User:Blackauryallibrary/Wings of Fame

Wings of Fameis a fantastic 1990 film by director Otacak Votocek written by Herman Koch and Otakar Votocek, starring Peter O'Toole as cesar Valentin, Colin Firth as Brian Smith and Marie Trintignant as Bianca. It features a sad music score by Paul Van Brugge. It also has many aspects of Surrealism and decadentism and surrealism.

plot
Brian Smith signs in to a cheap hotel at the time of a film Festival. He tries to approach Cesar Valentin a famous actor, but his attempt to speak to him is in vain yet one more time... Cesar Valentin who is meanwhile reluctant of, but nevertheless enjoying his fame. At an opening of a festival with a red carpet reception of the actors, he manages to get a gun out of the holster of a police officer and shoots him... While trying to calm the panicking crowds he is hit with a large spotlight falling from the roof as they try to put the spotlight on him and dies along with Valentin. They now sit on a small ferry with a dark hooded boatman, fairing trough the mist, as people in the water try to swim next to them. They arrive at an island. Cesar Valentin firmly climbs the stairs to a magnificent Hotel, Brian Smith hesitantly wonders as he follows him. They are given the best rooms in the Hotel. More and more strange and surreal events take place on the Island, as the people who loose their fame on earth are taken away, and given less luxurious rooms. There is the most eccentric people living in an extreme decadence and boredom here. People sit and drink, or have useless conversations, mock each other, a group of communist terrorists commit a bombing where a group of fascists are drinking... A Russian poet refuses to be taken to a better room as his fame on earth is rising again, as he is indifferent to the hotels proceedings and keeps writing his work, at another point he walks into the water and off the Island, much later in the film to find him return in his steps, coming out of the water again... Brian Smith who is much more attentive gets to know a girl who lost her memory and thinks she is in a mental hospital. He gets to meet a famous psychiatrist and they take walks and they discuss fame and its effects here in this place... Cesar Valentine slowly tries to approach Smith, who'm he can not understand. Smith first says he might have killed him, just to be famous himself. Upon finding finally he was murdered because of the biography Valentin Stole from Brian Smith and published it under his own name, he is angered, and almost kills him pushing him off a high ledge. Nevertheless by saying he loved his performance in a certain movie Smith convinces Valentin to save him as he hangs on to the ledge and after that they become friendly. But the fame is fading on earth, they have to abandon their suites and they are given rooms right under the roof now, looking like a prison with almost no accomodation. Valentin suffers a great deal in this misfortune, as many others on the Island. The psychiatrist meanwhile already vanished of the Island. Now an army beach landing ship lowers its draw up bridge onto the beach of the Island, a platoon of hooded servants march out, a large room is prepared by personall and waiters place fences and barb wire. THe people from the entire Island are invited, given a number when they walk in the room. There is a ceremony and have everyone read peoples credentials and say if they stay on the island or if they go, into the oblivion. As Smith has to read Valentins card it appears he has to go, and Smith's fate is sealed with his. they are put behind the fence. There is a lottery organized now. An arrow will shoot at a number on a large revolving panel. The number is Smiths. he gets to leave and go back to earth, and he may take one person with him. he doubts but the girl he met does not want to go with him, and the gates of oblivion start to open... Now a metro stops with the last wagon just before the tunnel. Smith and Valentin walk out. As they find a retrospective of Valentin in the paper they go to see the film, but find hardly one person to watch the movie, it burns on projection, it was the last one. Disillusioned now, Valentin and Smith say goodbye to each other, later Smith sees Valentine sitting at a cafe, without Valentine knowing he has some children go and ask him for an autograph... As Valentine lights up of joy, Brian Smith walks away.

Principle Photography
Apart from the theme the movie features extencive poetic imagery in both directing of photography and situations themselves. there is an accent on the buildings built for the International exposition in Brussels of 1935, of the Art deco style... The lobby of the Hotel of the dead and also the hallways feature art deco, even if the outside of the hotel is minimal architecture. Various scenes have ties to the surreal, or at least the composition is a new variation on the surrealist theme. The idea of fantasy may not come to mind instantly when to see this film. The rights to the final cut could not be aqcuired, some half hour or more was cut for the release, Votocek had the chance to present the directors cut to the then President of his home country Vaclav Havel. The movie is to this date the most ambitious and most costly of any Dutch production.

Theme
Apart from the main theme of fame There is a strong suggestion or relation to the world of the symbolists and decadents such as the lives or writings like Oscar Wilde, Barbey d'Aurevilly, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam And has a large focus on uselesness. The film is contemplative trough the character of Smith, most other characters have a high reluctance to one another, absorbed by the world of vanity. The waiters offer stiff service and act both as guards of the camp as to serve every wish of the residents, as long as one is famous enough. so the metaphore of selection and keeping up appearences is also present. Upon the question where he could find the Psychiatrist Frish, he had a dry and strict reply that there was no such person under that name on the Island. It also has a dominant theme of the claustrofobia of being inprisoned in an alien world that for instance Dark City features. The mysterious orchestrators of the mysterious Utopia may apart from Dark city also be found in the novel The Other Side by Alfred Kubin. The concept of the hotel is strongly related to such indifference by a bureaucratic authority within the visions of Franz Kafka.

Awards
The film won the Angers European Film Festival Audiance award, also won both the critics award and the special jury award at the Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival. And it was nominated for the Fantasporto international fantasy film in the category best film.