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Mozart's Sister
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Product Description
Product Description
Written, directed and produced by Rene Feret, Mozart's Sister is a re-imagined account of the early life of Maria Anna 'Nannerl' Mozart (played by Marie Feret, the director's daughter), five years older than Wolfgang (David Moreau) and a musical prodigy in her own right. Originally the featured performer, Nannerl has given way to Wolfgang as the main attraction, as their strict but loving father Leopold (Marc Barbe) tours his talented offspring in front of the royal courts of pre-French revolution Europe. Approaching marriageable age and now forbidden to play the violin or compose, Nannerl chafes at the limitations imposed on her gender. But a friendship with the son and daughter of Louis XV offers her ways to challenge the established sexual and social order.
Review
BY ROGER EBERT The image that springs to mind is of the young Mozart touring the royal courts of Europe and being feted by crowned heads. He was a prodigy, a celebrity, a star. The reality was not so splendid, and even less so for his sister, Nannerl, who was older by 4½ years and also highly gifted. The family Mozart, headed by the ambitious impresario Leopold and cared for by his wife, traveled the frozen roads of the continent in carriages that jounced and rattled through long nights of broken sleep. Some royalty were happy to keep the Mozarts waiting impatiently for small payments. There was competition from other traveling prodigies none remotely as gifted as Mozart, but how much did some audiences know about music? Toilet facilities were found in the shrubbery along the roads. Still, theirs was largely a happy life, as shown in Rene Feret's Mozart's Sister, a lavishly photographed period biopic that contrasts the family's struggle with the luxuries of its patrons. Papa Mozart (Marc Barbe) was a taskmaster but a doting father. Frau Mozart (Delphine Chuillot) was warm and stable. And this is crucial: Nannerl (Marie Feret) and Wolfgang (David Moreau) loved music. They lived and breathed it. They performed with delight. The great mystery of Mozart's life (and now we must add his sister) is how such great music apparently came so easily. For them, music was not labor but play. One understandably hesitates to say Nannerl was as gifted as her brother. We will never know. She played the violin beautifully, but was discouraged by her father because it was not a woman's instrument. She composed, but was discouraged because that was not woman's work. She found her family role at the harpsichord, as Wolfgang's accompanist. The feminist point is clear to see, but Leopold was not punishing his daughter so much as adapting his family business to the solidly entrenched gender ideas of the time. There's a trenchant conversation late in the film between Nannerl and Princess Louise de France (Lisa Feret), the youngest child of Louis XV. From such different walks of life, they formed almost at first meeting a close, lifelong friendship, and shared a keen awareness of the way their choices were limited by being female. A royal princess who was not close in line to the throne (she was the 10th child), Louise had two career choices: She could marry into royalty or give herself to the church. She entered a cloistered order, and it was her good fortune to accept its restrictions joyfully. But think if we had been males! she says to Nannerl. Each could have ruled in their different spheres of life. Nannerl also has a close relationship with Louise's brother, the Dauphin prince (Clovis Fouin), a young widower. It seems to have been chaste but caring. Nannerl was always required in the wings of her brother's career, and after his death at only 35, she became the guardian of the music and the keeper of the flame. She found contentment in this role, but never self-realization. The movie is an uncommonly knowledgeable portrait of the way musical gifts could lift people of ordinary backgrounds into high circles. We hear Papa in a letter complaining about the humiliations his family experienced by tight-fisted royals (they were kept waiting two weeks as one prince went out hunting). Leopold was a publicist, a promoter, a coach, a producer. It is possible that without him, Mozart's genius might never have become known. The film focuses most closely on Nannerl, a grave-eyed beauty, whose face speaks volumes. She aspires, she dreams, she hopes, but for the most part, she is obedient to the role society has assigned her. Marie Feret, the director's daughter, is luminous in the role. --Roger Ebert RogerEbert.com
About the Director
Born in 1945, Rene Feret first wanted to be an actor. He studied acting at the Ecole Nationale d'Art Dramatique of Strasbourg. Following his father s death, he was sent to a psychiatric hospital and this painful experience inspired his first long feature film L Histoire de Paul, which was awarded the Jean Vigo Prize in 1975. His success can be attributed to his large body of work, which is biographical in nature and takes place in Northern France, where he comes from. Rene Feret founded his own production company JLM Productions in the late 90 s.
