De-Lovely [Blu-ray]

“De-Lovely” is an entirely worthy look at the life and songs of Cole Porter that successfully evokes the lavish and sophisticated world in which he lived and wrote. It is very entertaining and relatively truthful to Porter’s life. Hollywood biopics have a rather poor track record and have often been more fantasy than reality and more tribute than truth. As these films go, “De-Lovely” is fairly truthful, including the fact that Porter was gay, a fact that couldn’t even be hinted at in 1946’s “Night and Day”. It nevertheless got mixed reviews and a real drubbing from some critics, a fate I feel it didn’t deserve.Critics certainly know that what can be done in a book cannot be done in two hours on film, yet some felt the film was superficial and didn’t delve deep enough into Porter’s psyche and creativity. Cole Porter was deep, complicated and moody, just the kind of thing movies generally can’t explore very well. On top of that, film in general seems especially limited in being able to depict the act of composing music. The film was made on a moderate budget for a general audience and did just what it should have done. It was enough to give the audience a good sampling of Porter’s music and world and let them delve deeper on their own if they want to.Some complained that the music was not in the order it was composed. This is very true but the film’s focus is more on the relationship of Porter and his wife Linda than a career story in which the songs have to be chronological to serve as benchmarks as the career unfolds. In the case of “De-Lovely” the film is conceived like a musical and the songs are used to comment on what is going on in the story and sometimes to set up the next scene. In this way every song is just where it should be. There is enough distance between now and Porter’s era that the correct order of the songs’ composition would only be known by Porter experts anyway. (It becomes disconcerting if the subject is contemporary enough that many people know when the songs came out such as in the recent Elton John biopic).The decision was made to have popular singers, well known to the public, perform the songs. For the most part this works even though some people objected to this. The popular artists surely helped the box office and the CD was a top ten hit. Most of the arrangements and presentations are faithful enough in referencing the era even if not being completely historic re-creations. Respectful of Porter, they even include their original introductions, which were mostly dropped by the mid-fifties. Elvis Costello had a blast with “Let’s Misbehave” and John Barrowman’s “Night and Day” was one of the high points of the film in its transition from rehearsal to show. “Be a Clown” provided a fantasy sequence with Porter and Louis B. Mayer on the MGM lot which included his famous quote to George Gershwin that Irving Berlin wrote lots of hit songs so why couldn’t he? Porter is known to have written “Be a Clown” in response to the studio wanting simple, unsophisticated lyrics. ( So in studio logic you naturally hire Cole Porter).It was odd to have “Begin the Beguine” transposed to a minor key in Sheryl Crow’s interpretation, changing it from a joyous dance to a dark, moody piece but I think this was done to create a mood for the scene that follows. It does work in an eerie way but I miss the original. Vivian Green’s “Love for Sale” was a dark dreamtime interlude through what then was a very underground world. It’s presented in a jazz style later than the era, but it works. Caroline O’Connor had fun doing Ethel Merman and caught the sharpness in her voice as well as the volume on “Anything Goes”, which Merman premiered in 1934.Some critics felt the film didn’t get the facts right, but I would challenge this. Most everything in the film is true with minor exceptions. The set up is fantasy in the first place: Porter, at the end of his life is visited by a supernatural being (well played by Jonathan Pryce) and is taken to a small theater to see a play of important scenes of his life with a cast made up of the actual people. This gives the film leeway enough to include a bit of surrealism