Note by Douglas Messerli
Soon after seeing the MET production of Lulu, I discussed it with my friend Tom Roberdeau who loaned me a copy of the film by Ronald Chase based on the original Wedekind original Lulu plays, but also incorporating music from the Berg opera. Knowing nothing of the Chase production—indeed the film was not permitted distribution by the Alban Berg estate—I postponed watching the DVD for some weeks, feeling it could not possible come up to the standards of the opera production I had just seen.
Chase, an American artist, photographer,
and independent filmmaker, also worked extensively in designing opera and
theater, often with the noted director Frank Cosaro. He began his career as a dancer, performing with the
José Limón Dance Company, but turned to opera design in the early 1970s.
Although I did not recall it at the time of Roberdeau’s loan of the disk,
Howard and I had previously seen Chase’s design at the opening of Washington
D.C.’s Kennedy Center 1971 production of
Ginastera's
Beatrix Cenci, a piece that, at some
point, I shall have to revisit.
Shot very dark, through gauzy scrims and
even smoke, so that one must almost struggle to enter Lulu’s sinful world,
Chase’s actors (Elisa Leonelli as
Lulu, Norma Leistiko
as Countess Geschwitz, John Roberdeau as
Alwa Schon, Paul Shernar Ludwig Schon, and Tom Roberdeau
as Jack the Ripper) seldom speak, instead
acting out a redacted version of the play with often abstractly sexual gestures
which are both flirtatious and lustful. Particularly the last scene, in which
Jack actually is seen spreading Lulu’s raised legs before he savagely rips her
to death, reveals the extremes of the central character, using sex as a way to
accomplish her rise in society while also employing her body simply as a way in
which to survive.
The film might have benefited by a bit
fewer of these abstractions and more of verbal or, at least, vocal interchanges
between the figures; at times it almost appears that we are being presented a
kind of summary instead of the actual narrative. Yet, it is an interesting
commentary, more importantly for those who have not yet seen the Pabst film or the
Berg opera and would like an introduction to complexities of these works.
As I note, however, I was delighted to be
able to see this little-known cinematic representation of Wedekind’s great
plays.
Los Angeles, June
25, 2016
This film is available on Amazon Video for streaming playback. But I can find no evidence of a DVD release. You referred above to a DVD - is such a disc for sale somewhere? Or even for rent?
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