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In Volker Schlondorff's Swann in Love, Jeremy Irons is Charles Swann, a cultured aristocrat who is in love with Odette de Crécy (Ornella Muti), an alluring courtesan. Much to his undying frustration, however, Odette shares her pleasures with numerous men and women, keeping the passionate Charles at arms length while continuing to take advantage of his cultural and financial largesse. Written by Peter Brook, Jean-Claude Carriere and Marie-Helene Estienne, the film is an adaptation of the second part of Swann's Way, the first book of Marcel Proust's epic seven-volume masterpiece In Search of Lost Time.

Set in Paris in the 1880s, the film is a recollection by a now aged Swann of a single day in his life as he attends dinner parties and salons, mingles with the upper crust, and pursues his courtship of Odette. Though Madame Verdurin (Marie-Christine Barrault), a fixture at the gatherings, sees Swann as unworthy of Odette and has unkind words about him, he evokes sympathy from the Duchesse de Guermantes (Fanny Ardant) who appears to also have designs on him. Swann's love for Odette feels a bit obsessive when he compares her face to a Botticelli face in a painting in the Sistine Chapel, yet we may be able to recall in our own life how love can be all consuming to the point where the lover takes on attributes far beyond the reality of their true nature.

Swann in Love is a valiant attempt to translate a literary masterpiece into film and is strongly supported by the cinematography of Sven Nykvist, yet it fails to capture Proust's depth of characterization, artistic imagination, or poetic sensibility, opting instead for superficial posturing, long glances, and shallow voice-overs. The highly educated and artistically sophisticated Swann, in a lifeless performance by Irons, is depicted as little more than a humorless snob who is rejected by others of his social station because of his love for Odette, but who continues to pursue her out of obsession or sheer obstinacy. In the reality of Proust, however, his love for her is so deep that he can overlook almost any flaw in her makeup, her constant lying, her lack of appreciation of art, music, and poetry, and her broad tastes in sensual pleasure.

There are others ways that Schlondorff gets it wrong. Although Odette is in fact a courtesan with all that it implies, she is hardly the unintelligent tart depicted in Muti's characterization. Also, the homosexual affair of the Baron de Charlus (Alain Delon) does not become part of Proust's story until many volumes later and does not belong in the film. One would think that, at the very least, the director would utilize a late romantic work of Gabriel Fauré or Camille Saint-Saens as the model for the enchanting sonata by the fictional composer Vinteuil that brings Charles and Odette together, yet Schlondorff instead opts for the modern atonal music of Hans Werner Henze, a choice that feels totally incongruent with the place and time. With all due respect for Schlondorff's valiant attempt to translate Proust into film, Swann in Love is one effort that should have remained on the drawing board with a "someday" tag attached.

According to IMDB this seems to have been the first time anyone ever tried to adapt Proust to the movies. And though flawed, it's not a bad try--kind of languid, but that was probably deliberate. Jeremy Irons is one of the best at portraying repressed longing, and Ornella Muti is exquisite enough to explain Swann's amour fou.

I really admire the work of Volker Schlondorff, I think he is one of the best German director nowadays with Wenders (although in a very different style). His adaptation of Proust is quite good but several things really annoyed me.

_first, the soundtrack: why using an atonal composition of Henze when Proust, who loved Wagner, filled his novel with specific musical references? It simply does not fit the atmosphere! Any chamber music of the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries would have been better!

_second, the acting: I am french and I really think Alain Delon is way overrated, he's simply mediocre. However, I really like Jeremy Irons, and Ornella Muti is usually quite good, but their dubbing is absolutely awful and ruins totally their acting! So I understand that Irons would have had a very strong English accent if he had been asked to act in french but if Schlondorff decided to shoot the movie in Paris with 90 percent of the cast being french, why in the hell didn't he choose two other french actors for the leading roles? I have nothing against English actors, on the contrary, but then, he should have shot the movie in English rather than dubbing miserably these good artists.

_Third, the movie is sometimes a little slow. Usually, Schlondorff does a much better job with the editing. If you want to discover the terrific job of this great director, you should rather see "The Tin Drum", "The Ogre", "The Handmaid's Tale" or "Death of a Salesman" before this one.

