Movie Outing: Anna Karenina

I recently took myself over to the Chelsea Cinema to see Anna Karenina, the movie based on Tolstoy's tragic novel from 1877, and which stars Keira Knightley and is directed by Joe Wright. I have been a big fan of these two since they made Pride & Prejudice together which is one of my very favorite movies.

The movie opened at Thanksgiving so I thought by now the theater would be fairly empty so I arrived a little late to find in the dark a completely packed house. I spotted one seat in the last row and asked two old ladies sitting on the aisle if I could kindly pass. One lady tried to stand up once, twice, and on the third attempt she got half-way up and said to me, "You better go by while the going is good!" I squeezed past and settled into a cozy, comfy seat perfectly situated in the middle of the row where the splendors of Russia unfolded before me.

This novel has been made into movies before, most famously starring Greta Garbo, but for this version Joe Wright decided to film the production mostly within an old theater instead of on location in Russia. It's a risky approach but I thought the movie was very beautiful and I recommend it, especially if you are looking for a luxurious eyeful during these dark dreary days of January. The screenplay was written by the English playwright Sir Tom Stoppard. The production design including the clothes and the sets is wonderful, and it inspires you to take home some of the elegance with you. I won't summarize the 900-page novel here, but you do know that for Anna, who is trying to escape the confines of a deadly dull marriage, it does not end well.

Wrapped in silks and jewels and furs, Keira Knightley is jaw-droppingly gorgeous in the title role, and thankfully the camera does linger on her lovely face. (Photos are movie stills from Focus Features and from Vogue magazine; click on photos to enlarge.)

 

A recent issue of Vogue magazine featured the stars of the movie – here is Keira in Vogue:



The English actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson plays Count Alexi Vronksy, the rich calvary officer who the unhappily married Anna falls for.

Here is Taylor-Johnson photographed in Vogue, not blonde.

Jude Law plays Anna's long suffering diplomat husband.
 


In Vogue he wears a dramatic coat by Prada.



Konstantin Levin, who shares a parallel plot with Anna's story, is played by the striking Irish actor Domnhnall Gleason.

The clothes in the movie were designed by Jacqueline Durran, who worked with Joe Wright on Pride & Prejudice, for which she received an Academy Award, and on Atonement; do you remember Keira Knightley's sinuously elegant emerald green evening gown in that movie? Durran was this week nominated for an Oscar for Anna Karenina, and I hope she wins. Eric Wilson at The New York Times wrote a very interesting piece about how Durran combined 1870's shapes with 1950's couture by Balenciaga to create gowns which looked historical but also modern for Anna Karenina.

To add to the modern note, jewelry in the movie is from Chanel; Keira Knightley is the spokesperson for Chanel fragrance.

I really enjoyed the movie which, I understand, is quite faithful to the novel (I haven't read it!). Afterwards I had visions of tsarist Russia dancing in my head. I'd like to return to it again.
Blog bonus: movie trailer

Midnight in Paris, and the Murphys

Top to bottom: in the movie, the character Gil Pender travels back in time to meet Adriana; Gil and Adriana talk with Ernest Hemingway; Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

TD and I missed the movie Midnight in Paris, which was written and directed by Woody Allen, when it was in the movie theaters last summer, but we recently watched it on pay-per-view and enjoyed it immensely. Last night the movie won the award for best screenplay at the Golden Globes but the elusive Mr. Allen was not in the audience to receive his trophy. If you haven't seen it yet I highly recommend it.

In it, the main character Gil Pender, played by Owen Wilson, travels back in time to Paris in the 1920s. I don't know about you, but I am fascinated by Paris in the 1920's when so many artists and writers were living and working there. Hemingway wrote about the era in his book A Moveable Feast which I think I have read five times. Hemingway along with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Cole Porter, Pablo Picasso, T. S. Eliot, Josephine Baker, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Salvador Dali, and Man Ray all make appearances in Midnight in Paris, and it's such a delight to see all these artists show up on screen. In different media, the artists in Paris in the 20's created the culture of the twentieth century. I was wishing the movie would go on and on and not end. And one is left thinking, who is left out of the cast here? Coco Chanel. Igor Stravinsky. James Joyce. Publisher Sylvia Beach who owned the influential bookstore Shakespeare and Company. And the Murphys.
The Murphys of course were Sara and Gerald from New York City. The couple escaped a stifling life in the United States and set up house in a villa on the French Riveria where they entertained most of the artists listed about and created a life of beauty and art informed by their American way of easy, relaxed elegance. Living Well is the Best Revenge by Calvin Tomkins and Everybody Was So Young by Amanda Vaill are two wonderful books about the Murphys.

