FILM TITLE: TOUS LES MATINS DU MONDE ( ALL THE MORNINGS OF THE WORLD ) DIRECTOR: ALAIN CORNEAU COUNTRY: FRANCE 1992 CINEMATOGRAPHY: YVES ANGELO CAST: Gerard Depardieu, Jean-Pierre Marielle, Guillaume Depardieu, Anne Brochet, Carole Richert. SUPER FEATURES: The music and the acting. FROM THE NOVEL BY PASCAL QUIGNARD, who also helped the director script the work.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
There is so little known about the life of composer SAINTE COLOMBE, that it took a novel to get some attention. And a director who loves music, because if you didn't, this film might not have been worth it.
This is not the CLIFF NOTES of music appreciation. This is the real thing....... and it is done so carefully, and meticulously, that one is probably going to go out and buy a lot of this music............. Sainte Colombe, became a historical composer, and creative musician because he disdained the music business more than for his own music, although it is intensely private, and extremely beautiful.
He was more famous for having created a scandal when he refused the favors of the courts of Louis XIV in France. He was less interested in the popular, or court attentions, than he was in being lost in his own grief, for a wife he truly loved, and if it is an indication, the first person that showed to him that his music not only made sense, but was good. However, Sainte Colombe's prowess with the instrument he devised ( the precursor to today's cello -- he added a 7th string to the viola to add more lower notes ) was clear, and the desire of many who hoped to get him as a teacher. Most were refused, and it is possible than none actually got any teaching. But Marin Marais has in his memoirs some moments to tell, and the film's writer devised a novel about the tragic life of a man, who was truly lost in his own creation.
Opening with an extreme close up of the sad Marais, in grief, for he too has been bit by his inability to deal with the guilt he has for having left Sainte Colombe's daughter, who went on to hang herself, the elder Marais tells his story to an audience of young musicians that are trying to rehearse, but have no touch, no feel for any music. And the film ends with the elder Sainte Colombe entering and saying the final line of the film. " I am proud to have taught a student like you " ... A submission, that he has finally seen what he has felt and preached to himself all his life. The music has won out. And the feelings have been elevated to a new high.
With a superb cast, both Depardieus ( father and son ), J-P Marielle as Sainte Colombe, and Anne Brochet and Carole Richert as the daughters of the composer, just smooth their way through the whole film, which appears long, but isn't..... but pleas that you listen and live the feelings of the music... which is not something Hollywood likes to do..... they would have cut half hour out of this film........
SUPERB FILM MUSIC IS GREAT SLOW....IF YOU LIKE IT FAST. DEEP FEELINGS...INTENSE.
5 GIBLOONS of 5
Copyright (c) Pedro Sena 1994 Reviewer and Moderator of the CENTIPEDE's THE FILM.
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