here and there (like “Be a Clown”) and to not have to start with his childhood or anything like that. Still, his life and the shows occur quite chronologically.It skips Yale altogether and begins in Paris. Porter’s extravagant lifestyle and reputation for entertaining is well-illustrated by a gigantic costume party in Venice, where the real Porter rented palazzos in the summer and threw amazing and outrageous parties. In fact he was eventually asked to leave Venice because of these parties. Fellow party-goer Gerald Murphy was a real friend and he and Porter wrote a symphonic jazz ballet together that was well-received. The Murphys (of the Mark Cross fortune) seemed to have entertained the entire Lost Generation at their parties on the Riviera.The esteem of Irving Berlin was real and his support saved “Fifty Million Frenchmen” from folding. “Paris” was the musical that brought Porter back from Europe and “Anything Goes” (1934) and “Kiss Me Kate” (1948) were his two most stunning successes. Moves to Hollywood and the Berkshire Hills happen when they are shown. The sadder things that happen did happen and when they did I felt a lot for the characters. Porter’s house in Los Angeles was a colonial much like Westleigh Farms in Indiana and not a Tudor, but so what? The house is the setting for one of the film’s funniest moments when Linda comes home to find that Cole has turned their swimming pool into a scene musch like that at George Cukor’s place. Despite its humor,this is actually a pivotal scene in the film with results that parallel events in real life. The small physical details are very accurate from the Deco cigarette cases to the fact that Ashley Judd’s vintage evening bags were supplied by Van Cleef and Arpels, the jeweler Linda Porter used to call “my favorite department store”.The greatest inaccuracy is also one of the film’s greatest strengths and that’s casting Ashley Judd as Linda. She was 20 years younger than Kevin Kline and looks it and Linda Lee Thomas was eight years older than Porter and though attractive, was rather matronly. She had a reputation for beauty in an era when beauty was not equated with youth. Ashley Judd looks absolutely wonderful, full of life and incredibly attractive. She also looks stunning in the fashions of the 1920’s and 30’s. She’s excellent in the role as well, vibrant and sympathetic. The deep affection they felt for each other was noted by everyone they knew and is portrayed well in the film. In this case I think the casting was to overcome the limitations of film. It would be very difficult to get across their mutual affection had a matronly woman been cast and would have probably required extra scenes. With Judd the attraction is self evident and easy to accept, requiring no explanation. Kevin Kline is deeply committed to this role and plays Porter with grace and charm, though I suspect Porter was more fun and mischievous. Kline looks nothing like Porter but Cary Grant in “Night and Day” looked even less so. I have to take it on faith that Monty Wooley, a close friend of Porters since his Yale days, was so warm and gregarious with his friends. Wooley, known mostly for “The Man Who Came To Dinner” was typecast forever after as Sheridan Whiteside, a vain, pompous, overbearing, snobby and prickly fellow based on Robert Benchley. Also, his famously white beard is black here. I also wonder why the film has Jeanette Macdonald and Nelson Eddy singing “I Love You” in “Rose Marie”. As far as I know they never sang a Cole Porter song in their films. The song was from Porter’s show, “Mexican Hayride”. Perhaps they are there as signifiers of what the mass audience liked in the thirties.This is a very good film that most anyone who likes Cole Porter’s music will enjoy. It’s a vast improvement on “Night and Day” which completely failed to catch the tone of the era and of Porter’s milieu. You could never say that Kevin Kline channels Cole Porter but it is a thoughtful performance. In some ways I felt the film should have sparkled more, but the filmmakers chose to explore his whole life, not just the wild twenties and thirties, and that naturally gives it a darker but more truthful feeling.

