Franco Zeffirelli - Music on Film

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MUSIC ON FILM
- The Cinematic Accomplishments of Franco Zeffirelli

By Christopher M. Wright
© 2005 Christopher M. Wright
All Rights Reserved

Many people know of moviemaker Franco Zeffirelli's box office hits like Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet. What they may not know is that Zeffirelli, born in Florence, Italy in 1923, began his show business career as an actor and designer in 1945, then produced many operas in Italy and abroad starting in the 1950's. It has been said that Zeffirelli has set the standard for successfully putting music on film.

Here to explain the trials and tribulations of translating one medium into another is S. James Wegg (www.jamesweggreview.org/), a Canadian music critic and reviewer. Jim was an on-air co-host for CBC radio's Music Ottawa series. He also founded and conducted a professional symphony orchestra and has produced television shows featuring his own musical arrangements.

Chris: You've met Franco Zeffirelli in person. What's he like?

Jim: I met him at a film festival in Palm Springs in 2003. It was a hot day and he was impeccably dressed in a suit jacket, blue shirt, and tie. He's the ultimate gentleman.

Chris: You have said that Zeffirelli really knows his music. How far does that understanding extend?

Jim: Let me start with a little story. I conducted La Bohème myself in the 1980's when I was a young man and thought I knew everything about opera. My stage director was doing La Bohème for the fiftieth time. I was astonished at the end of the fourth act when he got Rodolfo to lift Mimi's shawl in synch with the music. There wasn't a dry eye in the house. And this is something I appreciate in Zeffirelli's work. His greatest skill is his ability to wed the music with the visual, to marry the movement of the body, the fabric, and the camera with the themes and arias being performed. He feels the intrinsic movement in each piece and draws it out of his players.

Chris: Does he have strong ideas about each work or does he take it right down the middle?

Jim: There's a point in Tosca when the title character has to decide whether to sleep with Scarpia to save her lover. She opts for killing Scarpia instead. He approaches her and pulls down her shoulder strap, obviously anticipating that he will have his way with her. It's spooky when she stabs him and stops to savor the moment without replacing her shoulder strap. It makes the viewer wonder how much she enjoyed the act of killing. It's Zeffirelli's own interpretation as far as I know and it's all done visually.

Chris: You have said that it's difficult to put musical performance on film successfully. What are the main problems involved?

"Whenever you touch the story of one specific period or place in the world, you'd better know everything about that period and that place. You have to absorb deeply the aura of people you're going to revive in a play or opera. Know how they dressed, what they read, the kind of cooking they preferred, the games they played. You have to know well the planet in which you set your story. Absorb everything. That's the proper foundation. Then forget it all. Let your fantasy come to work."
- Franco Zeffirelli

Jim: The basic trouble is that these are very different art forms. Each performance of an opera is unique - you can only see it once. It's very difficult to capture the immediacy that the opera house crowd feels and convey it to a TV audience. As for sound quality, you can only place your microphones and hope for the best. But you can do things for the TV viewer that aren't possible for the live audience. When Scarpia is lying on the stage after Tosca kills him, the audience can't see his face but Zeffirelli puts a camera on it and the eyes are still open and the teeth are glimmering even though Scarpia is dead. It's absolutely chilling.

Chris: One choice that has to be made early on is whether you want to shoot a TV video of a live performance or make a full-fledged movie - film in several locations like real castles and lip-synch the music with a studio recording. Which do you prefer and why?

Jim: It depends on what mood I'm in. If I'm in a film mood, then I want to see real scenery where the action is supposed to be taking place. I want to be 'on location' and , for that, I will endure the lip-synching glitches. But if you have the cast of the century, I'd rather stay in the acoustically superior chamber of the opera house where you get a richer sound.

Zeffirelli gets around the lip-synching problem in his movies with cutaways. The camera leaves the singer's face so you aren't distracted, for example, when a 'p' isn't seen as it sounds.

And, frequently, the artists don't look the part of their characters. If you have an obese but talented singer, that's OK on stage but not in film where that makes it harder to believe the rest is real.

Singers who are doing a live performance know there's no going back - you only get one chance. But in film, if the high-C is not quite right, you can do 'take 35' if you have to. That produces another kind of terror for the performers - if they get to do it again, it'll have to be better.

Chris: Opinions about Zeffirelli are all over the lot. Some critics rave ('spectacular', 'brilliant'). But other critics sneer ('wretched excess', 'overblown'). Is it just a matter of taste or are there objective criteria by which music on film can be judged? Where does 'lush and luxurious' end and 'wretched excess' begin?

Jim: The critical ones are jealous. Not only of the end result, but Zeffirelli designs his own sets and costumes. He's something of a control freak, actually, but with more artistic merit than a von Karajan, for example.

