The Moderns | | Cast : | Keith Carradine, Linda Fiorentino | | Director : | Alan Rudolph | | Studio : | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen | | Released Date : | May , 1988 | | DVD Released Date : | September 07, 2004 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), French (Subtitled), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), English (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | March 28, 2005 | | Summary | An awful film by any reasonable standard | Content
 | I don't know where to begin, this film is so ridiculous. How about Gertrube Stein jumping up and down, jeering and cheering at a boxing match between Carradine and Lone, a match to decide an issue of honor, and in the middle of it, Lone starts doing Karate moves to win? How about Wallace Shawn in drag? How about a cut scene where, inexplicably, a group of people in modern clothing stand around the bar, staring directly into the camera, as it stops and sits with them in frame? How about a painter who can mimic Cezanne, Matisse, and Modigliani, but whose own paintings look like bad 1980's music video collages.
The portrayal of Hemingway is offensive, he rants and pontificates morosely, with little life. If Hemingway acted in real life as he did in this film, he wouldn't have had to commit suicide, someone else would have shot him. This film is a travesty, totally self indulgent garbage. Read a book about the period instead, it is doubtful you will find one as bad as this film. |
| Rating | | | Date | November 18, 2004 | | Summary | Agelessly Elegant | Content
| Although this film is far from perfect it is a wonderful depiction of Paris during the infamous 1920's when all the great American writers and artists resided there.
Nick Hart (Keith Carradine) is a starving American artist who haunts little Parisian cafes with his charcoal pencil and drawing pad in hand as he sketches people he deems interesting. He becomes intrigued with a darkly mysterious woman named Rachel Stone (Linda Fiorentino) and her corruptly powerful husband Bertram Stone (John Lone). As the story unfolds we discover a past exists between Hart and Mrs. Stone and danger follows their lurking interests along Parisian streets. Mr. Stone is supposedly an art dealer/collector who seems to know all of the most important of people while reducing those he cares little for to pulp. A drunken Hemmingway (Kevin J. O'Connor) along with the likes of Alice B. Tolkas (Ali Giron) and her mate Gertrude Stein (Elsa Raven) make fleeting appearances during the film in a half-hearted attempt to maintain the allure of Paris during the 20's. Hart discovers a way to make a living through his involvement with a rich heiress (Geraldine Chaplin) and an influential gallery owner (Genevieve Bujold) but this connection could also be his decline.
If you are someone who carries on a romance with Paris and all that she holds then you will probably find this film very appealing. Director Alan Rudolph manages to capture what life must have been like during the time of Hemmingway, Fitzgerald and Stein as Americans in Paris. One would almost prefer he had made a film directly related to the famous people he randomly refers to in this movie, we all know they were in themselves extraordinarily interesting subjects. But overall this film is worth watching despite the little imperfections and a bit of bad acting here and there. Carradine and Fiorentino display a decent chemistry in order to carry the story to completion. As always though the true hero here is Paris, a city as old as it is timeless.
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| Rating | | | Date | November 01, 2004 | | Summary | We'll Always Have Paris | Content
| For we English majors, Paris in 1926 is like Woodstock 1969. The cerebral high jinks of the period are familiar. The Dada movement, which is a self-parody of European artiness, has a cameo during a surrealistic funeral of the movie's cad. Hemingway and Gertrude Stein are also parodied. The literary icons are not treated well. Hemingway is a failure with two Parisian painted ladies and Stein comes off as a bully and a boxing fan, which is ridiculous.
I'm reading the life of Scott Fitzgerald now and I must admit that this fellow met everyone in Paris and New York with his mad wife in tow. I wish someone would do a film about Scott and Zelda. This wistfulness to experience the lives of the Celebes of an artistic and sociological watershed is the stuff dreams are made of.
The Moderns is really a forged masterpiece scam movie. It is handled deftly, but we are not there for the crime and it's amusing consequences. Art critics are satirized as pompous know it alls, which is always satisfying. Tom Wolfe has already written books about modern art and architecture, which describes the fraud in art's periphery. This film handles that well I think.
The problem with a bad movie: bad acting and a bad script, can harm a film, but not enough for aficionados such as myself, to abandon Paris in 1926.
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| Rating | | | Date | March 19, 2003 | | Summary | The Next-To-The-Last really good Alan Rudolph movie.... | Content
| Between 15-18 years ago, filmmaker Alan Rudolph, a protege of Robert Altman's, came out with a trio of really excellent films that captured the feeling of the times and places they were set in beautifully. The first was "Choose Me", a story about singles in the tail end of the disco era and the effect casual sex has on its characters; "Trouble In Mind", to this day, the ONLY film that attempts to capture the bizarre zeitgeist of the early eighties and the late seventies, a time that every person over 30 has lived through cognitively, but no other filmmaker sought to fictionalize.... Then there was "The Moderns": A movie so thick with atmosphere, good acting and mood that you'll be hard pressed to find something to compare it with. The story centers around unemployed artist Nick Hart, (Keith Carradine, the star of Rudolph's other two masterpieces,) dealing with the sudden appearance back in his life of Rachel, a woman who blows hot and cold, and who just happens to be his peripatetic wife from an earlier life. The odd thing is, she's ALSO the wife of a shallow, materialistic so and so named Bert Stone, a "little man" who made his fortune in prophylactics. These parts are played by Linda Fiorentino and John Lone....Lone being a truly quirky bit of casting. Despite her long absence from his life and Stone's presence, they rekindle their old relationship under Stone's nose, although he obviously suspects something from the beginning. Set in Paris in the 20's, Hart and his fellow characters are pictured as having a peripheral connection with Gertrude Stein's inner circle, a circle that includes Ernest Hemingway. This is where the atmosphere comes in, along with excellent music, as Rudolph recreates the period and setting near-perfectly, allowing his actors to reveal the mechanics of bohemian relationships, circa 1925 or so... In true Altman/Rudolph fashion, the ensemble cast's the thing, as every character seems to get equal screen time. Geraldine Chaplin has a turn here as one of Hart's paramours and sponsors and Genevieve Bujold is a cagy art dealer Hart has business with. Wallace Shawn also has a part as a "passing scene" columnist for a Parisian newspaper who contemplates suicide. Rudolph pays attention to every tiny detail, and has his American characters speaking English in interplay with each other and his French characters speaking French. Bujold speaks a form of "esperanto" that includes BOTH languages throughout the film. Can't afford that ticket to La Belle France? Rent this movie, break out the brie, boules and chablis and enjoy this substantial, quirky movie! |
| Rating | | | Date | August 04, 2002 | | Summary | Fun Film! | Content
| This an entertaining, unassuming film, set in Paris of the 1920s. I have always liked films set around this time because they are fun in terms of their music, the style of dress, and their mood. This film loosely follows a struggling young artist (is there any other kind?) as he works on his craft in Paris. Along the way, you have great costumes and great tunes. I love the theme song played at the beginning of the film as well as that short "Da-Da" piece played in the middle. Linda Fiorentino supplies the flapper beauty and oh boy is she pretty! There are some historical figures that pop up in this movie, like a young Hemingway casting about in Paris, and they help to add to the flavour of the film. If you like films such as "Henry and June" or Jennifer Jason Leigh's Dorothy Parker film from the 1990s, then you should give this DVD a spin. You might enjoy it! |
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