Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: The Dancer Upstairs

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Posted by Gerard S. Cohen (Member # 994) on 05-09-2003, 09:57 PM:

Screened opening night, 5/9/03 at the Kew Gardens Theatre in an attractive theatre lined with pleated red drapery, and a fluted procenium. But the auditorium is so much wider than deep, that the best seating is only about a dozen seats in the center of the last row.

Clean bright image and adequate sound, but grease-pencil markings were visible on the green bands of the trailers. The policy trailer could use a good cleaning.

The feature is a detective/suspense story about a pair of civil police attempting to track down a revolutionary terrorist
ringleader in a South American country, parallel to the Shining Path movement in Peru. Conflicts with political and military
authorities, and sexy women complicate the search.

Noteworthy: Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower" and a song about time on the soundtrack, and references to "The Battle of Algiers" video.

I was annoyed with the main production titles shown by fading, one-by-one against a black screen at the beginning of the film,
which was tedious and got the film off to a slow start, that never really accellerated.

This was John Malkovich's first feature film as director. The script was written by the author of the novel, a writer improbably named Shakespeare. My wife put her finger on the problem by saying a novelist should not attempt to script a film of his book, since the style and pacing of the two forms are entirely different. I agree, despite D.W. Griffith's claim that he learned to film by studying the novels of Charles Dickens, and Sergie Eisenstein's claim that he learned to edit by studying the films of Griffith.

The film moves very slowly despite interrupting acts of terrorism
Suspense/detective/political films are not my favorite genre,
and this one is not one I'll remember for very long.

Although all the actors have Spanish or Indian languages as their native ones, they spoke English in the film, except for brief dialog moments in the Indian tongue, when English sub-titles were provided.

The cast and Equadorian crew titles were scrolled at the end,
consisting entirely of Spanish and Indian names. The audience,
politely silent throughout the 2':23" show, filed out without a word.

[ 05-10-2003, 09:11 AM: Message edited by: Gerard S. Cohen ]

Posted by Charles Everett (Member # 889) on 05-18-2003, 01:39 PM:

AMC Empire, NYC, 5/17, 3:20 PM show. Hall #22 (Top of the Empire floor), attendance ~50.

The Dancer Upstairs is recommended if you are into foreign affairs and/or Latin America. Yes, it starts slowly as Gerard said, but the South American background keeps the film grounded in reality. It could be set in Peru or in Ecuador: Both of those countries are on the Pacific coast and the indigenous peoples speak Quechua, the language Gerard hints at.

For the cinephiles out there, pay attention to where an investigator is going back and forth through the end of the Costa-Gavras film State of Siege. The title is handwritten on the tape box in Spanish (Estado de Sito) and the tape carries end titles for a Spanish translation.

Most who have written about The Dancer Upstairs noticed "All Along the Watchtower" on the soundtrack. I might be the first to notice the monologue and song by Nina Simone, who died a few weeks ago.

Presentation: Image and sound were good. Show nearly started late because the digital unit for part of the preshow broke down. Because of this people were filing in well after the feature started.