In Norman Jewison’s 1987 film Moonstruck, two Italian American families intertwine in Brooklyn Heights. The film features a cast for the ages: Olympia Dukakis, Danny Aiello, Nicolas Cage, Vincent Gardenia, and a radiantly funny Cher, who has one of her most moving screen moments during a performance of Puccini’s La bohème. At the end of the performance, Cher’s character Loretta utters one of the film’s many memorable lines: “You know, I didn’t really think she was gonna die. I knew she was sick!”
La bohème has always been ripe for cinema, so it is unsurprising that three of Bohème’s film versions came early in its history, in 1916, 1923, and 1926. The last of these, directed by King Vidor, was one of the glories of the 1920s and featured the biggest stars of the day: Lillian Gish and John Gilbert. In 1935 multiple new films were released each week, so it was harder to have a hit, but one undeniable success was Mimì, based on La bohème, which starred Gertrude Lawrence (for whom Rodgers and Hammerstein would later write The King and I) and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. as the famous lovers.
Franco Zeffirelli directed a beautiful West German film in 1965 that starred a young Mirella Freni. This was not a filmed stage production, but a full cinematic portrayal of the opera in Zeffirelli’s signature opulent style. It contrasts nicely with an interesting and stark 1988 film directed by Luigi Comencini that starred an amazing Barbara Hendricks as Mimì. The most recent cinematic adaptation was Robert Dornhelm’s highly stylized 2008 film that starred Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazón.
Bohème-ophiles will not want to miss two different versions of La vie de bohème (The Bohemian Life): a 1992 Finnish film in French directed by Aki Kaurismäki and the1945 film of the same name on which it was based. Filmed during World War II in Nice under Italian occupation, the original film is a fascinating document of wartime France. It starred the young Louis Jordan more than a decade before he would set the world on fire in MGM’s 1958 smash Gigi.
The acclaimed Australian director Baz Luhrmann, having directed a superb La bohème for Opera Australia (which I had the privilege of conducting in 1996), transferred his love for La bohème into a 2001 hit film combining its plot with Verdi’s La traviata, the visually stunning Moulin Rouge! starring Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman.
For all of the wonderful ways to experience La bohème on film, the most memorable use of Puccini in cinema may be from a film that is forty years old this year, James Ivory’s A Room with a View. Never mind the plot. One would be challenged to find a more romantic use of music than Kiri Te Kanawa’s soaring through the word “felicità” (happiness) from Puccini’s La rondine as Julian Sands walks through a field of poppies and plants a breathless kiss on Helena Bonham Carter.
— © Patrick Summers
