MovieChat Forums > Italiensk for begyndere (2002) Discussion > Maeve Binchy and Dogme

Maeve Binchy and Dogme

posted 19 years ago by Tristan!-2
4 replies | jump to latest

This film is based on Maeve Binchy's book "Evening Class". I haven't read this novel - Maeve is more my wife's type of writer - but was wondering whether anyone who had, could tell me how close it is to the original (apart from of course Maeve's book is based in Ireland).

Also, I notice on the UK DVD release the subtitles at the end say "Thanks to Maeve Binchy", but I didn't see any such credit at the time on the cards that get thrown onto the table at the end. So was this added by the UK distributors because they did not want Maeve to be upset at the fact she wasn't credited? Was the fact that she is not credited a mistake by the guys who wrote out the cards, and it was too costly to have to reshoot the whole thing again so did the Danish release also have a subtitle thanking Maeve Binchy?

I think this was the UK distributors' idea, personally.

OR is it because the director Lone Scherfig decided not to credit her, applying Dogme 95 rules to her in the same way that she does not credit herself as the director (one of the Dogme rules...) although she does credit herself with the script!

And lastly, I see IMDB has not included poor old Maeve here, even "uncredited" as the original storywriter. Should I add her name as an uncredited writer? What do you think?

TRISTÁN WHITE

[–] james1971 19 years ago

This is a good suggestion... I think I'll go and read M. Binchy's book

By the way: the writer was regularly credited at the end of the VHS Italian version (which I watched yesterday)

[–] mancityjinx 19 years ago

I have read Evening Class, and it is excellent, as are many of her other books. I have not seen the movie, but I did see an extended preview, and it did not look at all similar to the book. What I love about several of Maeve Binchy's books is that they are all connected through places like Tara Road (a sought-after street in Dublin), and a restaurant called Quentin's. The same characters pop up in her later books...I'm not certain, but I think Evening Class was one of the first in the set of books I'm talking about, which are Evening Class, Tara Road, Scarlet Feather (which is my fave), and Quentin's. It's nice to get little updates on characters you've grown to love in previous books.

[–] goldenswim 17 years ago

I read evening class by Maeve Binchy and loved it. I had hoped this would be based on the book but it is not at all. The ONLY similarity is the lives of the people come together at an Italian class for beginners. This is a great movie though. It is worth struggling through the subtitles to figure it out.

[–] pbn 14 years ago

According to recent news articles, Zentropa did not originally credit Maeve Binchy, and Lone Scherfig did not publicly acknowledge any influence from Binchy's story. They were aware of the similarities, but determined that they were not in breach of copyright. However, Binchy's representatives soon approached them, and Zentropa acknowledged her rights, paid compensation and added a credit for her in later releases.

I am submitting a trivia item about this, and I think that's probably the best way to handle it IMDb-wise.