Let's face it, Proust's monumental "A la Recherche du Temps Perdu" is probably unfilmable. The Chilean director Raoul Ruiz had a commendable shot at adapting the final volume "Time Regained" in 1999 that achieved a certain measure of critical acclaim in spite of being rather diffuse with not all the characters clearly presented. ( I think you have to know the novel well to fully appreciate it). A rather more satisfying attempt appeared fifteen years before with Volker Schlondorff's "Swann in Love". By concentrating more modestly on what is really a vignette, a novella tucked within the vast structure, Schlondorf achieved a work with a real sense of cinematic concentration. There is no Marcel, whose endless reminiscences are something of a kiss of death to film narrative and no confusingly vast set of characters to get to grips with. There is simply Swann, the man about town, his obsessive pursuit of the whore, Odette, and the characters he bumps into during the course of a short space of time and a brief epilogue some years later. It is a very free adaptation. I cannot remember the Baron de Charlus appearing much at this early stage of the novel, but, as he is one of Proust's most fascinating creations, his presence is welcome, even if John Malkovich in the later version is better cast than Alain Delon. What strikes most forcibly is Schlondorff's unflinching look at a thoroughly decadent and degenerate society. In studying only the rich he paints a portrait of the lengths they are prepared to go to satisfy hedonistic pleasure and, in the case of Swann, lust. In an amazingly frank scene he sodomises a prostitute but is obviously more interested in obtaining information about Odette from her than in what he is doing. Sven Nykvist's camera glides through salons stuffed with rich objects and people: this is a world where the poor simply do not exist. All around however are flunkies whose sole purpose in life is to serve their masters uncomplainingly. Just occasionally a look, such as the coachman Remi's, when he is ordered by Swann to drive him half the night in his pursuit of Odette, says it all.

'Swann in Love' did have plenty of things going for it. Really like Marcel Proust's writing, and 'Un Amour de Swann' of the massive 'Remembrance of Things Past' is a masterpiece. Sven Nykvist was, and is still near-universally considered as, one of the all-time greats when it came to cinematography, particularly notable in the films of Ingmar Bergman. Love period dramas and always have. And am a fan of Jeremy Irons, and have liked to loved most of his work even in projects that are beneath him.

After finding and watching it, 'Swann in Love' as has been said already is a brave endeavour in adapting source material that is very difficult to do so, close to unadaptable actually. Proust in general has a sophisticated and subtle style of writing too that is not easy to translate to film or any visual media. 'Swann in Love' doesn't completely succeed and is not the masterpiece level that the book is (that was inevitable though), but there are a lot of good things here, really do applaud it for its noble effort and can really see that a lot of work was put into it.

Will start with what 'Swann in Love' does well. It is a thing of beauty visually. The costumes and settings are as sumptuous as one can get, never looking too fussy, and a lot of homework was clearly done in making the recreation of the period as evocative as possible. Nykvist's cinematography is a wonder, then again with such an amazing and influential cinematographer like Nykvist one doesn't expect any less. To me, the music fitted very well, especially with Swann's travels that are far from settled, and was used in a way that wasn't constant or over-powering. It is also a pleasant score to listen to like the use of strings, even the more atonal (not a fan of this in general but appreciate its musical importance) parts don't jar that much but can understand if anybody doesn't find it to their taste.

There is sophistication and subtlety here (not in Proust's way but in a general one), if not any reminicent parts which wouldn't have worked because they would make the film screech to a halt, and the story absorbs on the whole. The unflinching and claustrophobic portrayal of society and artistocrats is particularly striking, while the aforementioned Swann on the rampage scene, while too long, is a masterly visual and dramatic achievement. The obsessive moments have the right amount of intensity. Irons doesn't give one of his best performances here in a very early film role, but there is authority and conflicted pathos in his Swann which reminds one of the type of characters Irons was best and one of the best at doing it at, upper class characters with a dark or conflicted side. Ornella Muti is quite ravishing and portrays the seductiveness and at times smuttiness of her character expertly. Alain Delon has a lot of fun as the flamboyant artistocrat.

Not without its caveats however, 'Swann in Love' that is. There could have been more depth, it tends to be quite surface-level here, and more passion. A tighter pace, the deliberate nature is taken to extremes here and it can drag, and less scenes that go on for too long would have helped.

It also has some quite distracting and unnecessary over-dubbing, Irons has an amazing and easily recognisable voice that is wasted here.