At one point Jay Cocks' script borders on the self-congratulatory when Cole and Linda are shown viewing the earlier biopic starring Cary Grant with obvious displeasure. This remake, of course, is going to tell it like it is, and indeed the script of "De-Lovely" strains to account for the (frequently) flawed face of artistic genius. Linda tells Cole that his music stems from his talent, not his behavior, whereas Cole tries to explain that it's all part of the same inseparable package: without the excesses, the disloyalties, the self-indulgences he wouldn't be who he is--arguably America's greatest songwriter. In the end, "De-Lovely" is self-descriptive: not a pretty picture--more Asbury Park than Granada, to paraphrase a Porter lyric.Perhaps today's audiences need more proof that he really was a great songwriter. Or given the moral correctness of our times, perhaps audiences are incapable of empathizing with those given to self-indulgences. Or they may think they know all too well "the wages of sin." Or perhaps the acting of Kline and Judd overwhelms the script's good intentions. Indeed, they come across as two people who, as each is fully aware, ask too much of one another. He gives her gifts, love, sporadic devotion; she gives him gifts, his vanity (i.e., useless legs), and undying devotion. In the end, and in the still of the night, Linda's devotion cuts through the darkness--a flickering memory but all that Cole has left before the screen goes black.We believe the characters, their relationship, and their deep if unconventional love--perhaps too much. The film becomes a frequently luminous and tuneful soap opera about a main character who is more pathetic than tragic, about a self-destructive songwriter who self-destructs for obvious reasons, but in a deliberate, slow, very sad and depressing manner. Orson Welles had in essence a similar character and plot framework in "Citizen Kane," but he also had the directing "style" (which above all should be foremost in anything related to Cole Porter's music and life) and a "motivator" to make Kane's willful and self-ignorant destruction a mutually shared obsession, inviting us at every moment to become adventurer-detectives searching for the clues that will lead us to "Rosebud."By contrast, "De-Lovely" wallows in pain and misery for the last 30 minutes, insulting us with a momentary deus ex machina ("Blow, Gabriel, Blow"--the clumsy choreography and camera work are exceeded only by the execrable, cheesy musical arrangement), and then attempting to rescue everything with that flickering, potentially powerful, image that is the film's final moment. Too little, too late--and too soon, moreover, after we've endured the spectacle of our subject reduced to a pay-for-play "John," a victim of blackmail (triply so, because Linda is included, as is their relationship and mutual trust). The soundtrack plays "Love for Sale," but what we witness is a love that's far more than "slightly soiled."The project needed to be rethought. Most of today's viewers are totally unsympathetic with the private lives of artists (one would think the writers would pay attention to politics) and, for that matter, unfamiliar with Porter's songs. The film would have done a great service had it opened viewers' hearts and minds to the "obsessions" (an apt term used in the film) of others, the personal mind-images and different objects of desire that motivate the passions of the artist in ways that move us all. (What's the gain in portraying Monty Wooley as a pimp?) Or it would have done an equal service had it launched a whole new wave of interest in the music of Cole Porter. Sadly, it fails there, too, for reasons too numerous to mention. As a musician, I have no answers for the film's complete re-harmonization if not rewriting of "Begin the Beguine." (If such flagrant disregard of the man's music is acceptable, why should we accept the film's representation of Porter's life?) Perhaps it's just as well the film bypasses Porter "essentials" like "I've Got You Under My Skin," "I Get a Kick Out of You," and "At Long Last Love." And, of course, only Hollywood can be counted on to make a musical about American jazz musicians' favorite American composer with nary a measure of music that swings! In short, musically this production is clueless about the heart of great American popular music. The performances and arrangements in "De-Lovely" owe more to the late Victorian-era sounds of the British music hall than to the African-American musical forms that directly inspired Berlin, Gershwin, Arlen, even Kern and, indirectly at least, Cole Porter.This is a movie/DVD that few people will care too watch more than once. If you count yourself in that number, and if you're wondering why someone would bother to make a movie about Cole Porter, pick up any recording by Sinatra and Nelson Riddle with "I've Got You Under My Skin" ("Songs for Swinging Lovers" is a good start) or "Night and Day." If you tire of either song (virtually impossible), try the inspired, absolutely scintillating version of "In the Still of the Night" on the first disc of the recent "Sinatra-Vegas" box. And if that's not enough, there's plenty more from the same source, or from Ella Fitzgerald on the "Cole Porter Songbook." Or listen to Mabel Mercer explaining how it (in Porter songs, love is frequently an "it" or "thing") was "Just One of Those Things," or to Dinah Washington actually selling it on "Love for Sale," or to Danny Kaye performing the pyrotechnical verbosity of "Let's Not Talk About Love," or to any singer who imparts to these timeless, immortal songs and lyrics the life that is theirs, allowing them to become the magnificent obsessions of yet another generation of listeners.[Why the 4-star rating? Maybe I got the movie entirely wrong, and if I didn't, maybe the movie succeeded in creating sympathy for and interest in Cole Porter as well as the original, indigenous art form at which Cole excelled: the "American Popular Song," along with "The Great American Songbook," which owes so much of its brilliance to the contributions of his inarguable genius. Musical composition--in verbal, cinematic, or musical language--is not a thumbs up, thumbs down proposition. I'm frankly bummed by dismissals of Robert Altman's "Nashville" (my favorite movie), but I'll respect the opinion of any reviewer who took the time to screen the film and give it some serious thought.]

