EVITA
Evita (Alan Parker, 1996) is scheduled for 27 November, in conjunction with the third chapter of your textbook, on production design. The film is based on the life story of Eva Peron, played by Madonna, whose star image blends well with Peron's image.But our focus will be on production design. Few films depend so entirely on a coherent production design. This is shown mainly in the many crowd scenes, particularly the geometric designs of massed formations that try to evoke not only the Argentine politics contemporary with Eva Peron, but also with the cultural politics that is always contemporary, whether in the form of religious fanaticism, political parties, or movie stardom.
When viewing Parker's film adaptation of the Lloyd-Webber/Tim Rice musical, one must keep in mind that, since the original stage musical is written in the form of an opera and sung all the way through, there was less freedom than with other source material, such as a novel or play, to (for example) cut, add new material, or rearrange the source material, though a new song ("You Must Love Me") was added. Since acting was necessarily subordinate to singing, the director could not make much use of interior acting and subtext to communicate ideas. Thus many of Parker's chocies involved an emphasis on production design and audio-visual montage (that is, contrasting sound and image to form a new idea) in order to give personal significance (or directorial signature) to the film. The alternative would have been merely to film the stage musical with little creative point of view.
Considering the limits imposed on Parker, the result is fairly successful. One admires, above all, the care taken with hundreds of shots, each realistically filmed and presented in terms of costumes, lighting, acting, mise-en-scene, and composition.
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