Overall, not entirely successful but with quite a lot of virtues and a valiant effort. 7/10

Jeremy Irons is Charles Swann, the stand-in for Proust in this movie version of the author's semi-autobiographical SWANN'S WAY, moving through the aristocratic portion of Parisian society in the 1890s, where nothing is forbidden to those of great wealth except honesty.

The recreation of 1890s Paris was an easy thing for the film makers; much of it was still there ninety years later. How, though, to bring out the essential sense of Proust's work? For American actors, trained in techniques of sense memory, it clearly calls for use of that technique. The film-makers, however, have played with the idea of memory and its distortions. Proust may have famously written of madeleines and their triggering effect on his memory. the film-makers, however, are clear that we may remember things past, but we interpret them as the individuals we are today. Irons' performance is all about lust for courtesan Ornela Muti, but that is how he views it in the epilogue fifteen years later when the elegant Paris he recalls is buried under construction sites and rendered fetid by automobiles.

And so, Irons is perfect casting in this role. We see him speak, we see him behave, but his character must be inferred by his actions, and we are never sure, until the epilogue, whether he is doing them because he wants to, or because of the fighting impulses of transmogrified lust and fear of expulsion from Society.

strange construction. remarkable recreation of atmosphere, few drops of Proust novel -as discreet homage - a nice Charlus, a voluptuous Odette and correct Swann. details of a world in who mannerism is part of fall. good acting, interesting description of obsession, seductive tale about life style of aristocracy levels. and if you do not read the confession of Marcel, all is OK. but in case of error, the taste is not good. a slice of perfect universe remains a slice. the good intentions are far to be steps of adaptation. the flavor is present, the voices are at perfect place, the images are parts from the cake but result is a poor drawing. sure, it is an exercise." A la recherche de temps perdu" is out of any adaptation. but important is the fact than it is not a really disappointing film. that is the key.

I should start by mentioning that I've never read any of Marcel Proust's works, least of all "Swann's Way" (and even if I did, something would probably be lost in translation). So, having watched Volker Schlöndorff's adaptation "Un amour de Swann" ("Swann in Love" in English), I can say that they knew exactly which kind of movie they were making. This critical look at Parisian high society of the late 1800s really wraps you in with the costumes, sets, and general ambience. The romance between an Englishman (Jeremy Irons) and a French woman (Ornella Muti) is but a window into this world.

Obviously I'd have a better sense of it had I read Proust's works. I doubt that I'll ever get around to reading Proust, given how long it takes me to get through a book. Even so, I recommend the movie if you want a look at fin-de-siècle France. It's not what I'd call a masterpiece - especially since 1984 also saw the release of "Amadeus" and "The Killing Fields" - but you should still check it out.

Who would've ever guessed that Schlöndorff, as one of the doyens of New German Cinema, would direct movies as different as this, "The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum" and "Palmetto"?

I enjoyed this film very much. I don't know how the film works as a literary adaptation but, judging it purely as a film on its own terms, it works well as a study in sexual obsession and jealousy. Irons is perfectly cast as the fixated aristocrat but the post-dubbing, whilst seamlessly executed, is a little off-putting as it clearly isn't Irons' own voice (despite what some IMDb posters seem to believe). Irons expertly portrays Swann's social aloofness and the way in which his obsession takes over his sense of reasoning. The film is exquisite to look at (as you would expect from a film with Nykvist as the cinematographer) and Delon gives a scene-stealing performance as Swann's camp best friend. Worth watching.

Terrific costuming and production design, most noteworthy is the luminous camera-work of Sven Nykvist (Bergman/Allen/Tarkovsky and others). The film is paced as languidly as narrative film making will permit, allowing a certain quality of the author's voice to be felt beneath the demands of "storytelling", one of the chief obstacles in adapting this material.

I think that a masterstroke in this film is the music. While it may seem inconsequential, it draws the film into a more complex direction than typical period music would have done. I believe that this allows the film to reinvent the quality of emotional space in the material.

Contemporary composers of modern chamber music like Hans Werner Henze (who'd collaborated with Schlondorff before) were brought into the making of the film. The music succeeds by injecting an atonal, dissonant, aching, atmosphere into the story. The piano and violin pieces work well against typical form and aid the narrative in a superbly contemplative manner. I was reminded somewhat of "L'Année dernière à Marienbad", simply because the musical "cues" were not spelled out in simple terms.

