Le monde des musicals

Film (1975)

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Musique: Cole Porter •
Paroles: *** Divers •
Livret: Peter Bogdanovich •
Production à la création:

At Long Last Love is a 1975 American jukebox musical comedy film written, produced, and directed by Peter Bogdanovich. It stars Burt Reynolds, Cybill Shepherd, Madeline Kahn, and Duilio Del Prete as two couples who each switch partners during a party and attempt to make each other jealous. Featuring 18 songs with music and lyrics by Cole Porter, Bogdanovich was inspired to make a musical with the composer's songs after Shepherd gave him a book of his songs. All of the musical sequences were performed live by the cast, since At Long Last Love was meant by Bogdanovich to be a tribute to 1930s musical films like One Hour With You, The Love Parade, The Merry Widow and The Smiling Lieutenant that also filmed the songs in the same manner.

Four socialites unexpectedly clash: heiress Brooke Carter runs into the Italian gambler Johnny Spanish at the race track while playboy Michael O. Pritchard nearly runs into stage star Kitty O'Kelly with his car. Backstage at Kitty's show, it turns out she and Brooke are old friends who attended public school together. The foursome do the town, accompanied by Brooke's companion Elizabeth, who throws herself at Michael's butler and chauffeur Rodney James.
The four friends change partners at a party, where Brooke and Michael step outside behind Kitty and Johnny. In an effort to make the others jealous, Kitty, Johnny, Brooke, Michael, Elizabeth and Rodney begin their romance.

1 At Long Last Love peut-être considéré comme un Flop musical

Production
At Long Last Love was Bogdanovich's first musical film, as well as the first motion picture he wrote by himself. He got the idea to a musical film of Cole Porter songs when his then-girlfriend Cybill Shepherd gave him a book of songs by the composer. "His lyrics conveyed a frivolous era," said the director. "With a kind of sadness, but very subtle... Cole Porter lyrics are less sentimental than, say, Gershwin and more abrasive... Gershwin was the greater musician. But Cole was a better lyricist and I was more interested in lyrics than music." When he heard the lyrics for "I Loved Him", with its reversal of emotion and wry lyric, he decided to use that as the finale and "worked back from there". The film was originally called Quadrille, and was equally weighted between the four lead characters.
In September 1973, Bogadanovich announced the cast would be Cybill Shepherd, Madeline Kahn, Ryan O'Neal, and the director himself.[8] Shepherd had recorded an album of Cole Porter songs paid for by Paramount called Cybill Does It... to Cole Porter. By March 1974, Bogdanovich had decided to not act, and replaced himself with Elliott Gould, who had experience in musical theatre. Gould and O'Neal dropped out. By March 1974 Burt Reynolds had replaced Gould. Bogdanovich says he was "talked into" using Burt Reynolds, who wanted to try a musical. "The whole joke that he's kind of a nice fellow, good looking, not particularly good at dancing. He can't dally with the girl. He's rather ineffectual." He gave the other male lead to Duilio Del Prete who had just been in Bogdanovich's Daisy Miller and who the director thought was going to be a big star. In March 1974, Fox agreed to finance the film.
Filming started August 1974. Resisting the urge to shoot another film in black and white, Bogdanovich had it art-directed as "Black and White in Color". He wanted the characters to feel like they were having a conversation using "greeting cards in the form of songs" like "they didn't know what to say to each other." The movies of Ernst Lubitsch with Jeanette MacDonald and Maurice Chevalier such as One Hour With You, The Love Parade, The Merry Widow and The Smiling Lieutenant influenced Bogdanovich to have all of the song sequences be filmed live, as it would recreate the "kind of sad, funny, melancholy, silly," and "spontaneous" vibe of the films. However, all of the lead actors, especially Reynolds "weren't accomplished singers or dancers," resulting in a lot of delays and mess-ups during the shooting process. In addition, the cast had a tough time performing the sequences due to having to perform them in one take and deal with wonky receiver systems in order to listen to the instrumentals. Bogdanovich later said he "was very arrogant" during the making of the film, "but that arrogance was bought out of a frantic insecurity. I knew it was so possible I was wrong that I became tough about insisting that I was right."

Versions
The studio rushed the film into release, with only two previews in San Jose (which Bogadanovich recalled being "a total disaster") and Denver. Bogdanovich made more changes to the film to have it be more focused on Reynolds' character due to pressure from the studio, and the final version was never previewed. Following a premiere at 20th Century-Fox Studios in Los Angeles on March 1, 1975, the film opened March 6 at Radio City Music Hall to scathing reviews and poor box office returns. The chorus of critical attacks prompted Bogdanovich to have an open letter of apology printed in newspapers throughout the U.S. Bogdanovich later said once the film was released "I realized how I should have cut it after that and I immediately did cut it, they let me recut and I think I paid for that, and that version was then shown on television and that's the version that all release prints have been ever since. That was quite different from the opening version. Very different, but unfortunately it was too late." The director has stated many people who first saw it in this version did not react so badly to the film.

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