There is a generation divide, as always with cinema, and it is obvious with regards the Visconti's film and the earliest Käutner's version. In the modern times, when it is commercially fashionable to insist on the more prurient aspects of one's biography and when crude obscenity has replaced suggestiveness, it is quite understandable that younger generations should far prefer the eroticism and nauseating aestheticism of Visconti. As a man in his seventies, I must say I was deeply moved by the Ludwig portrayed by Käutner. The camera-work is excellent, the Wagnerian musical background sublime and the rendering of the end of the King quite gripping. It is a great injustice to compare this film with the Sissi series.
Reviews
2 Reviews
This Special Friendship
(1964)
A pair of of star-crossed lovers
28 September 2008
People who have loved the novel by Roger Peyrefitte should equally love the film by Delannoy. This story of a thwarted love between two young boys in a french Catholic college in the 50's, faithfully transcribes the nearly oppressive atmosphere which prevailed in religious boarding schools in those days. The climate of repressed, contained passion at times culminates in sublimated eroticism as when Georges kisses the medal worn by Alexandre against his breast. The film perfectly renders the perversity of some priests who secretly encourage the forbidden love, sharing it by proxy, while openly condemning it. A remake of this film could not possibly be made nowadays. It tells a story of a time when,as the great Burke wrote, though at a far anterior period, "vice itself lost half its evil by losing all its grossness". The cast is excellent and the Black & White pictures superb.
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