Immortal Beloved (1994)

Isabella Rossellini's best performance

This was a lush, beautiful movie - even if I couldn't watch it a second time.

It was a sumptuous movie worth watcing.

Marco!

R2 why couldn't you watch is a second time?

I must’ve been unable to rewatch, too. I have a DVD and I can’t really remember anything but well-acted scenes of terrible emotional pain.

Polo!

I saw this years ago and loved it.

I only remember a man in the theater yelling “He’s deaf!”when the “beloved” whispered the secret in Beethoven’s ear.

[quote][R2] why couldn't you watch is a second time?

I don't really know. Part of it is that I've never really had the opportunity, but I never sought it out to view again, either.

I remember watching it and enjoying it. To me, it had a dark romantic (in the sense of idealized, mysterious) quality to it with just a faintly gothic quality. But, there wasn't anything with which I really connected emotionally. There were lovely moments, but after it was over, I didn't really feel like it was something I needed to watch again - like I had gotten all the enjoyment I would get from one sitting.

The ending scene and end credits build up to the third movement of Beethoven's titanic Emperor Concerto. It is spectacular .

Miriam Margolyes = Cartoon woman

I suspect that Miriam Margolyes standard contract includes a requirement for a craft truck.

R11 She plays a frumpy old maid in this. It is accurate

She can ruin a tragic drama just by appearing on screen.

[quote] Directed by Bernard Rose

A person of no importance.

R14 Miriam Margolyes is the fat crude landlady. the comic relief

OP I just started listening to classical music about a week ago, would you highly recommend Amadeus?

R17 Yes! My advice is to listen to the soundtrack first and then watch Amadeus.

F. Murray Abraham gives one of the best film performances of all time.

R18, that's it, I'm putting it ony my list. Thanks for the recommendation! Apparently there is talk of releasing the movie in 4k.

I loved "Immortal Beloved" for the music, as Beethoven wrote some of the greatest music ever written. The soundtrack is pretty much the equivalent of "Beethoven's greatest hits." I'm slightly partial to Beethoven over Mozart, though so I'm biased. I didn't believe the storyline put forth in this movie, though, as far as who actually was the "immortal beloved."

[quote] I didn't believe the storyline

I don't believe Beethoven was interested in unimportant things such as women.

[quote] Gary Oldman

Has played a variety of roles but something about him is off-putting to me.

Off-screen he talks like a Cockney chav using words like 'geezer' and 'initt'.

Not one bad performance in the film

The music is spectacular

[quote] Not one bad performance

Margolies wasn't 'performing'; she was 'misbehaving'.

She behaves like that around the clock whether anyone's looking or not.

[quote] Ludwig von Beethoven

*van Beethoven, OP

OP, gosh, I haven't thought of this film in decades. I was in middle school when it came out and remember being quite taken with it. I distinctly recall my parents renting it from Blockbuster and us all being rather transfixed by the film's sumptuousness and by Gary Oldman's performance.

I'm almost afraid to rewatch it when looking at the director's track record. His credits are a series of "huh?" and "ugh!" But maybe my distant memories of the film aren't all rose-colored and it holds up?

Is it streaming anywhere?

Didn't it come out while he was making this movie that he was beating her?

Also, that he had abused Uma Thurman?

R26 It is worth the watch, honestly

R28 Listening to this movie soundtrack is more useful than watching it.

Valeria Golino is not an actress.

I never miss a movie by Bernard Rose.

Wow, haven't thought of this in years. At the time I remember telling a friend it was like some Warner Brothers biopic of the 1940s -- the kind of movie you thought Hollywood had stopped making. But it was sumptuously produced -- the opening scene recreating Beethoven's funeral was spectacular and being filmed in Prague, it was like a million dollar gift to the Czech tourist board. And, of course, it sounded terrific. Not a movie you'd ever want to see at home on your TV no matter how big it is. It's definitely a movie to be seen on the big screen.

Gary Oldman and Isabella Rossellini were such a cool-seeming couple, back in the day. IIRC, he was her partner immediately after David Lynch (also a very cool Hollywood coupling).

It's a shame their relationship didn't spawn more and better film co-appearances.

Oh, R32, he is wife-beater

[quote] Oldman's now ex-wife, Donya Fiorentino, said that Oldman choked her and beat her with a telephone in front of their young children. In an interview earlier this year with the Independent, Fiorentino reiterated her story, saying, “Our marriage was a giant car crash in which demented things happened

Well, that sucks. Screw him, then.

