Circle of Love | |
---|---|
French | La ronde |
Directed by | Roger Vadim |
Written by | Jean Anouilh |
Based on | La Ronde 1897 play by Arthur Schnitzler |
Produced by | Raymond Hakim Robert Hakim |
Starring | Jane Fonda Anna Karina Jean-Claude Brialy Maurice Ronet |
Cinematography | Henri Decaë |
Music by | Michel Magne |
Distributed by | Continental Distributing Inc. Walter Reader-Sterling Inc (US) [1] |
Release date |
|
Running time | 110 minutes |
Country | France |
Language | French |
Box office | 1,078,415 admissions (France) [2] |
Circle of Love (French : La ronde) is a 1964 French drama film directed by Roger Vadim and based on Arthur Schnitzler's 1897 play Reigen . The film generated minor controversy because of Jane Fonda's nude scene, the first by a major American actress in a foreign film. [3]
In 1913, a sentimental Parisian prostitute offers herself freely to Georges, a handsome soldier, because he resembles her true love. Seeking to take advantage of all opportunities for lovemaking, the soldier seduces Rose, a lonely housemaid, and then goes off to make other conquests.
Returning home, Rose allows her employer's son Alfred to make love to her. Encouraged by the experience, the young gentleman next makes love to Sophie, a married woman. Refreshed by the encounter, Sophie makes bold overtures to her stuffy husband Henri. Later, Henri takes a mistress who forsakes him for an author whom she hopes will write a play for her. Instead, he pursues Maximilienne de Poussy, an established actress with whom he had had an affair years before. He has little success, however, for the actress finds satisfaction only with young men, and she has a brief affair with the count, a young officer.
Following their encounter, the count embarks on a night of wild revelry. In the morning, he is in the sentimental prostitute's apartment, who this time collects a fee for her services, and the cycle of love is now complete.
After having recently directed the box-office hit Les liaisons dangereuses , Vadim took on another adaptation of a classic erotic text that became La ronde. As Vadim later said:
When I make a picture about relations between people, something erotic comes through; I can't help it! But sex has been an inspiration, the greatest inspiration, since art exists. I don't mean pornography. But when I do something I like to go to the end with what I express. It is very difficult in France to talk about anything but sex! Politics, the army, the police, Catholicism - in that order. There is the influence of priests in censorship; no rule forbids you to discuss the church but they will stop you somehow. [4]
During filming, Jane Fonda began a romantic relationship with Vadim that continued for several years. [5] [6]
Catherine Spaak later claimed that Vadim was so focused on Fonda during the making of the film that "everyone suffered." [7]
The film was released in the United States as a dubbed version that Vadim loathed; this inspired him to make his next film, The Game Is Over , in both English and French versions. [8]
One French reviewer said that Jane Fonda had a "French accent a la Laurel et Hardy." [9]
The Guardian praised the film's color and production values but added "there is a vulgarity about Vadim's frequent fleshy close ups which compares sadly... with Ophuls' elegant chiaroscuro. Anouilh and Vadim stick closely to Arthur Schnitzler's original but the film is obviously embroidered with imagery of Vadim's creation - a visual superfluity." [10]
Writing in The Observer, Kenneth Tynan called the film "a masterpiece of colour photography" and "the nearest approach to an organised work of art that M. Vadim has yet directed." [11]
The movie was advertised in New York with an eight-story billboard in Times Square that displayed a nude Fonda. She subsequently sued the producers for $3 million. [12] Fonda said:
"To me it was a great big opportunity to do a beautiful comedy and my first costume picture," recalled Fonda. "They ruined it here [in the US]. That awful dubbed English. And that big poster of me, nude! Vadim resented it too." [13]
New York Times reviewer Eugene Archer called the film "a total debacle... a dull, pointless, ineptly acted vulgarization of a distinguished play, with nothing to recommend it beyond some attractive color photography." [14]
The film was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
In 1967, Vadim and five of the film's stars were charged with obscenity in Italy for the film's content. [15]
Arthur Schnitzler was an Austrian author and dramatist.
Jane Seymour Fonda is an American actress, activist, and former fashion model. Recognized as a film icon, Fonda is the recipient of various accolades including two Academy Awards, two British Academy Film Awards, seven Golden Globe Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, the AFI Life Achievement Award, the Golden Lion Honorary Award, the Honorary Palme d'Or, and the Cecil B. DeMille Award.
