Diva (1981 film)

Diva is a 1981 French thriller film directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix, adapted from the novel Diva by Daniel Odier. It eschewed the realist mood of the 1970s French cinema and instead adopted a colourful, melodic style, later described as cinéma du look. The mixture of "film noir, opera and art-house styles" did not please the producers,^[3] but was more to the liking of the Canadian audience at a festival where it was screened and achieved a 'Critics' Choice' in 1981.^[4]

The film made a successful debut in France in 1981 with 2,281,569 admissions, and had success in the U.S. the next year, grossing $2,678,103.

Two police officers, Paula and Zatopek, are now after Jules, seeking Nadia's cassette, but they only know that it incriminates a prominent gangster and not that the gangster is actually their boss. Jules is also being hunted by Saporta's two henchmen. Two Taiwanese men are also seeking him as they want his unique and valuable recording of Cynthia Hawkins. Jules seeks refuge from all these pursuers with his new friends, the mysterious bohemian Serge Gorodish and his companion, Alba, a young Vietnamese-French thief.

Jules decides to return Cynthia Hawkins' dress at her luxury hotel. She is initially angry, but eventually forgives him. She is intrigued by Jules' adoration and a kind of romantic relationship develops, expressed by the background of a piano instrumental, as they walk around Paris in the

Jules is spotted and chased by the two police officers, but he escapes by riding his moped through the Paris Métro system. He takes refuge in the apartment of a prostitute friend (an unnamed character), but flees when he realizes she is part of Saporta's criminal network and will likely betray him—he leaves just before L' Antillais and Le Curé arrive. The enforcers catch up with him and Jules is shot, but Gorodish rescues Jules just before Le Curé can kill him. Gorodish and Alba drive the wounded Jules to a safe house outside Paris, a remote lighthouse, in Gorodish's antique Citroën Traction Avant.

Gorodish is now in possession of the recording that incriminates Saporta and he uses it to blackmail the Commissaire. The two meet in a large, abandoned factory; Saporta pays-off Gorodish, but intends to kill him as, before the meeting, ha had placed a remote control bomb under Gorodish's car. The two Taiwanese interrupt them and steal the cassette at gunpoint, believing it to be Jules' recording of Cynthia Hawkins. They attempt to drive away in Gorodish's car, but are killed when Saporta detonates his bomb with the intention of killing Gorodish. Gorodish then drives away in an identical Traction Avant that he had hidden in advance.

Meanwhile, Jules returns to Paris to give Cynthia his bootleg recording and lift the threat of blackmail from her. But L'Antillais and Le Curé are lying in wait for him outside her hotel. They abduct him and take him to his loft apartment with the intention of killing him and faking his suicide. However, police officer Paula has been keeping Jules' apartment under surveillance; she saves him by killing Le Curé and wounding L'Antillais. Saporta then appears, kills his surviving henchman, and attempts to kill Jules and Paula, intending to make it look like his dead henchman shot them. Once again Gorodish saves the day by turning out the lights and, in the dark, fooling Saporta into walking into an empty elevator shaft and falling to his death.

In the film's final scene, Jules meets Cynthia at an empty theatre, where he plays her recording for her and she expresses her nervousness over hearing it because she had "never heard [herself] sing."

Cast

Production

Diva was Beineix's first feature film: he had acted as assistant to directors such as Claude Berri, René Clément and Claude Zidi.^[6] However, Diva represented "a constant battle between his digressive, imagistic, 'baroque' imagination and his producer's insistence on a tight thriller". They hated the title, aspects of Beineix's style, and the producers' disappointment meant that the film was almost not distributed at all.^[3]

The contemporary style of the film was "hyper-realist, post-punk visual style - overlooking, perhaps, the traditions of humanism and genre cinema, the policier, in which the film is rooted". Moreover, "Pop Art decors, offbeat locations, selective colours and idiosyncratic compositions are assertively used to create a fantasy world which is only a sidestep from crime movie realism..."^[6] Another critic noted that "...the seduction of Diva is in its extraordinary sets and the way in which, through combinations of light, shadow, spatial relations, carefully chosen and positioned objects, forms and graphics and matched colours, something is created which is distinctly otherworldly while being firmly, almost prosaically, situated in the real world".^[3]

Beineix described some of the more fantastic, even improbable elements of the film, such as Gorodish replacing his glamourous white Citroën car with an identical one after the first has been exploded killing two villains, as those of "a character manipulating the plot from within".^[6] Auty suggests that in some ways "the dramatic structure is strikingly close to the operatic form and it is entirely appropriate that the film should end in an opera-house".^[6]

In a major change in an otherwise faithful adaptation of the Odier novel, Jules and Gorodish no longer split the proceeds after selling the illicit tape to the highest bidder.^[3]

It was the first film of Wilhelmenia Fernandez, Dominique Pinon, and the first leading role of Frédéric Andréi.

Filming

In the use of locations, Beineix integrate two strong environments, the Paris familiar through film of the Place de la Concorde, Tuileries Gardens, with the modern city: parking lots, disused warehouses, metro stations and pinball arcades, through which the action pushes Jules, for example from his barely-furnished loft apartment, to the 'neo-classical' hotel suite of the opera singer, "redolent of the grand operatic tradition".^[6] Almost all of the film was shot in Paris and makes use of several well-known landmarks in the city. The public recital by Cynthia Hawkins takes place at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord.^[5] At the time the theatre was notable for the distressed and run-down appearance of its interior as it had been damaged by a fire and left derelict. In the 1970s it was revived by British theatrical director Peter Brook and French producer Micheline Rozan who deliberately retained the interior's rough and damaged appearance.^[5][7]

Nadia is killed outside the

In many scenes Jules rides a moped through Paris. Initially, this is one in the yellow livery of the French postal service (but fitted with a Spirit of Ecstasy mascot). But later he borrows a red Malaguti Firebird^[8] from a friend. He uses this to flee from police through the Paris Metro. The chase scene was filmed at a number of stations, Concorde, Châtelet, and Opéra. It ends at the Place de l'Opéra, where Jules dumps the moped and flees on foot.^[5]

One of the few filming locations outside Paris is the lighthouse Jules is taken to by Alba and Gorodish, the

The meeting between Gorodish and Saporta in a disused factory was shot at the former Citroën car factory in the 15th arrondissement of Paris. This had ceased production in 1975 and was being demolished when the film was made.^[9] The factory site is now the Parc André-Citroën.

Music

Following her appearance as Musetta in La bohème at the Paris Opera in 1979, Wiggins Fernandez's singing in the film introduced the aria Ebben? Ne andrò lontana (Well then? I'll go far away) from Alfredo Catalani's opera La Wally to millions.^[10]

As well as the Catalani aria sung by Wiggins Fernandez and Vladimir Cosma's original soundtrack played by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer,^[11] the film also includes a piano movement entitled 'Promenade Sentimentale' played by Cosma.^[12] At the very start of the film an operatic excerpt plays over the credits (the prelude to Gounod's Faust), but is cut off when Jules switches off the cassette player on his moped.^[6] Highlights of the soundtrack include the aria Ebben? Ne andrò lontana and a pastiche of Erik Satie's Gymnopédies composed by Cosma.^[13]

Following Diva, Cosma would win his second music César for Le Bal, two years later.^[14]

Home video

The film was released on DVD on 29 May 2001 by Anchor Bay Entertainment.^[15]

A Blu-ray edition was released by Kino Lorber on 11 August 2020.^[16]

Reception and legacy

Initial reaction

The film initially was not a commercial success after its March 1981 release in France, where it faced bad press and a hostile reception by critics. However, French audiences slowly grew after it was released in the United States and found success there.^[17] Diva played for a year in Paris theaters. David Denby, in New York, upon its 1982 American release, wrote "One of the most audacious and original films to come out of France in recent years...Diva must be the only pop movie inspired by a love of opera."^[18]

Film critic Roger Ebert gave it four out of four stars and praised its cast of characters.^[19] He called Beineix "a director with an enormous gift for creating visual images" and elaborated on his filmmaking:

The movie is filled with so many small character touches, so many perfectly observed intimacies, so many visual inventions—from the sly to the grand—that the thriller plot is just a bonus. In a way, it doesn't really matter what this movie is about; Pauline Kael has compared Beineix to Orson Welles and, as Welles so often did, he has made a movie that is a feast to look at, regardless of its subject. [...] Here is a director taking audacious chances, doing wild and unpredictable things with his camera and actors, just to celebrate moviemaking.^[19]

— Roger Ebert

Ebert also praised the film's

• César Awards
  :
  • Best Debut: Jean-Jacques Beineix
  • Music: Vladimir Cosma
  • Cinematography: Philippe Rousselot
  • Sound: Jean-Pierre Ruh

The film was entered into the 12th Moscow International Film Festival.^[22]

See also

• List of submissions to the 54th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film
• List of French submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
• Postmodernist film

References