And Now… Ladies & Gentlemen

 

Picture: B-     Sound: B-     Extras: D     Film: C+

 

 

Claude Lelouch has been directing films for over a half-century and still manages to get pictures made that seem ambitious as compared to the current generation of hacks-for-hire Hollywood is currently subjecting us to.  Though he has not been in peak form since the early 1980s, he is still a real narrative filmmaker, which is why And Now… Ladies & Gentlemen (2003) was easier to take when it did not work.

 

The film offers Jeremy Irons as a somewhat clever criminal who robs from the very wealthiest of shops, often by posing as the police, then showing up as a criminal the “police man” says to expect.  The first immediate problem is that his disguises are very unconvincing, already hurting the film’s ability to suspend our disbelief.  If we then take this as humor, then we can say the film does not follow through with any kind of consistent wit.

 

These sequences are cut somewhat surrealistically into nightclub stage footage featuring Patricia Kaas as the woman singing solo or with co-stars.  This never adds up to anything, but the songs are standards (or nearly so) and the music by Michel Legrand is likely a reason these moments are somewhat distinctive.  This eventually boils down to something of a melodrama with the usual predictable conclusion.  Claudia Cardinale even shows up in the cast of mostly unknown (at least in the U.S.) actors.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 2.35 x 1 image is often beautifully shot by cinematographer Pierre William Glenn, who at least knows how to shoot with the scope frame.  It is still a bit softer than it should be, but has its moments of clarity.  Watching this, it made me realize even further how trounced and whittled-down directors and cameramen have allowed the art of filmmaking to be put far below bad television.  At least this looks like a real movie, and if you just said “whatever that means”, you just showed your ignorance and cinematic illiteracy.  The Dolby Digital 5.1 AC-3 mix is available with wacky subtitle options that do not always make sense in the way they have been chosen, while the language is available as French and English.  What Lelouch did was have the actors speak in their native language, then dub over the language when it was the opposite of the intended language track.  Both are not bad, though limited by both their Dolby compression and especially because this is so dialogue-based.  Except for a few trailers, there are absolutely no extras.

 

I cannot remember the last time Lelouch had any of his films released by a major studio, even if Paramount released this through their Classics division.  Doing an unusual amount of English probably had something to do with it and it is at least a mature film.  Ultimately, however, And Now… Ladies & Gentlemen is not a comeback for the enduring director, but it just might the a sign of some new breakthrough to come.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo