England / Russia / Italy / France / Netherlands,
1992, 92 min
Shown in 1993
CREDITS
- dir
-
Sally Potter
- prod
-
Christopher Sheppard
- scr
-
Sally Potter
- cam
-
Alexei Rodionov
- editor
-
Hervé Schneid
- cast
-
Tilda Swinton, Billy Zane, Lothaire Bluteau, Quentin Crisp, Heathcoate Williams
- source
-
Sony Pictures Classics, 550 Madison Ave, 8th Floor, New York, NY 10022. FAX: 212-833-7911.
-
COMMENTS
Sally Potter appeared in person to receive the first Satyajit Ray Award in 1993.
OTHER
Orlando is based upon the Virginia Woolf volume of the same name and tells the picaresque tale of a young man who lives through four centuries in rather unusual circumstances. He progresses at first in keeping with his upper-class origins, taking immortality in stride, until one day he wakes up, magically transformed into a woman. And so it goes: S/he continues on from the Victorian age into the present, exploring along the way questions of courtliness and beastliness, war and peace, politics and property, past and future—and gender. Orlando’s narrative progression is, if anything, postmodern. Lush operatic music surges on the soundtrack, the camera sweeps us off our feet, wry intertitles march us through history and the incandescent Tilda Swinton (Edward II) marches us through genders in her embodiment of Orlando through the ages. No wonder audiences love it. Potter admits to being influenced by Soviet cinema (Orlando’s cameraman Alexei Rodionov is Russian) and by Michael Powell (the great British director who championed her cause in the years before his death) but certainly Satyajit Ray could shine in her firmament of influences as well, for he would have recognized the beauty created here and the valor of its execution.
—B. Ruby Rich
FACTOID #27
A surrealist stop-motion animator, the Czech Jan Svankmajer, was the first recipient of the Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award in 1997. The POV Award honors the lifetime achievement of a filmmaker who works outside of feature-length narrative filmmaking.
