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This book was so bad for me....
But still I am curious to see this movie
There will be time to see the movie but there is no hurry
Showing on Australian TV tonight... for any Oz readers! (SBS movies, 7.30 pm)
Yeah, I noticed that too; it seems they are running it a few different times too for those that miss tonight. I'll give my verdict tomorrow.....
So, I finally got around to seeing the movie after having read so much on here; I note a lot of the early posts on this are purely speculative written before anyone had seen it, and some had already decided they did not want to approve before it was even released. Such blind prejudice does you no favours. Many had thought it would, or should, be an attempt at a biopic, which it never was. Some, were solely concerned with musical accuracy so for example Teddy’s worries about why the music was recorded by the Rosenbergs instead of using original recordings can now be put to one side.
Of course old Django records had been used in many movies, as background and incidental decoration, but this film required the actors to portray a live setting and the combination of the Rosenberg soundtrack and clever trickery mixing imagery between the actor Reda Kateb and the two-fingered playing of Christophe Lartilleux was as good as it could get. Not sure why they would have bothered using Nousche to record the parts played by Hono though. Surely it would have worked just as well to use either one as both soundtrack guitarist and supporting actor, or did Nousche not fit the small speaking role of M. Hoffman played by Hono and Hono not fit as well with Stochelo's playing as Nousche? Whatever, keeping in mind that the music was just a part of the story for a film that was intended to tell a story of a difficult and not particularly well-known part of Django’s life and I think they delivered on all counts.
Likewise if anyone had any worries about it being a typical ‘Hollywood’ biopic, a low-budget French production it never looked at all ‘Hollywood’. It was too cold, grey and unglamorous for that.
Historically correct? From what written evidence is available, I would say it is not far off, bar the obligatory fictional ‘femme fatale’ Louise de Klerk. She was probably a device to represent an amalgam of several characters in the shadows of wartime Paris, nightclub owner, resistance agent pretending to be a collaborator, one of many pretty girls who would have fallen for Django and probably destined for a miserable end at the hands of the Gestapo. The one Django called “La Plume” was in fact Gerard Lévêque the long-suffering clarinetist who transcribed every note that Django composed for his Mass, something not mentioned in the film.
Interested in refreshing my memory I dug back into a couple of books this morning and although the Swiss escape episode is touched on very briefly in the Delaunay biography, Michael Dregni’s book does go into more detail of the details of Delaunay’s arrest for suspicion of connections with the Resistance; he was freed as he did not crack under interrogation, although his secretary was later sent to the gas chamber. In fact Delaunay was a major player in the Resistance and had connections with SOE agents in London. Curiously (modesty, or something he wanted kept secret for other reasons?) Delaunay does not mention this in his book.
The only criticism I would have, and it is only a minor one; is there is something missing between Django arriving at the Swiss border staring ahead into the snow, and then conducting his Mass in Paris two years later. According to both authors he did find a way across the barbed wire but was then caught by Swiss border guards before being sent back; only later returning to Paris. So we still do not really know how he escaped further attempts by the Germans to force him to play in Berlin, unless it was just by chance that as the tide was turning in late ’43 the German Army had bigger worries to deal with.
No, it is not a docudrama of his whole life, nor was it intended to be a detailed examination of the finer points of his guitar playing for anal Django wannabes, rather just another war-time tale which happens to be based around a musician everyone who is reading this forum holds in high esteem.
As a long standing Django fan I can say it was not the best movie I have ever seen, but it was an agreeable way to spend two hours on a Friday evening. Also, as a take-Django-in-small-doses-or-leave-him viewer I can say my wife also thought it a good film.
Finally, to answer those who were hoping for an accurate biopic. Django’s story if it ever were to be re-enacted as true filmed biography would be such a big project it could never be told in the traditional two hour movie format but would need to be serialised for a long running TV show; no this was never intended to be any attempt at a ‘biopic’, it was just one particular story from the many in Django’s lifetime.
The director’s explanations on the link below tell all we need to know, and for what he was trying to do I think he succeeded.
https://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/django-s-cast-on-resistance-and-the-hidden-notes-of-his-life-1.26431
@Chris Martin - you never let me down giving a much needed historical perspective on things!
Completely agree with all of this. I understood that it was historical fiction and going into it with that in kind, I enjoyed the movie as an interesting “Django themed” story.