Баз Лурман - с неизживяната носталгия по кино-мюзикъла (С похвати от радио-журналистиката)
Baz Lurman - With Nostalgia for the Movie-Musical not Overcome Yet (With Techniques from Radio-Journalism)

Summary/Abstract: In the style of an anchor of a specialized musical broadcast on the BNR (what in fact is the author herself) the paper presents the lightning career of the Australian film director Baz Lurman with his films of the “Red Curtain”. The film version of “Strictly Ballroom”, produced by Lurman and the co­ author - scriptwriter Craig Pierce is the first feature film if the director from the so called sequence “Red Curtain” - films of the “Red Curtain”, characteristic with their theatricality and the re-interpretation of familiar musical-stage productions. The idea of this definition comes from the red plush curtain, which opens at the beginning of “Strictly Ballroom” and closes at the end of the film. Besides being a film version of an earlier theatrical attempt, “Strictly Ballroom” is undoubtedly an allegorical look at the holding and character of a ballroom dance competition. The film was produced in 1992 and shown at the Cannes Festival for the first time. It was greeted as a stylistic discovery of the young and unknown debutant director and showered with prestigious rewards: from Cannes, from the “Gold Camera” Festival, from the Australian Film Institute, from the Bristish Academic Awards, from the festivals in Melbourne, Sydney, Toronto and Chicago. The second, blockbuster film of Baz Lurman - “William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet” is a contemporary version of the classical play in the style of MTV, the action of which develops in Miami Beach. The hostile families are implacable rocker gangs, handling most modern automatic weapons and fast motorcycles. The musical pop-rock “gang” version of Shakespeare’s play has proved to be the favourite film version of the contemporary young generation - probably because of the attractive sound and certainly because of the new teenage idol Di Caprio. The film also offers two soundtracks. Since the moment of the realization of the first (the end of 1996) up to now over 3 million copies have been sold worldwide, and different pieces from it have been sounding continuously on most world radio stations. On the second soundtrack there are quite a lot of songs and several orchestra pieces, which were not included in the first. The soundtrack itself (the musical score created in advance) turned out to be the necessary impulse for setting in motion the future film production of Lurman and one of the specific peculiarities (perhaps the most specific) of his approach to the films of “the Red Curtain.” “Moulin Rouge” of Baz Lurman is the third and most successful film from his “Red Curtain” films, whose first projection opened the festival in Cannes in 2001. Nominated in all categories for an “Oskar” prize, it received only two - for artistic design and for the costumes of Lurman’s wife - Catherine Martini. The meeting with “Moulin Rouge” was rather shocking mostly for the film critics. The opinions about the film were diametrically opposed: from Victoria Alexander in “Films in Review”, who called the film “a turning.

• Details
• Contents