Some critics just review operas and that's all they really want to see. They aren't looking at the picture with 'film eyes'. You have to wonder how many films they have reviewed. I got into reviewing three or four years ago and I find myself taking more of a 'film activist' view than I would have imagined, having started with more of a background in opera. I'm prepared to make sacrifices - like putting up with lip-synching - to get a good movie. If I want a good opera, I'll go to the Met.

Chris: What about clear error, the ostensibly objective mistakes pointed out in various reviews like frames out of focus and sound out of balance. Several reviews of Zeffirelli's work talk about the orchestra overpowering the singers or singers sounding farther away than the camera indicates. Put on your producer's hat for us - can real mistakes be made?

Jim: Sure, but those areas aren't his part of the ship. He's not in the control booth calling the shots. The out-of-focus frames are the TV director's responsibility. You don't see them in Zeffirelli's movies. Having produced TV myself, I know some things can't be helped. So in Tosca, you can hear the shuffling feet of the orchestra and errant open strings. And so you make another compromise to get an overall result that's still magnificent. The curtain opens and you're in Rome, the effect is that great. The audience is cheering before a single note is sung. You have Zeffirelli's famous apricot-colored light streaming through the upper windows on the set. Gold light is nice, but the apricot he uses instead is stunning.

As for sound quality, an opera has to be appreciated as a whole. It's not just music and sometimes you have to sacrifice sound quality to get the staging right.

Chris: Some critics are bothered by Zeffirelli's use of cutaways, dissolves and other ways he keeps the camera moving instead of just focusing on the singers. What do you say?

Jim: In his films, Zeffirelli moves the camera around quite a bit because the actors are not really singing. By using things like candles and mirrors to frame shots and shooting from different angles, Zeffirelli keeps the flow of the music going and masks the fact that the singers are lip-synching. Besides, there's a 'golden rule' in film - don't leave the camera on anything for more than 30 seconds.

For the live videos, Zeffirelli knows when it's time for the singers to stand and deliver with a minimum of movement. He gives them many bars to prepare and focuses the camera on them when the time comes. He intensifies by zooming in slowly for the tight shot just as the music soars.

I think purists should turn off the sound of his live videos and watch how much he gets his cast to do just with their hands. They say the Italians talk with their hands, and the hands in those videos carry on quite an amazing dialogue, often conveying the subtext. If a character is having murderous thoughts, watch how the hands will grip something tightly or flex in anticipation. Zeffirelli reinforces the characterization with body language and this can have quite an emotional impact.

Chris: Others are bothered by the fact that Zeffirelli eliminates some of the music or presents it out of order, like in Otello where ballet music is put in the first act where it doesn't belong. They're also bothered by his use of flashbacks and other shortcuts to move the story along. How upset are you by the fact that Zeffirelli is not 100 percent faithful to the librettos or scores?

Jim: It's easy to play 'gotcha', but you have to ask whether it wrecks or improves the performance. Then we'll have quite a different conversation.

Chris: In 1982, Zeffirelli said he relied on his audience. "I've made my career without the support of the critics, thank God," he told an interviewer. Hamlet, Romeo & Juliet, and Otello were meant to compete with Hollywood, not Lincoln Center or the Met. Can purists still find something to enjoy in these films?

Jim: Absolutely, if they will relax and understand it's a movie, not a play or an opera. Who could argue that the set in Romeo and Juliet isn't spectacular? That couldn't be done at Stratford-on-Avon. My review of Romeo and Juliet is the most visited page of my website.

Chris: Zeffirelli has been criticized for playing up sex and violence in his films. I, for one, am really tired of all the sex and violence in Hollywood movies because it means the moviemakers got nuthin' to say - they're bankrupt. Zeffirelli has Otello kill Iago with a spear in the back, something that was offstage in the original. There are nude scenes in Otello and in Romeo and Juliet. Are these scenes artistically justified or are they only there to sell tickets?

Jim: The violence and sexual references in Zeffirelli's movies are always in support of the unfolding drama. They're never gratuitous. It's always done with love. Romeo and Juliet were lovers, after all.

Chris: What do we have in Zeffirelli? Did he truly set the standard? Where do you place him in in the overall pantheon of producers who have put music on film?

Jim: For my money, he's the most successful director to merge the two art forms. You are almost doomed to failure every time you attempt this and you have to make compromises. He's figured out how to do that.

Chris: If you were new to his work, where would you start?

Jim: For video, I'd start with La Bohème. It's vocally exceptional - just heaven. If you can finish it with dry eyes, check your pulse. My second choice would be Tosca. It's not as good musically because of the conductor, but it creates a wonderful mood.

Chris: And for film?

Jim: La Traviata is at the top of my list. The visual imagery and voices are great and it has a warmth that's hard to describe unless you've seen it. Otello is my second choice - spear and all.

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