perfect bootleg copy of her performance was made and sent to Taiwan, which insists that she either sign to make recordings of her performances or they will sell copies of the illegal tape. Jules believes that Gorodish and Alba sold the tape to the hitmen after him. He later learns that they still have the tape and that the claim by the Taiwanese that they had the tape was a bluff. At the end of the movie however, he plays the bootleg tape for Cynthia. She expresses slight nervousness over hearing it as she "never heard [herself] sing". Jules responds by holding her and the two dance together to the music.

Cast

Soundtrack

Highlights of the soundtrack include the aria Ebben? Ne andrò lontana from Alfredo Catalani's opera La Wally, and a pastiche of Erik Satie's Gnossiennes composed by Vladimir Cosma.

Reception

Initial reaction

Diva played for a year in Paris theaters. David Denby, in New York, upon its 1982 American release, wrote "One of the most audacious and original films to come out of France in recent years...Diva must be the only pop movie inspired by a love of opera."[6]

Film critic Roger Ebert gave it four out of four stars and praised its cast of characters.[7] He called Beineix "a director with an enormous gift for creating visual images" and elaborated on his filmmaking:

The movie is filled with so many small character touches, so many perfectly observed intimacies, so many visual inventions—from the sly to the grand—that the thriller plot is just a bonus. In a way, it doesn't really matter what this movie is about; Pauline Kael has compared Beineix to Orson Welles and, as Welles so often did, he has made a movie that is a feast to look at, regardless of its subject. [...] Here is a director taking audacious chances, doing wild and unpredictable things with his camera and actors, just to celebrate moviemaking.[7]
—Roger Ebert

Ebert also praised the film's chase scene, writing that it "deserves ranking with the all-time classics, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The French Connection, and Bullitt."[7]

Retrospect

Since its re-release in 2007, Diva has received retrospective acclaim from film critics; review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 96% based on reviews from 45 critics, with an average score of 8 out of 10.[8] Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly gave it an A rating and praised its "voluptuous romanticism". She wrote of the film's visual ties to cinéma du look, "the movie's mad excitement hinges entirely on the pleasure to be had in moving our eye from one gorgeously composed stage set of artifice to another."[9]

Awards

The film was entered into the 12th Moscow International Film Festival[10] and was also selected as the French entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 54th Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee.[11]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Lionsgate Shop, Lionsgate corporate website, Undated.Retrieved 9 April 2013.
  2. ↑ "DIVA (AA)". British Board of Film Classification. 1982-06-17. Retrieved 2013-02-02. 
  3. ↑ Beineix, Jean-Jacques, Chris Routledge, Filmreference.com, Undated.Retrieved 9 April 2013.
  4. ↑ Diva Movie - Diva - Movie
  5. ↑ Diva (1981)- JPBox-Office
  6. ↑ New York Magazine - Google Books
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Ebert, Roger (January 1, 1982). "Diva". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 2012-03-23. 
  8. ↑ "Diva". Rotten Tomatoes. IGN Entertainment. Retrieved 2012-03-23. 
  9. ↑ Schwarzbaum, Lisa (November 16, 2007). "Diva Review". Entertainment Weekly (964). Retrieved 2012-03-23. 
  10. ↑ "12th Moscow International Film Festival (1981)". MIFF. Retrieved 2013-01-26. 
  11. ↑ Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

External links

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