Roger Vadim Plemiannikov was a French screenwriter, film director and producer, as well as an author, artist and occasional actor. His best-known works are visually lavish films with erotic qualities, such as And God Created Woman (1956), Blood and Roses (1960), Barbarella (1968), and Pretty Maids All in a Row (1971).
Maximillian Oppenheimer, known as Max Ophüls, was a German-French film director who worked in Germany (1931–1933), France, and the United States (1947–1950). He made nearly 30 films, the latter ones being especially notable: La Ronde (1950), Le Plaisir (1952), The Earrings of Madame de… (1953) and Lola Montès (1955). He was credited as Max Opuls on several of his American films, including The Reckless Moment, Caught, Letter from an Unknown Woman, and The Exile. The annual Filmfestival Max Ophüls Preis in Saarbrücken is named after him.
La Ronde may refer to:
Annette Susanne Strøyberg was a Danish actress. Her films included Les Liaisons dangereuses (1959), which was directed by her first husband, Roger Vadim.
The Blue Room is a 1998 play by David Hare, adapted from the 1897 play Der Reigen written by Arthur Schnitzler (1862–1931), and more usually known by the French translation La Ronde.
La Ronde is a 1950 French film directed by Max Ophüls and based on Arthur Schnitzler's 1897 play La Ronde.
Barbarella is a 1968 science fiction film directed by Roger Vadim, based on the French comic series of the same name by Jean-Claude Forest. The film stars Jane Fonda as the title character, a space-traveller and representative of the United Earth government sent to find scientist Durand Durand, who has created a weapon that could destroy humanity. The supporting cast includes John Phillip Law, Anita Pallenberg, Milo O'Shea, Marcel Marceau, David Hemmings, Ugo Tognazzi and Claude Dauphin.
Catherine Spaak was a French-born Italian actress and singer who acted in mostly in Italian films with some Hollywood and international productions. She is best known for her roles in the films Il Sorpasso (1962), The Empty Canvas (1963) and The Cat o' Nine Tails (1971).
La Ronde is a play in which ten people form an unwitting interpersonal circle with their secret, sexual relationships. It was written by Arthur Schnitzler in 1897 and was controversial at that time. It scrutinizes the sexual morality and class ideology of its day through successive encounters between pairs of characters. By choosing characters across all levels of society, the play offers social commentary on how sexual contact transgresses class boundaries. Printed privately in 1900, it was not publicly performed until 1920, when it provoked strong reactions. The play's two titles —in German Reigen and in French La Ronde— refer to a round dance, as portrayed in the English rhyme Ring a Ring o' Roses.
Henri Decaë gained fame as a cinematographer entering the film industry as a sound engineer and sound editor. He was a photojournalist in the French army during World War II. After the war he began making documentary shorts, directing and photographing industrial and commercial films. In 1947 he made his first feature film.
Otto Schenk is an Austrian actor, and theater and opera director.
Luc Bondy was a Swiss theatre and film director.
Union Dime Savings Bank was originally chartered in 1859 in New York City, USA. By the time of bank deregulation in 1979 it was starting to suffer losses. With the direction of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, it was acquired by Buffalo Savings Bank and, along with the New York Bank for Savings, became part of the renamed Goldome. In 1990, Manufacturers Hanover Trust bought $2.8 billion in deposits in 24 New York City branches for $27.7 million. By late 1991, Goldome failed and its New York assets were sold to Manufacturers Hanover Trust and the East New York Savings Bank.
Christine is a 1958 French period drama film, based on the 1894 play Liebelei (Flirtation) by Arthur Schnitzler. The film was directed by Pierre Gaspard-Huit and the title character was played by Romy Schneider. The cast included Alain Delon as a young lieutenant.
Frank Ulrich Marcus was a British playwright, best known for The Killing of Sister George.
Joy House is a 1964 French mystery–thriller film starring Jane Fonda, Alain Delon and Lola Albright. It is based on the 1954 novel of the same name by Day Keene.
The Game Is Over is a 1966 French-Italian French language drama film directed by Roger Vadim and starring Jane Fonda, Michel Piccoli and Peter McEnery. The film is a modern-day adaptation of the 1871-72 novel La Curée by Émile Zola.
Claude Pierre Edmond Giraud was a French actor.
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