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Bobby Deerfield
by Sony Pictures
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$14.94 |
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$13.49 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. |
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DVD
Sony
Publisher: Sony Pictures
Henri Decaë
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Actors: Guido Alberti, Anny Duperey, Gerard Hernandez, Dorothy James, Marthe Keller
A racing car champion falls in love with a freewheeling lady who is suffering from an incurable disease. Based on the novel "Heaven Has No Favorites" by Eric Maria Remarque.
Al Pacino's character in the first two Godfather films was a man increasingly drawn into himself, pulling an entire family history and legacy along with him into a personal oblivion. Pacino's performance as the titular race car driver in Sydney Pollack's Bobby Deerfield also suggests a fellow adrift in his own company, his very profession underscoring isolation behind the wheel at top speeds. Living with his French lover (Anny Duperey), Deerfield's solipsism (perfectly captured in a dream sequences in which he appears almost autistic) begins to crack when he meets and falls for a dying woman (Marthe Keller). Emerging from his shell just as she is fading away, both the irony of the situation and Deerfield's first experience with real love wake our hero from his spiritual slumber. Pollack's attempt at a mainstream art-house movie didn't entirely work, and critics have been brutal on both its serious aspirations and Pacino's locked-down performance. But there is something in the film that convincingly suggests a yearning for passion and experience even at the great cost of loss, and Pacino's portrayal of a man who steps out of his car and onto the collective bus of ordinary sorrow is rather moving. --Tom Keogh
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| great film during Pacino's younger career |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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I read that this was one of Pacino's personal favorites, so I decided to see for myself. It is NOT in any way a "typical" Pacino film, but he develops a character throughout the film that becomes a loving, vunerable man which is a rarity in his films, at least from my point of view. The other fantastic aspect of the film is the wonderful photography of central Europe. The lake district in northern Italy is particularly artfully filmed. I've spent much time there, and the cinematography really captures the essence of that part of the world. NOT an action film, may be too slow for some. I love it. LMSmith
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| Watch this movie |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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I have seen this movie several years ago on cable and have been in love with it ever since. I have been waiting for years for it to come out in DVD. This movie is fantastically produced and very well directed. I love the era this movies was made in and can only recommend it very very higly. A true Classic. Pollack never received the credit he deserved for this movie.
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| Bobby Deerfield |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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One of my favorite Pacino movies ---beautiful music, scenery and a sweet story about a man who had his life changed when he learned to love a woman who was dying ---Marthe Keller is great in this movie - quirky and interesting, and Al is in a very untypical role for him. Wish he had done more movies like this one. I would recommend it to any fan of Al's.
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| Bobby Deerfield Movie Review |
| Customer Rating: 1 out of 5 |
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Dave Grusin's sometimes jazzy and often emotional soundtrack may be the only saving grace for Al Pacino's obscure 1978 film Bobby Deerfield. Released for the first time on DVD in 2008, this is one of Sydney Pollack's lesser known movies, and rightfully so. With picturesque countryside cinematography and inside-the-cockpit video game cameras (during the only real race scene), the film has no action as advertised, and the romantic drama is of the barely perceptible kind.
Racecar driver Bobby Deerfield (Al Pacino) is distraught and confused after the death of a good friend on the racetrack. Drowning out the idea of driver error, he desperately searches for a reason for the tragedy, if only to appease himself. He visits another racer at a rehabilitation center who was hurt during the accident, and meets Lillian Morelli (Marthe Keller), a mysterious and spontaneous woman who invariably asks irregular questions. As Deerfield finds himself hopelessly attracted to the nonreciprocal Lillian, he struggles to figure out her irrationalness as she passively stays at a distance.
Sydney Pollack, the director of such award-winning films as Tootsie and Out of Africa steps out of masterful form to produce this cinematic grog. The acting is not entirely awful, and the scenery is luscious indeed. But the story never really knows where it wants to go, and after the first half-hour, the audience will be quite puzzled at which direction it wants to take us. Not a racing movie at all, and devoid of the action that the promotional materials would have us hoping for, Bobby Deerfield is instead simply a drama laced with lovelorn romance.
The film seems to push the idea that everything is sweeter if you take a chance, but whatever risks Pollack took with his storytelling techniques certainly proved fruitless. Lillian is highly unpredictable, but in an annoying way - one that makes us shake our heads in disparagement instead of interest. As she continually makes spontaneously reasonless decisions, and teases Deerfield with seductress banter, we keep asking ourselves why he doesn't simply leave her. His infatuation is coaxed by mystery alone, and her incessant curve-balls make for an odd romantic pairing. When he finally tries to accept her crazy mood swings and penchant for nonsensical lies, we only pity him for his apparent descent into equivalent madness.
Lydia, the hopelessly-in-love fan of Deerfield always appears as the superior choice for the risk-taking racer, and so his abandoning her for infrequent satisfaction rarely makes sense. He is distant from his family and further distanced from logic after his failure to accept the death of his friend, and yet we still are never shown incentives to believe that what he sees in Lillian is anything remotely close to love.
The dialogue at a few rare occasions is cleverly humorous, and the camera often lingers on the lovely scenery of Paris, but Bobby Deerfield manages to be devoid of a coherent story or anything beyond moments of madness tied together with unlikely romance. With too much left to assume at the conclusion and an unconvincing love story throughout, Bobby Deerfield is understandably one of Al Pacino's most obscure films.
- Mike Massie
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| Beautiful work by Pacino, Keller, and Pollack |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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I wonder if most people even know or remember this film. I saw it in the theatres and have loved it since. I am so glad to see that it is finally being released onto DVD. Very Europeanan style (especially the score),the film follows the beautiful and tragic love affair between Pacino and Keller (they became a real life couple during the filming). Based on the Erich Maria Remarque novel, "Heaven has no favorites", director Sydney Pollack knows how to create a beautifully romantic tapestry with the touch of tragedy always hovering overhead. Even though it isn't too hard to figure out how the film will end once introduced to Kellers character, Lidea Morelli, you don't care as you want to saver every moment the couple have together, just as they do. The main theme running throughout the film (as in all of Remarque's work) is death, from Deerfield's brush with it everytime he races, to Keller's character dying from TB, but you get caught up with quest she has to live each day as an adventure and find the gift that it has to offer you. Lidea's gift to Bobby is to discover himself behind the dark glasses that he wears all the time, so that no one will be able to recognize and know who he is. It's in her dying that brings life to Bobby. My favorite scene is during an afternoon picinc in the countryside and Bobby is frustrated over the enigmatic nature of her character. He wants to know who Carlos Montenegro is, whose land they are having the picinic on and has invited her for a hot air balloon ride the next day. He keeps repeating "Who's that man, who's Carlos Montenegro?" and she finally turns to him and quietly asks, "Who's Bobby Deerfield?". Great film making. I've read some dissapointing reviews about this film as it wasn't well received at the time it came out but I think it just got lost as gems often do when they're not mega blockbusters. Check it out, you may be surprised.
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