Product details
- MPAA rating : NR (Not Rated)
- Product Dimensions : 0.6 x 5.4 x 7.5 inches; 2.72 ounces
- Item model number : 14652
- Director : Rene Feret
- Media Format : Multiple Formats, NTSC, Subtitled, Color
- Run time : 2 hours
- Release date : February 14, 2012
- Actors : Marie Feret, Marc Barbe, Clovis Fouin, David Moreau
- Subtitles: : English
- Studio : Music Box Films
- ASIN : B005ZMBDJU
- Country of Origin : USA
- Number of discs : 1
- Best Sellers Rank: #63,401 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
- #10,024 in Drama DVDs
- Customer Reviews:
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- Reviewed in the United States on May 27, 2012One great talent makes it big, and another from the same household doesn't. What's the difference? This is at the heart of what this film explores and exposes with due subtlety and pace observation. It uses historically real people, but casts them in what is apparently (as there is no evidence that it actually happened as it is recounted here) a fictional situation. So what's the point?
The point is that the emergent effects of real life do not develop at the necessary speed of entertainment. So a compromise had to be made between what the makers of the film want to show within its historical time frame, and what the "listening/watching-time-tolerance" of most movie goers can muster. The film was made for Europeans, a lot more used to sitting still through a musical concert without a lot to look at in the meantime (many even take to shutting their eyes throughout a performance); so we sit through a lot of auditory musicality during an essentially visual film sequence-- which gives some American viewers (more used to the sort of jazz and pop concerts where people get up and jump around) a sense of intolerable drag. AS a European coming from something of an aristocratic background, I can tell you that slow and methodical was used to make people who fancied themselves to be in charge look calmly powerful; it served their perpetual efforts at holding on to power through day to day intimidation of all the commoners who move at real-life speed--which is the essence of noblesse! The idea of fiddling while Rome burns is a sign of supreme confidence that only those supposedly born to rule are believed capable of displaying (it is, of course, unnatural to the human ethos, so they have been meticulously trained for it since infancy). Mozart rebelled against it-- as was illustrated by the frenetic quality of "Amadeus," the movie that was about him in particular)-- and his sister merely surrendered to it-- as indicated by her excruciatingly long moments of silence in this film. But that, folks, was an excellent symbolization of the way it really was, of the unremitting background reality of the lives of these people. One gets the sense that the French Revolution is just building up outside the Dauphin's door (among REAL people trying to live REAL lives despite the UNreality of their rulers' existences), and the pointlessness of the royal existence comes across as reduced by then to the anointed family's self-indulgence and excess. It is a world where the camouflage of lacking capacity to cope and the absence of genuine know-how by the masquerade of a deliberate-SEEMING pace has become the first principle of statecraft. This movie captures that crap exquisitely, making the democratically minded in the audience absolutely want to scream! This is the chocking atmosphere the bourgeois Founding Fathers of America were so concerned about when they feared governmental power.
Blindness to the other (the less fortunate commoners who have to EARN rather than inherit whatever they have) is what we discover is behind the metronomically controlled pace of the Hayden-type classical music score, the fraud it is supposed to cover up. It reminds me of the adoration of natural beauty so typical of the brutality-drenched world of feudal Japanese, Chinese, and Korean aristocracy. When two samurai encountered each other, they spent up to a half hour telling each other about their respective lineage of great fighters, but the actual fighting lasted only seconds (minutes at most). This is a world where "what you see is most definitely NOT what you get." Over and over again that sort of disappointment is heaped upon us like a sudden collapse of the roof in an earthquake. Obviously, in that world, people of real talent and ability JUST CAN'T GET A BREAK!!!!!
So, don't blame the movie because we have come in the last two hundred years of so (and with a First World War to blow it once and for all out of our collective systems) so far from where we were. It is a portrayal of where we were just before the French Revolution picked up on the American one and sprung the trap on the Ancient Regime. The bygone people of high birth tried to show they were above the thing that humbles us all-- TIME!! They tried to convince their subjects that time was indeed on their side, that they had all the time in the world. They didn't grow old, because they owned all the resources and could imprison youth as their slave (as was the case when the heroine ended up married to a man of 50 with five children, and the one child she had would be appropriated by her by then elderly impresario father in the vain hope of reproducing through possession of his grandson's life the musical achievement he had accomplished in his younger years through possession of his son's life). It wasn't just the aristocrats oppressed the common mass of people, but that commoners oppressed themselves with dreams of becoming oppressors of someone themselves. It was a Ponzi scheme, where each layer recouped its losses by creating another layer of duped victims.
All in all, this largely fictional film captures with painful accuracy a departed world, but one always longing to come back as long as human beings age. The idea is to stop the hands of the clock through the manipulation of progeny. But, of course, what they didn't realize is that when you try to hold back the hands of the clock YOU WILL ONLY GET YOUR ARMS BROKEN. I feel close enough to what I believe to have been the true story depicted in this film to say it was marvelously captured. Even if it is taken only as an exercise, it is a great thing for would-be historians of the period to experience. I saw it quite accidentally on Netflix, but I am now buying a copy for my library, for my students, and for my daughter and her children. Too bad there is not a version dubbed in English!!!!