Gerald and Sara on the beach at Cap D'Antibe.

Traveling in Venice with Cole and Linda Porter.

Gerald Murphy on his boat photographed by Man Ray.

The Murphys were renowned for their style of living, and inspired a recent traveling museum exhibition entitled Making It New. The catalogue stated that for the Murphys, "Life itself became a seminal work of art. The artist redefines the terms and conventions of life without necessarily leaving a single art work object behind." Although the Murphys suffered great tragedy when two of their three children died of disease, and Gerald struggled with his homosexuality, they remain a great lasting inspiration. And Paris in the 20's is a gift that keeps on giving.

The Ballets Russes

I was having a swanky lunch recently on the seventh floor at Bergdorf Goodman with a friend from college, and afterwards I discovered in the cozy book department there a big, new, glossy book out about the Ballets Russes.
We love the Ballets Russes.
I first learned about the Ballets Russes (that's French for the Russian Ballets) from Diana Vreeland because when you read about her, she talks a lot about the dance company, and in fact mounted a show about it in 1978 when she was the consultant to the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute. Boy, I would love to have seen that.
The Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev formed the Ballets Russes, which performed mainly in Paris from 1909 until his premature death in 1929. Many of the company's dancers came from the Imperial Ballet of St. Petersburg, and arrived in Paris as exiles from the Russian Revolution.
Here is a portrait of Diaghilev with his nanny by Leon Bakst from 1906 (all images courtesy The Monacelli Press).


But, the Ballets Russes was a radical departure from classical dance. Diaghilev invited all kinds of artists to contribute, and incorporated into the company all aspects of art, costume design, set design, music and dance. It was really an artistic revolution which announced the dawn of the modern age. Sets were created by Picasso, Braque, Miro and de Chirico. Costumes were designed by Chanel and Matisse.
This robe, based on a design by Henri Matisse for the ballet Le Chant du Rossignol, 1920, is made of silk satin painted with flowers and edged with velvet.


Robe based on a design by Leon Bakst for the ballet Le Dieu Bleu, 1912, of wool with gilt metal, satin appliques and gilt buttons.



The aesthetics, the music and dance were all part of the final creation. Igor Stravinsky, the premier composer of the earlier twentieth century, was hired by Diaghilev when he was a young man, and went on to create for the company his great works The Firebird, Petrushka, The Rite of Spring. Diaghilev promoted to ballet master the young George Ballanchine who went on to co-found the New York City Ballet and create modern ballet in the twentieth century. Diaghilev moved male dancers who had previously been overshadowed by prima ballerinas to the forefront. Here is Mikhail Fokin in the ballet Le Spectre de la Rose from 1914.


Diaghilev's greatest star (and lover) was Nijinsky, the dancer and choreographer who created ballets which reached far beyond tradition and experimented with the new, futuristic direction of modern dance. Some of his work in fact caused riots and scandal.
Costume design by Leon Bakst for Nijinsky as the Faun in L'Apres Midi d'un Faun.


Diana Vreeland said, in 1978 to the Palm Beach Daily News, that when the Ballets Russes opened, "it was a turning point for all the arts. The brilliant colors and bold rhythms put an end to the paleness and primness of the early part of the century. Nothing has ever been the same since." What a fantastic time to live in Paris, at the dawn of modern art. This deluxe book from The Monacelli Press is beautifully illustrated and includes a number of varied essays which offer a thorough and lively exploration of the many accomplishments of this extraordinary dance company.
A few years ago, TD and I went on New Year's Eve to see the documentary Ballets Russes (2005). There was practically no one else in the small, darkened theater. After Diaghilev died, the company continued on in various forms, and some of the dancers were still alive to talk about it. Many of the old dance clips are of course in black and white, and my memory of that movie is that it simply sparkled in the dark with radiance and delight.

(Fashion) History Repeats Itself

Millicent Rogers, the Standard Oil heiress and jewelry designer, in a portrait by painter Bernard Boutet de Monvel.

I've been reading about the recent couture shows in Paris. I have to say, I miss the show of Christian Lacroix, the heavenly French designer who whipped up the most fantastic clothes, and recently went out of business.

John Galliano for Christian Dior presented some very Fifties-ish designs that featured a narrow waist and then billowing silk skirts. When I saw it, it reminded me of the tableau of Charles James dresses which opened the recent "Model as Muse" exhibition at the Museum of Metropolitan Art. Here is my photo from my visit last year:

Charles James was the artistic American couturier who was renowned for his sculptural gowns which combined colors in unexpected ways. The heiress and jewelry designer Millicent Rogers was a great client of his. She is pictured at the top of this post in clouds of Charles James' silk which worked well with her strong, bold, abstract jewelry designs.

