Glitter and be Green
French actress and Bond Girl Eva Green (Casino Royale) is in talks to star as Maria Callas in a biopic from Italy’s DeAngelis Group (DAP) and British producer partner Future Films. The project will be co-produced by Swarovski, “whose bling was often worn by the iconic opera star on stage and off.” [Hollywood Reporter]
What is the need for another Callas movie or biography? What has been missed or is not known? Nothing; but morbid curiosity is the drive. I hope it’s a flop.
Those bi-optics ‘tell us what they want us to know in revisionist style and then also add extra ‘invented history’ as new fact. Someone was going to do one on Mario Lanza and put his death down to a fall out with Lucky Luciano in Italy. I can only suppose that , fell though. We have had one on Coco Chanel -which also conveniently dry cleaned some of her smelly Nazi associations.
Just the other night after watching Julie Andrews in Star! -the ‘bio-pic of Gertrude Lawrence’ and all the men in her life…. I decided to look up other bits about her. I came across a mention that the film eschewed ‘her relationship’ with Daphne du Maurier the author (of Rebecca fame). Miss Poppins and Maria’s ‘image’ at the time could never have being associated with anything like THAT!
A huge part of me would like to see Tilda Swinton play Callas. Does not look like her, but she has the passion the ability to transform herself into something very close to sylph-like, at once delicate and fierce.
And she is a lover of opera, also.
I am going to try as hard as I can to get a copy of this screenplay, just to see if it is melodramatic shite or something that feels “real.” One thing we don’t need is for the film to fall into hagiography.
Also, biopics don’t have to be 100% true. They’re boring like that. Have you seen Bright Star? One of the best, I’d say, and Jane Campion–out of necessity–made a lot of shit up. Of course, there is the risk of running with it and ending up with the masturbatory fantasy that Zeffirelli brought us.
Hey, I like this Tilda Swinton idea a lot. A lot of work will have to go into darkening her complexion but she could definitely pull it off.
Do you really think of Maria as delicate or sylph-like. If you ask me, she was a pretty hard-ass, ballsy, New Yawk grrrrlll.
I mean have you ever listened to her interviews?
Yea I have…and she was both. She had a sylph-like elegance…and she had balls of titanium…They’re not mutually exclusive.
I think Callas was PROOF of that.
She had that quality on stage and as an affectation, but she was a pretty earthy broad if you ask me.
No one can be called “sylph-like” who says things like “anywheres else.”
What we need is a serious biopic that concentrates on Callas’
great contribution to the opera world and how she came to be that wonderful singer, not another boring
Callas/Onassis soap opera or a silly Carmen fantasy.
Yes, because biopics are always the best venue for serious consideration of someone’s legacy and never have any tendency towards Oscar bait clichés. I mean, I think your film would be much more interesting but most biopics are such melodramatic crap that it seems futile to hope for anything else (though melodramatic crap can be entertaining, its primary goal is to entertain, not to do justice to the subject). Maybe it will be halfway decent and we can be pleasantly surprised.
Also, “soap opera” is an entertaining word choice here.
“One thing we don’t need is for the film to fall into hagiography.”
Oh, I hope so, too. I’d never be able to play the home version when it came out; it’s been decades since I owned a hagiograph.
ba-dum BUM, Will. ba-dum BUM.
Thank you, my dear.
This role is rightfully Cher’s, why can nobody see that?