- Reviewed in the United States on February 2, 2019This movie is all in French and you have to read subtitles, but the movie itself was soo very good that after awhile you dont even care, excellent story and very well done
- Reviewed in the United States on May 11, 2012In the 2010 French film (with subtitles) "Mozart's Sister", we the viewing audience certainly get an idea of what life was like for a woman in 1700s no matter how talented she may have been. In this imaginary tale of Mozart's older sister Nanneral, Nanneral is shown as an extremely talented musician especially on the harpsichord and violin well able to perform and compose brilliantly. However, she being a woman and Wolfgang's sister was viewed, especially by her father, as greatly inferior.
The events in the film occur on an imaginary concert tour the Mozart(s) took to Paris when Wolfgang was around eight (8) years old and his sister was interring puberty. The parents doted on both their children and seemed to love them greatly. Wolfgang, of course, was the "great hope" of the parents especially of his father. After all, he was male and immensely talented. All his sister could hope for was to accompany Wolfgang or to inter a nunnery. In the film, Nanneral gets a respite from reality by forming a chaste relationship with Louis XV's son. Louis XV's son becomes besotted with Nanneral and her talents having her disguise herself as a man in order to perform in the "court" and to be his "short-lived" confidant. She relishes these opportunities and adores this "freedom" and the opportunity to "show off" her own talent void of a super talented brother. But, alas, it is short lived and she has to return to being a "woman" and to the shadows of her brother.
"Mozart's Sister" is beautifully filmed gorgeously recreating the era. Yes, the film is rather "slow paced", to me, reflective of what life must have been like in the 18th century
- Reviewed in the United States on August 28, 2015Sorry I cannot be more possitive in rating this movie. Historically it may be accurate, which I ignore, but to my tste the story is presented in such a languid, slow moving pace that required effort to sit and watch it to the end. Perhaps the addition of some more Mozart music could have helped. On the positive side, the pictures of places and palaces are good.
- Reviewed in the United States on August 16, 2013To remind you of how far we've come as women!
To think that it was normal (and expected) to forbid so many talented women to write music, to perform in concert, to be sexually free, to do what men did naturally and sometimes not as well...
- Reviewed in the United States on November 18, 2018I think that the telling the perspective buyer that this item is in a foreign language....needs to be displayed in a more obvious manner. Just like a box pops up to tell you that a particular DVD will not PLAY in a certain zone.....telling the customer that it is a foreign language film needs to "stand out." I try to watch and notice everything. Alas, this time I made a mistake.
- Reviewed in the United States on December 26, 2020I suppose that the producers wanted to be faithful to the life and times of Nannerl, Mozart's sister, but as other reviewers noted, the plot doesn't strictly follow Nannerl's life at that age. I've read several biographies of Mozart, one of which was "Mozart's Women: His Family, His Friends, His Music", by Jane Glover. Glover did mention that Nannerl befriended a female member of the aristocracy, but I've never read anywhere that she had a relationship with a crown prince of France. Nannerl is portrayed in this movie as demoralized, suppressed by her paternalistic father, and European society in general, obedient (to some extent) and very reticent. But the film would have been more interesting if there had been more humor, and if Nannerl had been a somewhat more vivacious. (However, not to the degree to which Wolfgang and Constance were portrayed in the film "Amadeus".)
- Reviewed in the United States on January 1, 2020Educational! Great for music history buffs and high school aged students (some mature subject content).
Top reviews from other countries
- AuroraReviewed in Canada on May 3, 2021
5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting
Learned a lot from it...
- Peter R HicksReviewed in the United Kingdom on December 13, 2016
5.0 out of 5 stars This is a great story about the early years of the little known ...
This is a great story about the early years of the little known sister of Mozart who was talented in her own right. Highly recommended for those with an interest in musical history.
- ChornaReviewed in Canada on February 12, 2014
2.0 out of 5 stars Mozart's Sister
A very "soupy", over-romanticized portrait of a tragic figure in the history of music.
Nothing said about her vast correspondence with her more famous brother and father, little about the terrible repression she suffered as a woman.
- R. J. HarwoodReviewed in Canada on March 21, 2012
1.0 out of 5 stars Slower than watching grass grow
I am a movie fan and have been for years. This is the First movie that I couldn't handle...The pace was too slow and the music was very limited...I'd rather watch Amadeus over and over before spinning this movie again !