Then I read on Hamish Bowles' entertaining blog, The Hamishphere, that, yes, in fact John Galliano was inspired by the museum exhibition for his recent Dior couture collection which included complicated ball gowns in structured shapes – a rich confection of lustrous fabrics and jewel colors.
(photos from Style.com)


This collection goes back to Charles James and it goes back to Christian Dior himself who in the Fifties presented the New Look. After the austerity in France of World War ll, Christian Dior created a popular dress silhouette with a narrow waist and a full skirt featuring yards of fabric which spoke to prosperity and abundance: The New Look.

Now, this is the interesting part. In the Fifties, after closing down her fashion house during the war, Coco Chanel returned to the world of fashion. Chanel of course had already revolutionized fashion earlier in the century. In a reaction against stiff and formal Edwardian clothes, Chanel invented comfortable separate pieces – jackets, pants, tee shirts – which followed the lines of the body and allowed for easy movement.

In the Fifties Chanel was again shocked to find women constrained, this time by the corseted waists and crinolines skirts of Dior's New Look. Her answer to it was a new invention: the Chanel suit. Made out of a lightweight tweed, the suit jacket skimmed the body and was edged with embroidery or pearls; it could easily be slipped off and worn over the shoulders like a cardigan. The slim skirt stopped at the knee, assuring that the modern woman could run to catch a cab and sit down in an office chair.

At the recent couture shows, a day after the Dior show, Karl Lagerfeld at Chanel presented this:

A crisp refreshing tonic, a slice of lemon to cut through the sweetness. Hamish Bowles reports that the edges of the fabrics were unpicked and then woven back together so that there appeared to be no seams. Now that's a modern approach, just as Mademoiselle's new suit was in the Fifties.

The Chanel jacket still skims the body.

Evening dresses seem to float.

Karl Lagerfeld is going for a real weightlessness here. Beautiful and wearable.
As in the past, one collection evokes opulence while the other looks to the future.

In Memoriam: While I was thinking about this post came the news that the amazing English designer Alexander McQueen, age 40, had committed suicide. In 2007 his great friend English stylist Isabella Blow died from suicide. It's so sad. Beyond the tragic loss of life, the world of fashion needs so much these fantastically eccentric and imaginative English talents who really work outside the bounds and take us all beyond the basics.

Coco Before Chanel

On Halloween TD and I avoided the madness of the Village Halloween Parade and slipped into the Chelsea Cinema on West 23rd Street to see "Coco Before Chanel," the movie about the young Chanel. In French with English subtitles, it tells the story of how the girl who lived in a French orphanage grew to become the most influential fashion designer of the twentieth century. I've written here about Chanel before (in fact that post is the one most visited by readers) so I was looking forward to this film. I loved watching it and being in that wonderfully romantic era of the Belle Epoque before World War 1. The movie is quiet and elegant in an "unHollywood" way.

Chanel was born in 1883, so when she was coming of age, fashion looked like this:

Tight corsets, long trains and highly structured clothes impaired movement and freedom. Feathers, lace and dripping jewelry were added on to the heaviness like icing on a cake. From an early age, Chanel, in the movie played by Audrey Tatou, notices clothing and simplifies fashion. From the nuns in the orphanage she borrows the idea of austere black clothes edged with white collars and cuffs, which become a Chanel signature. For instance, for a masquerade party, she dresses like a hobo (above) in a black suit with a white collar band shirt and vest, while the other ladies are cinched in and puffed up in their finery.

Chanel falls in love with Arthur "Boy" Capel, played by Alessandro Nivola, who takes her to the seaside resort of Deauville.


There she notices the sailors' striped shirts and adopts them as her own.

I had two shirts like this in college. One, white with blue stripes, came from L.L.Bean. The other, blue with green stripes, came from an army and navy story on Nantucket. I've been looking to replace them ever since.

"Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance," Chanel said later in her life. She reflected the modern age that was dawning and revolutionized clothes so that they followed the line of the body thus allowing the wearer freedom and comfort. In this scene, her sleek, sequined shift contrasts dramatically with the other confections in the room.


Sadly, Boy Capel died in a car crash, and Chanel never married. She had many lovers including the Duke of Westminster in England, from whom she borrowed tweed hunting jackets and Shetland sweaters. I thought that would have been neat to see in this movie, but this story did not go that far. Instead we see Chanel married to her work, creating the clothes, including the Chanel suit, that defined a century. We end with her in a blue sweater and white skirt and pearls – the epitome of timeless, modern chic.

Now that's what I call a Halloween treat!