A love story between a “demi-mondaine” kept by various lovers, suffering from tuberculosis, and a young provincial bourgeois. Adaptation from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils, “The Lady of the Camellias”.
Director: Daniel Schmid.
Writer: Daniel Schmid.
Stars: Ingrid Caven, Peter Kern, Peter Chatel, Béatrice Stoll, Ludmilla Tucek, Manon, Irene Olgiatti, Pierre Edernac, Bulle Ogier.
Cinematographer: Renato Berta.
Composer: Gottfried Hüngsberg.
1974 Chicago International Film Festival – Nominated for the Gold Hugo.
I like that with movies, you can do it so that everything is in a second, that the way it begins, it ends—because where are the ends in life? In Tonight or Never the first shot is the same as the last shot. GI I was confused by La Paloma because it only becomes a hallucination at the very end.
More One of the most insanely beautiful openings, but that’s about all folks. If in Shadow of Angels , iconoclastic Swiss director Daniel Schmid demonstrated that, in adapting a play by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, he could in effect out-Fassbinder Fassbinder himself, his previous film La Paloma is a far more inscrutable work, and probably more distinctively Schmid’s own.
There’s a beautiful 1080p upgrade out there now with English subtitles. I’ve only been able to find the version without subtitles though!