Tony Palmer's Film About the Wagner Family Review

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Tony Palmer's Film About the Wagner Family ReviewI recognize the picture - it's on the cover of 'The Wagner Clan', a fairly enjoyable, gossipy little book by Jonathan Carr. However, the Amazon listing tells us nothing about the film itself. It doesn't even tell us the length. Could this be as good as 'The Golden Ring', or just another potboiler?
I thought I'd find out.
This is a fairly enjoyable, gossipy little film.
There are a few production issues, of which more later, but they don't detract from the entertainment value of watching the latter-day Wagners sniping at each other. Gottfried was in particularly good voice: he pioneered trolling long before the concept was popularized on the net. The internecine squabbling and daggers-drawn hatred is quite amazing, particularly the venom allegedly displayed by the late Wolfgang towards his brother's family, and his children by his first marriage. Katharina somehow manages to give a bad impression, even without the help of her family. If anything, the notorious Winifred, with her friend Adolf, come across as mild by comparison.
To give a very loose translation of the title of this review 'After Richard, they were a shower' (with the possible exception of Cosima).
If you are a Wagnerite, I suspect this film will irritate and entertain. At least that's how it affected me.
Production issues?
English voice-over rather than subtitles. In a film where most interviews were in German, this became annoying.
Constant switching between aspect ratios. Archive material 4:3, modern footage 16:9. There's nothing unusual about this, but the resultant DVD track didn't standardize, so my old Wega couldn't cope.
If you have read and enjoyed 'The Wagner Clan', you'll enjoy this film.
If you're a Wagnerite, you'll enjoy the shots of Wahnfried and the Festspielhaus.
Tony Palmer's Film About the Wagner Family Overview

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Camelot (Original Broadway Cast) Review

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Camelot (Original Broadway Cast) ReviewThe original cast of "Camelot", Richard Burton as Arthur, Julie Andrews as Guinevere, Robert Goulet as Lancelot, is one of those rare coming togethers of great talent in a Broadway show that all you can do is wonder why in God's name (a) the show wasn't recorded in its entirety back then on film or tape and (b) none of these participants reprised their roles in the dreadful 1967 movie version. What was Joshua Logan smoking when he insisted on Richard Harris instead of Burton? It remains one of the most baffling stories in the history of Broadway musicals mucked up by Hollywood.
This CD of the original cast is therefore all the more precious because its your only chance to sample this wonderful assemblage of talent performing the best Lerner-Loewe score next to "My Fair Lady". The remastered CD is a must, putting the songs back in their right order and sounding much better than the earlier CD pressing did.
Ultimately, the CD gets only four stars from me not because of its presentation, but because of the manner in which this recording was first produced back in 1960. Goddard Lieberson, the head of Columbia Records who produced cast recordings back then was notorious for damaging the essence of what a cast recording was supposed to be, i.e. a document of the show and its music and instead often made some very bad tamperings with the material in order to achieve a supposedly "purer" musical listening experience. This meant (a) always eliminating all dialogue snippets that led into a song or was spoken between verses (b) sometimes eliminating whole musical sections that didn't sound "musical" enough and were more stage bound. In the case of "Camelot" this supposedly more "artistic" decision results in the loss of Julie Andrews lines and contributions in the title song so that it's a Burton solo. We also lose Burton's angry prelude to "How To Handle A Woman" where he rails against Merlin, and finally the ending which reprises the title song has been tampered into something it wasn't and never was on stage. Goddard Lieberson's aversion to dialogue from the play in this case not only harmed the integrity of this recording as a document of the play, but also robs us the ability to hear how really good Burton, Andrews etc were in their performances as well as their singing. The end result is still magnificent in the form its presented, but should have been more definitive than it turned out to be.Camelot (Original Broadway Cast) Overview

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