They did seem cool at the time, and it seemed (somewhat like an artsier Depp) that the sky was the limit for "edgy thespian" Oldman back then.

A least we hear about Oldman beating his wives.

O'Toole beat his wife back in the 60s but she was too well-mannered to squeal to the press.

R29 Valeria Golino was always more of a model. While she is the third girl, she is really not in much of the film. It is really about Johanna ter Steege, and Isabella Rossellini.

Why didn't Johanna ter Steege become more famous?

[quote] Why didn't Johanna ter Steege become more famous?

Why didn't Shau-or-eeze Ronan become more famous?

R37 who?

I liked it a lot.

What's this movie got that the original movie didn't have?

R40 everything

Sad ending

Nudity

[quote]Why didn't Johanna ter Steege become more famous?

Stanley Kubrick picked her to play the lead in his movie Aryan Papers, about a Jewish woman during World War II. But then Spielberg made Schindler's List and it didn't seem like a good idea to make another Holocaust movie that maybe was too similar and the project was cancelled . She's still a succesful actress in her native country (the Netherlands) though

R44 that's good!

His best work.

Not too effusive nor too abstruse.

R46 You don't think the Ninth is the best work?

The middle section of the Ninth is rather garbled with strange pauses and quick changes in tempo and tune.

The second movement, the Molto vivace, is both a scherzo AND a trio.

[quote] Beethoven wrote this piece in triple time but punctuated it in a way that, when coupled with the tempo, makes it sound as if it is in quadruple time.

It makes it sound as if parts of the orchestra have lost a page in the score. And even the brilliant climactic finale has strange stops and starts before it concludes with the remarkable thrilling gallop reminiscent of a horse race and pounding hooves.

Why is Mozart top of the pops here in DL?

I superseded EVERYTHING by him!

Weird, I’ve never even heard of this movie…I want to see it now. I doubt it’s on Netflix tho

[quote] I’ve never even heard of this movie

There's no reason why you should.

It's a second-rate Euro-pudding made by an American who profited from a career made of garbage.

R51 Wow that's rude

It's an axiom amongst movie producers that biopics about failed artists can make highly successful movies.

But that biopics about highly successful artists most frequently make dull, lousy movies.

Beethoven wrote the Moonlight Sonata.

But Keegan says it's 'a bit dull' (at 7.30 and 8.20)

The Emperor Concerto, which romantic second movement ends the film and the titanic third movement plays over the closing credits.

Attached is the version played Alfred Brendel and the Vienna Philharmonic, conducted by Simon Rattle.

Was it as good as Prick Up Your Ears?

How mays biographies has Gary Oldman actually starred in, anyway? Offhand I can think of Beethoven, Joe Orton, Winston Churchill, Herman Mankiewicz, and Sid Vicious.

Oldman is great in this

What's so great about Beethoven anyway? Has he ever had his picture on a bubble gum card?

Anyway, he's such a tragic figure - brilliant, but awful - I hate the scene at the end when the kids are kicking him senseless on the street.

I remember reading that his deafness wasn't due to the abuse he suffered at the hands of his father but some other degenerative disease (syphilis? ).

R59 he has some of the greatest music ever written.

It's Valentine's Day. Here is the letter to his Immortal Beloved:

Even in bed my ideas yearn towards you, my Immortal Beloved, here and there joyfully, then again sadly, awaiting from Fate, whether it will listen to us. I can only live, either altogether with you or not at all. Yes, I have determined to wander about for so long far away, until I can fly into your arms and call myself quite at home with you, can send my soul enveloped by yours into the realm of spirits — yes, I regret, it must be. You will get over it all the more as you know my faithfulness to you; never another one can own my heart, never — never! O God, why must one go away from what one loves so, and yet my life in W. as it is now is a miserable life. Your love made me the happiest and unhappiest at the same time. At my actual age I should need some continuity, sameness of life — can that exist under our circumstances? Angel, I just hear that the post goes out every day — and must close therefore, so that you get the L. at once. Be calm — love me — today — yesterday.

What longing in tears for you — You — my Life — my All — farewell. Oh, go on loving me — never doubt the faithfullest heart

Of your beloved

L

Love this movie