Don Juan From:Arnaud Bedouët , Michel Boujenah , Nieves Bravo , Emmanuelle Béart , Pedro Casablanc , KOCH LORBER FILMS ,
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See larger picture. | | Amazon Sales Rank:# 30526 User Rating: Customer Reviews List Price:$14.98 Amazon.com's Price:$13.49 Prices subject to change. You Save:$1.49 (9.95%) Availability:Usually ships in 24 hours |
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Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9781417200504
Format: Color
Format: Content/Copy-Protected CD
Format: Dolby
Format: DVD-Video
Format: Letterboxed
Format: Subtitled
Format: NTSC
ISBN: 1417200502
Label: KOCH LORBER FILMS
Manufacturer: KOCH LORBER FILMS
Number Of Items: 1
Packaged Height: 60 hundredths-inches
Packaged Length: 750 hundredths-inches
Packaged Weight: 25 hundredths-pounds
Packaged Width: 530 hundredths-inches
Publisher: KOCH LORBER FILMS
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2005-06-07
Running Time: 91 minutes
Studio: KOCH LORBER FILMS
Theatrical Release Date: 1998
Product Description:
Actor Jacques Weber made his directorial debut with this film adaptation of Moliere’s 1665 play Don Juan. In early 17th-century Spain, the nobleman Don Juan (Weber) and his valet are on the run from two brothers out to seek revenge for the abandonment of his promise to marry their sister, Elvire (Emmanuelle Béart). With no signs of repentance, Don Juan continues his amorous conquests with women he meets along the way (Penélope Cruz, Ariadna Gil) regardless of the consequences.
Customer Reviews:
2 of 3 customers found the following review helpful:
 A Miracle, 2007-02-17
When I firsts read Moliere's DON JUAN thirty or forty years ago, I never thought I'd live to see it performed. Everything about it seemed to harsh, and the humor -- after all it was called a comedy, and written by one of the world's best comic playwrights -- the humor was cold, cruel and rather ugly. I thought it brilliant, and I could see how da Ponte'd made a libretto for Mozart out of it mostly by just translating it into Italian. But I simply couldn't imagine it on the stage.
Weber's adaptation is very close to the original, in that it is absolutely without sentiment. After all, this is a tale about an atheist and a cynic. Weber doesn't bow to convention or conventionalized religious belief, which is, after all, basic hypocracy, but maintains Moliere's taught line of suspended judgement. This is a story everybody a the time would have understood immediately, and they did: It is the story of an unprincipaled nobleman, sensitive to nobody's feelings but his own, who uses and abuses his lessers for his amusement. Sexual pleasure is included in that, because to a man of that temperament, sex is only a matter of romantic game-playing, and more literary than glandular.
Don Juan is probably a military man, or at least has had the military and martial arts training noble young men received, along with their social manners. His swordsmanship, skill and bravery make him a very formidable and probably deadly adversary. His manner; which is to say, his mananers and deportment, his clothing; everything about him bespeaks rank and caste and position. He is a leader, an 'A' male, and he commands and receives deference wherever he goes, from people accustomed to giving it. He expects hospitality as his right, and simple people feel honored by his presence.
Women, simple, poor women, are tantalized by the prospect of being made love to, or even of being paid attention to, by a man "of the court." In their short, hot youths, followed abruptly and inevitably by their empty lives, whatever scraps of his attention they are able to snatch from him, they will treasure until the grave. And that is why -- and shown so well here -- why they follow him like female canines in season.
All the women in this show are wonderful-looking, strikingly beautiful and very different one from another. Emmanuelle Beart, Penelope Cruz and Ariadna Gil are delicious to look at, and the costume designer (of splendid name) Silvie de Segonzac, has made wonderful dresses for them, of the period. But then, all of the costumes are good, both the men's and the women's, from the hatwear to the ruffs, including the shoes and boots, and wonderfully varied. Include in this rich display of period costuming, a dwarf's livry. (But then this wonderful movie like watching a Valesquez come to life, and what would a Velasquez be without at least one dwarf?) There was even a blackamoor, but he was asleep.
The Don Juan plot or story is easy enough, and most people know it well enough, either through Opera, or stage plays. And the descrptions given by the Amazonian reviewers are excellent and well observed, so there's no need to go on at length about that. What there is to on about is the director's wonderful pictorial judgement and taste. In a time of cinematic miracles that can and often do boggle the mind, Weber has chosen to avoid all of them, and to rely on nothing, no trick of light or sound or movement, no technical effect, that can distract even the tiniest but from the impetus of this most fascinating of character-driven stories. D. Jose Luis Alcaine, cinematographer, is a genius. The pictoral composition is of the highest quality; rich in color, filled with detail, both of landscape, of seascape, light, darkness and clouds, and always perfectly framed. That composition and the cinematographer's art, generally, become increasingly complex in group scenes, and camera movement becomes more dynamic, but these crowd scene compositions are never stagy or stale.
And yet, people ask, is Don Juan sexy? He is fat, old, and gray-haired. Well, when Henry Kissinger was in the White House, the media often called him the notoriously sexy and very mysterious Mister Kissinger, suggesting that women fell into his bed as easily and as often as babies fall into backyard swimming pools in Phoenix. Somebody observed, however, that there is nothing quite as sexy or attractive or maybe just arousing, as Power. And that's the secret. It's a secret fat men and old men and even men with white hair know perfectly well, and have always known how to use. Youthful athleticism is all very well and good, in its way, but power fascinates and stimulates most, or at least, many women, as most mature men know. One night in Hollywood is enough to nail that down, even for tourists.
And then there is Spain. Spain, the un-credited supporting star of this film. What a landscape! When the Moors held it the peninsula was a verdant garden of abundance. But when the Spanish drove them out and took it over, the peninsula became in little time, a parched garden where hungry peasants plowed stones. Tragedy, the tragedy of poverty, is written in every mile, on the crest of every treeless hill. What better background before which to act out the sterile self-indulgences of an empty, childness, heartless and diseased, narcissistic fool?
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