Wonderful movie with a large selection of Porter's songs.

An imaginative musical bio-pic of Cole Porter; overall it's an enjoyable movie with a host of star singers and set-piece ensembles; it depicts Porter's life and his apparent bi-sexuality with sensitivity and the period detail is fairly good, given the otherwise artificiality of the overall concept.The songs are of course very much part of the weave; most of the contemporary singers acquit themselves well with these classics, though there are a few flaws – Elvis Costello, despite poor diction (inadvertently) does a good impression of Arthur Askey singing “Let's Misbehave”, but a more serious error is Sheryl Crow singing “Begin The Beguine”; Crow is a singer I have respect for and she actually handles the re-imagined version of the song well – but it's that re-imagining that I take issue with; the arranger puts the melody into a minor key and it isn't the tune Porter wrote – who does he think he is changing a master's work in such a way? Artie Shaw may have ditched the beguine rhythm in his hit recording, but at least he kept the melody!These issues aside, the dramatic performances (especially by Ashley Judd) and clever concept are positives and the film works well on that level.The UK Collector`s Edition DVD has commentaries, 4 featurettes and deleted scenes; English subtitles are available for the movie and the extras; a CD is also included with the soundtrack performances of the songs in the film.

I did buy this on the hope that I wouldn't have to read a biography on Porter in order to learn more about him, but this film doesn't really get into anything. I guess there's only so much you can put in a film is basically a rotation of of two scenes: a different song, followed by his wife allowing him to have an open marriage.Although we meet 'old Porter' first, the main film eliment kicks of with 'younger Porter' already being somewhat established and living the high life.... So nothing earlier on how he got there. And the first main song is, 'Well did You Evah? ' written when Porter was in his late 30s, which confuses things a bit. We also have 'old Porter' saying he wrote some songs as a 'code'..... Which I haven't seen quoted anywhere and I feel might have been some 'artistic license' storytelling for the film which then takes the magic out of some of his tunes.All the performances of Porters tunes are joyful though with a heap of singer cameos. Sheryl Crow and Alanis Morrisettes renditions are very impressive in that I didn't know either singer had a voice much better than their own songs allow. I'd nearly like both artists to record their own jazz albums after this!Anyone who's seen a loved one on their death bed will know how devistatingly accurate his wife's last scene is. She's really the hero of the film all the way through... I really wanted to know what made both of them tick to become such the people that they were.So this is light on detail but still an enjoyable watch all the way through

If you love the stylish 1920s, 30s and 40s, and the witty and sophisticated music of Cole Porter, you will love this biographical film of the songwriter's colourful life, beautifully told using his songs own songs to reflect aspects of the story. It is not a conventional musical, and many of the songs are sung by a surprising array guest artists appearing in cameo roles (see who you can spot)! to perform the songs in a style with a modern twist. Begine the Begine has never sounded more gorgeous than the way Sheryl Crow sings it. My husband and I have watched this film literally dozens of times and we still love it. bought this copy (and numerous others) as gifts for like minded friends.

Why this film hasn't been acclaimed worldwide, I don't know.It has a fantastic sense of style with performances that are faultless. Kline and Judd are so perfectly matched and believable that you become convinced you're watching the real people.But it's the music that wins you over - and the way in which it is woven into the story so that you suddenly see every song in a whole new way as it becomes an illustration of Porter's own life, weaknesses, passions or longing.The entire basis of the film is that Porter (Kline in wonderful prosthetics) sees his life flash before him in the final moments of his life. This is 'orchestrated' by 'Gabe' (Gabriel) who acts as the director of the 'show' that Kline is watching in its final rehearsal. he is thus able to comment on his own life as it is acted out before him.Truly wonderful and definitely not to be missed.

I first watched De-Lovely when I was 13 when I rented it on Netflix. I love it a lot. Kevin is stupendous in this. Most movies distributed by MGM in the United States often get out of print and hard to find. So I purchased the dvd that's labeled Dispatched from and Sold by Amazon. It's my very first movie of Kevin Kline that I bought in a uk region 2 dvd. I usually don't watch Gay/Lesbian movies and TV shows but he's the reason I could watch this and In & Out. He and Ashley are basically of the age group where they can be father and daughter due to being 20+ years from each other. The acting and the musical numbers were brilliant and well rehearsed.