Aria is a 1987 British film produced by Don Boyd from Virgin Group's visual section consisting of ten short films by a variety of directors. It was entered into the 1987 Cannes Film Festival.[1]
Each segment features its director's visual accompaniment to arias and scenes from operas. Each film has minimal dialogue (some none at all), with most of the spoken content being the operas' lyrics (libretto) in Italian, French, or German.
The music archive source was RCA Records (which at the time included Erato Records, but later that label went to Warner Music; RCA is now a part of Sony BMG, so this film's music rights are complicated).
The ten segments of the film
The narrative chronicles the attempted assassination of Albania's King Zog in 1931, notable for King Zog shooting back at his would-be assassins.
Three London teenagers skip school, steal a car and die in a traffic accident.
A look at French bodybuilders.
A comic segment set in San Luis Obispo's famous Madonna Inn: a movie producer cheats on his wife unaware that she, too, is there with a clandestine lover of her own. Finally, both philanderers are revealed to each other via an accidental swap of their souvenir video footage.
A look at the seemingly-dead city of Bruges, Belgium. Scenic footage of the empty streets and cemeteries is intercut with a duet of two lovers, as a beautiful virgin is stripped naked by her lover and, after she expresses her affection for him, she loses her virginity to him.
A re-creation of opening night at Paris's Ranelagh Theater, in 1734. The audience is filled with a raffish (and, perhaps, diseased) assortment of lowlifes and the decadent.
Two young lovers arrive in Las Vegas. After driving down Glitter Gulch, they check into a cheap hotel room. There they make love and, after that, commit suicide by cutting their wrists in a bathtub.
After a car crash, a lovely young girl imagines her body is being adorned by jewels mirroring her injuries, in a tribal ritual parallel to the procedures of the surgical team treating her, until she wakes up in the operating room after resuscitation.
"Depuis le Jour" from Louise
A veteran opera singer gives her final performance, intercut by 8mm home movies of an early love affair.
A has-been virtuoso remembers his happier days while arriving at an opera house, visiting the dressing room to put on his clown makeup, and performing the aria for his audience of one. (This story provides a framework for the rest of the movie.)
References
External links
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Films directed by Robert Altman |
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| 1950s |
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| 1960s |
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| 1980s |
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| 1990s |
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Films directed by Ken Russell |
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| 1960s |
Elgar (1962, TV) · French Dressing (1963) · The Debussy Film (1965, TV) · Always On Sunday (1965, TV) · Isadora Duncan, The Biggest Dancer In The World (1966, TV) · Dante's Inferno (1967, TV) · Billion Dollar Brain (1967) · Song of Summer (1968, TV) · Women in Love (1969)
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| 1970s |
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| 1980s |
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| 1990s/2000s |
Whore (1991) · Prisoners of Honor (1991, TV) · Lady Chatterly (1993, TV) · Mindbender (1995, TV) · Dogboys (1998, TV) · Fall of the Louse of Usher (2002)
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