Swann in Love

1984 [FRENCH]

Drama / Romance

4
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 56% · 9 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Spilled 53% · 500 ratings
IMDb Rating 6.5/10 10 2406 2.4K

jealousy paris, france based on novel or book courtesan 19th century

Director

Volker Schlöndorff Photo
Volker Schlöndorff

Top cast

Alain Delon Photo
Alain Delon as Baron de Charlus
Ornella Muti Photo
Ornella Muti as Odette de Crecy
Catherine Lachens Photo
Catherine Lachens as Aunt
Jeremy Irons Photo
Jeremy Irons as Charles Swann
720p.BLU
1018.92 MB
1200*720
French 2.0
NR
Subtitles ro  
24 fps
1 hr 50 min
Seeds 6

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by lee_eisenberg 7 / 10

a dog in love, you say...

I should start by mentioning that I've never read any of Marcel Proust's works, least of all "Swann's Way" (and even if I did, something would probably be lost in translation). So, having watched Volker Schlöndorff's adaptation "Un amour de Swann" ("Swann in Love" in English), I can say that they knew exactly which kind of movie they were making. This critical look at Parisian high society of the late 1800s really wraps you in with the costumes, sets, and general ambience. The romance between an Englishman (Jeremy Irons) and a French woman (Ornella Muti) is but a window into this world.Obviously I'd have a better sense of it had I read Proust's works. I doubt that I'll ever get around to reading Proust, given how long it takes me to get through a book. Even so, I recommend the movie if you want a look at fin-de-siècle France. It's not what I'd call a masterpiece - especially since 1984 also saw the release of "Amadeus" and "The Killing Fields" - but you should still check it out.Who would've ever guessed that Schlöndorff, as one of the doyens of New German Cinema, would direct movies as different as this, "The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum" and "Palmetto"?
Reviewed by boblipton 7 / 10

A Tile Pried From A Vast Mosaic

Jeremy Irons is Charles Swann, the stand-in for Proust in this movie version of the author's semi-autobiographical SWANN'S WAY, moving through the aristocratic portion of Parisian society in the 1890s, where nothing is forbidden to those of great wealth except honesty.The recreation of 1890s Paris was an easy thing for the film makers; much of it was still there ninety years later. How, though, to bring out the essential sense of Proust's work? For American actors, trained in techniques of sense memory, it clearly calls for use of that technique. The film-makers, however, have played with the idea of memory and its distortions. Proust may have famously written of madeleines and their triggering effect on his memory. the film-makers, however, are clear that we may remember things past, but we interpret them as the individuals we are today. Irons' performance is all about lust for courtesan Ornela Muti, but that is how he views it in the epilogue fifteen years later when the elegant Paris he recalls is buried under construction sites and rendered fetid by automobiles.And so, Irons is perfect casting in this role. We see him speak, we see him behave, but his character must be inferred by his actions, and we are never sure, until the epilogue, whether he is doing them because he wants to, or because of the fighting impulses of transmogrified lust and fear of expulsion from Society.
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