MovieChat Forums > The Visit (1964) Discussion > The movie vs. the play

The movie vs. the play


Having read two versions of the play and performed in one of them (an inferior one, unfortunately), I'm curious: has anyone who's ever seen or read the play seen this movie? How do the two compare? Has stuff been dropped? Added? Is the movie bad? Good? Etc.

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The play is greatly different from the movie (huge spoilers here). For one thing, for theatre de l'absurde reasons that someone else may fathom, Klair (not Karla) wears all sorts of prostheses as though her life had been one operation after another. A big deal is made of the fact that she marries and divorces just about every other day. But the most important difference is that the chief male character (his name in the play is Alfred Ill) really is executed in the play. He is strangled to death on stage.

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I read both Versions of the pla and saw the movies and I have to say the movie is horibble. Bergman and Quinn are (back then) way too oung to play Alfred and Claire. The also changed a lot.The sitting isn't central europe anymore but the communistic russia. (when you watch the movie you get the feeling you're watching an american propaganda movie during the cold war, which it probbably is.) The story also looses its charme. The movie is way less sarccastic and macabre than the play.

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"An American propaganda movie during the Cold War"? Are you on drugs? There is nothing of the Cold War in this simple fable about greed and revenge, which seems to me (more so the original play version than this movie adaptation) to be an allegory of how much of Europe caved in to the horrific National Socialist program to eliminate Jews.

Nor is there any mention of Russia or communisim that I can see. But I agree with you on the important point: it's not a very effective adaptation of the play.

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"Are you on drugs? There is nothing of the Cold War in this simple fable about greed and revenge, which seems to me (more so the original play version than this movie adaptation) to be an allegory of how much of Europe caved in to the horrific National Socialist program to eliminate Jews. "


But why did they move the setting of the play from somewhere in the Alps to eastern europe? There was no reason for it. Well except for giving this movie an anti-communistic message a la : In a society in which the community is the most important thing, how much does the life of one individual count ( if his death can improve the lifestyles of the community)


The play didn't have this message.

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I don't see any reason to say that Galen is located (in the movie) in Eastern Europe.

I didn't think about it when seeing the movie, but if u mention this - the movie's criticism is on capitalism and greed, more than on communism.

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The welcome signs are in both English and Cyrillic characters. That suggests a location where both alphabets are used, such as (then) Yugoslavia or Ukraine.

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But the names don't sound remotely like Yugoslavian or Ukrainian, which makes it all seem like it takes place in an imaginary country.



better sorry than safe

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[deleted]

I read both Versions of the pla and saw the movies and I have to say the movie is horibble. Bergman and Quinn are (back then) way too oung to play Alfred and Claire.

Both Bergman and Quinn were 49-year-olds when the movie was released. If anything, they were 10 years too old to play characters that had a child together 20 years earlier when Klara was a teenager.

I haven't read the play or seen it performed, but I thought the film was excellent.

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I have, actually, seen the movie (I OWN IT YES) and I was Claire in the stage version adapted by Maurice Valency. I've read the other adaptation, and I must admit that the Maurice Valency version was far superior, both in dialogue and character development.

Personally, I enjoyed the movie---my grandmother liked the play version, after having seen it on both mediums of stage and screen, because Claire actually had Anton Schill (Serg Miller's name onstage via Valency) killed in the play, which brought her to be more of a silent, sadistic, and competely sane murderer, whereas the movie, Claire comes off as wildly unstable, and leaves Serg alive. (But the movie ending had the great line of "The Visit is over", which I loved loved LOVED.)

I was, overall, super pleased with the movie, because due to the whole thing being in black and white, it was just as creepy as the show, and was very reflective of a World War II kind of mindset, as it's set between 1946-8.

(Sorry this is such a far-off reply from the original post, but I felt I had to comment.)

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January 8th, 2005

Doryface:

Please let me know if it is possible to purchase a copy of the movie,
"THE VISIT" from you? We've been looking everywhere and can't find one.

Need to research the story and style. Want to make a film with a simular story, shot digitally in black & white.

Thanks,

Thomas
[email protected]

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SPOILER ALERT:

Another change in the movie involves Claire's entourage. In the play, the judge who had presided over her paternity suit becomes her butler, whereas in the movie he is her legal advisor (which may sound a BIT more realistic, but spoils some of the satire). Also, she had two blind eunochs in the original play who turn out to be two tramps her lover had bribed with booze to lie that she had slept with them (she later had her revenge on them by blinding and castrating them). In the movie, they both seem fine.

Another thing that was added in the movie was a factory girl who admires Claire, and who is having an affair with the local police chief, a fact that Claire notes and inspires her in the end to persuade the girl to work for her as her secretary, rather than let history repeat itself.

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The added young woman had me thinking she would turn out to be the lost daughter. I guess they put her in to mess with my head.

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if you have not obtained a copy by now. you can download the movie from the net.
if interested let me know. i will send you the torrent.
regards,
prabhakara

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I've never seen or read the play, but I've always loved the film. It's so...loony.

Like almost everyone, I love the last line--"the visit is over." However, her remark to the girlfriend of the older official is almost as good. Bergman gives her the bracelet and says, "Take this. Go. But don't go to Trieste."

If you know the film (and perhaps the play?) it is quite a line.

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... the last line--"the visit is over."


But that echoes the last line of Anastasia— 'The play is over'.

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The truly unfortunate thing about this play is that it wasn't filmed with the Lunts. Having been to Ten Chimneys three times (the Lunts' estate in Central Wisconsin) and seen the jacket Lunt wore onstage hanging on a clothes line, which he did to weather it, I wish this had been filmed for television the way their Great Sebastians was. The only film we have of them are: the film version of The Guardsman, which should be put on dvd; their short appearance in Stage Door Canteen; a TV production of The Old Lady Shows Her Medals, The Great Sebastians, Fontanne narrating the Mary Martin Peter Pan and the Dick Cavett interview with Noel Coward and the Lunts.

While I enjoy the movie for what it is, Ingrid Bergman is having a ball in this role and enjoying herself; Quinn had become a commodity by this time and had no choice but to accept any and every role that came his way to support his entourage. The main thing about this is that when Fontanne played Clair, she underplayed it. This movie and a college theater production I saw several years ago, featured a woman who was over the top! Subtlety would be better.

Fortunately, we have the divine Valentina Cortese in this film, giving a lovely, understated performance. At the 1974 Oscars when Bergman won for Murder on the Orient Express, she apologized to Cortese for winning, because Cortese was so marvelous in Truffaut's Day for Night. That shows so much class!

Overall, the movie is entertaining, but as stated above, we have been denied Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt in their last performance. It played on 46th Street in a theatre that has been named for the Lunts.

By the way, of all the theatres on Broadway, only the Lunt-Fontanne, Helen Hayes, Vivian Beaumont and Ethel Barrymore are named for women. There are 15 + theatres named for men! Why not rename some of them for women?

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