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Swann in Love
Swann in Love
Directed by	Volker Schlöndorff
Screenplay by	Peter Brook; Jean-Claude Carrière; Marie-Hélène Estienne; Volker Schlöndorff;
Based on	Swann's Way; 1913 novel; by Marcel Proust
Produced by	Eberhard Junkersdorf; Margaret Ménégoz
Starring	Alain Delon; Jeremy Irons; Ornella Muti; Fanny Ardant;
Cinematography	Sven Nykvist
Edited by	Françoise Bonnot
Music by	Hans Werner Henze; David Graham; Gerd Kühr; Marcel Wengler;
Distributed by	Gaumont Distribution
Countries	France; West Germany
Languages	French; English; German
Box office	$6.1 million

Swann in Love (French: Un amour de Swann, German: Eine Liebe von Swann) is a 1984 Franco-German film directed by Volker Schlöndorff. It is based on Marcel Proust's seven-volume novel sequence In Search of Lost Time, specifically a self-contained section of the first volume, the title of which typically translates as Swann's Way (1913). It was nominated for 2 BAFTA Film Awards.

Plot

The film's story follows an original treatment of Proust's story by theater and film director Peter Brook, who was originally going to make the movie, setting it as a day in the life of the aging and ill Charles Swann (Jeremy Irons), who looks back on his past life in flashbacks.

The young Swann is an idly wealthy eligible bachelor in the best circles of Belle Époque Paris, although he is still regarded as something of a social outsider because of his Jewish background. He has been having an affair with the Duchess de Guermantes (Fanny Ardant), but he soon becomes intrigued and then obsessed by the young courtesan Odette de Crécy (Ornella Muti).

Swann's interest in Odette is at first encouraged by Madame Verdurin (Marie-Christine Barrault), a hostess who oversees a tightly-knit, exclusive, and decadent social circle. His friend, the overtly gay Baron de Charlus (Alain Delon), helps to arrange for Swann and Odette to meet. Swann's obsessive love for Odette, however, threatens Madame Verdurin's control, so she arranges other assignations for the courtesan, inflaming Swann's jealousy. Even though Swann declares himself to believe in a kind of spiritual egalitarianism, his interest in Odette is also aesthetic, as shown in references to a copy he owns of a fresco by Botticelli and his comparisons of Odette to the painting's figure, the Biblical character Zipporah. Odette, on the other hand, considers herself free to socialise and sleep where she pleases, leading Swann to visit a prostitute who might have information about whether Odette sleeps with other women as well as men.

Odette does come to contemplate and then suggest marriage to Swann, not so much to "save" her from present life as to insure her future. The Duchess de Guermantes and her husband warn Swann that he and Odette can never be received in upper-class society again if he goes through with the marriage, but as the scene returns to the present, now a mechanized and modernized scene unlike the dreamlike milieu of the past. We see Swann again as an older man and Odette as his wife. Swann's passion has cooled, but he does not seem to reject his choices, even as he faces death soon.

Background

Director Volker Schlöndorff commented later about Proust's Swann in Love as follows:

I must have been sixteen or seventeen, [...] I devoured "Un amour de Swann" in one weekend, lying appropriately under the apple trees in the garden of my boarding school. [...] Proust revealed three worlds to me: the French language, the corresponding society and the unknown regions of love and jealousy. [...] At the time, I, like Charles Swann, had only one desire: to become assimilated in France. [...] When I was offered "Un amour de Swann", I didn't hesitate for a second. I accepted without reading the book again. [...] I saw images in my mind's eye: a man wandering at night across the boulevards, from one bar to the next, in a feverish state of euphoria, searching for a woman who constantly eludes him. He knocks late at night on a window which is not hers. One afternoon, he subjects her to a long session of questioning, he tortures her with his jealousy and takes enjoyment in his own suffering. Odette and Paris: a woman, larger than life, and a city, the epitome of all cities, as well as the man who tries to possess them both - that for me is "Un amour de Swann".^[2]

Cast

Jeremy Irons as Charles Swann
Ornella Muti as Odette de Crécy
Alain Delon as Palamède de Guermantes, Baron de Charlus
Fanny Ardant as Duchesse de Guermantes
Marie-Christine Barrault as Madame Verdurin
Anne Bennent as Chloé
Nathalie Juvet as Madame Cottard
Philippine Pascal as Madame Gallardon
Charlotte de Turckheim as Madame de Cambremer
Jean-François Balmer as Dr. Cottard
Jacques Boudet as Duke de Guermantes
Nicolas Baby as the young Jew
Charlotte Kerr as sous-maîtresse
Catherine Lachens as la tante
Jean-Pierre Coffe as Aimé
Jean-Louis Richard as Monsieur Verdurin
Bruno Thost as Saniette
Geoffroy Tory as Forcheville
Roland Topor as Biche
Vincent Martin as Remi
Arc Adrian as Swann's Valet
Pierre Celeyron as Valet Pif
Romain Brémond as Protocole Guermantes
Véronique Dietschy as Madame Vinteuil
Ivry Gitlis violinist
François Weigel pianist
Catherine Jacob

Reception

Critical reception

Roger Ebert gave the film a positive review and wrote that "Jeremy Irons is perfect as Charles Swann, pale, deep-eyed, feverish with passion."^[3] Other critics tended to praise the film's period detail and other technical aspects, but complained that the film did not—and possibly could not—do justice to Proust's literary work. Vincent Canby in the New York Times, for example, remarked that "I suspect that it's not even interesting enough to persuade people to search out the original. If you haven't read Remembrance of Things Past, it doesn't make a great deal of sense, but, if you have, it doesn't make enough."^[4]

Awards

Nominee Best Costume Design - BAFTA (Yvonne Sassinot de Nesle)
Nominee Best Foreign Language Film - BAFTA (Volker Schlöndorff, Magaret Menegoz)
Winner Best Production Design - Cesar Awards (Jacques Saulnier)
Winner Best Costume Design - Cesar Awards (Yvonne Sassinot de Nesle)

References

^ Box office information on film at Box Office Story
^ "Un Amour de Swann : Summary". volkerschloendorff.com. Archived from the original on 25 April 2016. Retrieved 20 September 2016.
^ "Swann in Love". rogerebert.com. Retrieved 20 September 2016.
^ Canby, Vincent (September 14, 1984). "Swann in Love". New York Times. Retrieved December 5, 2020.