Avoiding kitsch is part of the problem when adapting an author who discusses subjects (in epic detail) which have been filmed a thousand times before - in my opinion, the music permits yet another interpretation of that subject. At first its quietly unusual, becoming a defined, twisting voice, accenting the growing dissonance Swann experiences with Odette and ultimately with society.

It is a beautiful film. My only concerns were the occasionally odd voice-over work, which was a little distracting. Ornella Muti is a knockout, but her beauty seems oddly contemporary - its as if the filmmakers were trying to make the statement that voluptuousness is eternal, while beauty standards shift periodically and culturally. Irons is excellent as Swann. I would highly recommend the film.

For a long time I've thought that the Nobel Prize should go to a filmmaker, and who better than Volker Schlondorff. He has taken so many literary classics and turned them into fine films--Young Torless (Musil), The Tin Drum (Glass), Coup de Grace (Yourcenar), Michael Kohlhass (Kleist), The Ogre (Tournier) and many more. He has worked in Germany, France and the US and shows great ability and imagination always. This is the first film adaptation of Proust and it is wonderful in many places. The long sequence at Odette's house when an hysterical Swann goes on a rampage--looking for the source of the sound he imagines he hears--only to drive Odette into a fury as she smashes a vase is a classic of modern filmmaking. The pettiness and claustrophobia in the lives of aristocrats circa 1900 is superbly brought out. Sven Nykvist is the cinematographer (deep black night scenes, lovely) and Hans Werner Henze wrote the superb music: it's like another actor in the story; jangled, dissonant sound accompanying Swann's frantic travels through Paris.

Never having read "Swann's Way"---the source material for this film---I was free to view it as an entity unto itself, which is what I prefer.

It is the study of a man's obsession with a courtesan, Odette de Crecy (Ornella Muti). Swann wants for nothing, materially, and he could live his life anywhere and anyhow he pleases. But he is emotionally tethered to Odette as they each glide through the salons of the Parisian upper class in search of artistic experiences, self gratification, and maximum visibility.

Are they lovers or mere contractors? Do they love each other or detest what they perceive of themselves under the other's influence? Do they extract maximum enjoyment from life or perpetually battle boredom and self-loathing? As they perform their dance of attraction and repulsion, it is sometimes unclear.

Jeremy Irons is convincing as the self-absorbed Swann. And Ornella Muti is mesmerizing as Odette. Both of them feel indigenous to the fashion and culture of their milieu, which makes it easier to focus on the characters themselves.

A wonderful score elevates the film considerably. I plan to watch it again, if only for its evocation of a place and time.

for me, this film has only two virtues . the first - Alain Delon who is the perfect baron de Charlus. the second - the conviction than only Luchino Visconti could be able to direct Proust masterpiece. it is unfair to say that it is a bad film. it is only a decent try . in which the lead actors are uncomfortable in the clothes of the roles. because, at the first sigh, all is correct. performances, atmosphere, the adaptation. but something is missing. the flavor of the universe of Marcel, the poetry of the lines of paper, the nuances, the delicacy, maybe the nostalgia . it is an exercise. admirable. but not exactly convincing.

I remember thinking when reading this thing and feeling as though there is no way this can be adapted, but after Jeremy Irons , I remember the influx of feelings that spanned our human emotions through Jeremy Iron's eyes and his physiognomy was able to reproduce what Proust composed with his gorgeous prose , there it was the narrative that pushed one to places heretofore existed; here with Mr. Iron's seamless efforts I recall everything and more...

Come for Jeremy Irons speaking French and Alain Delon, stay for the sinking feeling of regret that comes from watching a film that you know would work better in its original novel form.

I haven't read anything by Marcel Proust, and I don't know if I will in the foreseeable future, but Swann in Love does feel super literary, as a movie. It deals with the sorts of themes (mostly the pain and frustrations of love) that often seem to be best explored in literature, as opposed to film, the former a medium that's best for getting uncomfortably deep into a character's head and state of mind.

That's not to say movies shouldn't attempt to adapt psychological and dense novels about love/desire/heartbreak, because there's a way to do it right, even if it involves changing things up drastically (I really like both novel and film versions of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, for example).

As for Swann in Love, it has a few really good scenes, it looks nice overall, and I think I mostly get and appreciate what it's going for... but it fails to add up to something great, and is probably overall a little less than the sum of its parts. Still, it could be worth a cautious look for anyone intrigued by the premise or cast on offer here.