In 1928 Paris, choreographer Ida Rubinstein commissions Maurice Ravel to compose the music for her next ballet. Music that becomes the universal masterpiece Bolero. Source: Australian Catholics.
Here is a fine cinema experience to learn something about composer Maurice Ravel.
As soon as the first notes are heard, listeners will instantly identify the beginning of Bolero, a piece Revel composed for a 17-minute ballet.
The film’s opening collage features the notes of Bolero, followed by an extraordinary range of scenes, including wonderful variations on the music, visualised, especially in dance, from orchestral to jazz and beyond.
The film opens in 1903. The young Ravel (Personnaz) is encouraged by his Basque mother to enter a recital to win a prize. He does not. And, with something of a quietly introverted morose personality, he has a mixture of pride and doom as he works as composer and orchestra conductor.
The screenplay then moves to the 1920s. Ravel is a conductor and well-appreciated in France and beyond. He travels to the United States for a tour of successful concerts. He is supported by his mother as well as by his manager, Marguerite (a sympathetic Devos).
In society, he is tantalised by evocative ballet entrepreneur Ida Rubinstein (Balibar) and emotionally devoted to Misia (Tillier), the several-times married sister of his close friend, Cipa (Perez).
The sequence where Ravel hears some of the notes for Bolero – sitting at the piano, trying them out, working out variations, rhythms, the tune and pounding base – presents a credible visualisation of a composer at work.
This portrait indicates that Ravel did experience some wonderful creativity in his music, composition and performance. But he is a complex character – reserved, intense and detached and not always easy to get along with.
Review by Fr Peter Malone MSC
Bolero: Starring Raphael Personnaz, Doria Tillier, Jeanne Balibar, Emmanuelle Devos, Vincent Perez. Directed by Anne Fontaine. 120 minutes. Rated PG (Mild themes). In cinemas September 18.
FULL REVIEW
Bolero (Australian Catholics)
