Eva
buy bestselling dvd movies, videos find reviews, ratings, prices
|
 |
List Price: $29.95
Our Price:
$26.99
You Save: $2.96
Features
• Black & White
• DVD-Video
• Widescreen
• NTSC
In Theaters : 04 June, 1965
DVD Release : 26 September, 2000 |
| [ + Zoom ] [ Buy Now ] |
DVD : Usually ships in 24 hours |
|
|
Eva description
Elegant and lush, and filmed in Venice, Rome, and rural Italy, Joseph Losey's Eva (released in the U.S. and Britain as Eve) is a cold, cruel film about crippling insecurity and sexual manipulation. Burly Stanley Baker simmers as a swaggering but self-loathing Welsh author happily indulging in the continental high life, covering up a devastating secret with braggadocio and sneering machismo; Jeanne Moreau has never been icier as the cruel, manipulative, high-rent prostitute Eve who becomes his obsession. They never become more than fascinating enigmas, but they send off sparks in an indulgently fatalistic film that wallows in human weakness and emotional self-destruction. Beautifully filmed and elegantly scored, with Billie Holiday tunes weaving a sad sense of loss through the picture, Eva became a showcase for Losey's arresting visual style and electrifying direction, and the springboard for such later, more restrained masterpieces as The Servant, Accident, and The Go-Between. The producers recut Losey's final version of the picture by 16 minutes, redubbed it, inserted lines, and changed the music (they "destroyed the rhythm and the comprehensibility of the picture," accuses Losey in an interview). The DVD includes both the release version and the 119-minute director's cut, mastered from the only surviving copy, an English-language Scandinavian print with Swedish and Finnish subtitles. It's frustrating that Kino didn't use the tools of digital technology to marry the two prints, using only the necessary footage from the subtitled version, and instead the director's cut is marred by subtitles throughout. Nonetheless, it's an important preservation of director Joseph Losey's vision. --Sean Axmaker |
|
♥♥♥♥♥ |
2 stars for Lissi in a small role.
|
Only die-hard fans of French New Wave need to trouble themselves with this interminable moldy oldie. Made in 1962, this film may have been an interesting look at the underbelly of La Dolce Vita, but it has definitely corked and soured with time. This is a very drippy, wet movie in the worst way; from the canals of Venice, to drizzly Rome with water fountains, to the leading man excusing his infidelity with lines like "that's the way I am, Baby." Cool man, cool. Crazy. Cool.
Jeanne Moreau plays the empty souled sex kitten like a second rate Brigitte Bardot. Her acting (at least in this decade) was posey, coy and irritating. Since she was usually playing the kind of woman that men want to slap around, I guess she succeeded in what her Directors wanted. In fairness, it is the work of an actress who was not directed very well, attempting to be interesting in the extended, endless times where there is no dialogue and she has to fill the time. Today's actress would just "be," but you can hear the Director yelling "Do something different." Don't just go to bed, roll on the floor and pull the blanket off the bed! She's trying so very hard to get attention, and she all ready has a camera on her!
Contrast her here with one of the all-time classic screen beauties, Virna Lissi, who does a quietly fantastic acting job here as the wronged Fiancee - even her final actions are off screen - so that it becomes very hard to see why Tyvian (Stanley Baker) would look at Moreau twice. Even in small scenes, you can see Lissi evaluating things she does and does not say - inner life.
There is a secondary male character who looks so much like Baker as to be a shorter twin and you have some unnecessary visual confusion in this mannered 60s vie boheme. One could assume the confusion, the canals, the endless archwasys are supposed to represent Tyvian's inner life. The main stand out here is the interesting camera angles, which sometimes turn this into a cinematic equivalent of an Escher picture. Too bad the rest of the film is not as interesting as the camera angles. This film makes it obvious why Hollywood picked up Lissi and not Moreau. (Thankfully, Moreau has aged beautifully in many respects.)
|
|
Eva dvd movie.