'Lost Illusions' - How Great Literature Makes Great Entertainment

Published August 17, 2022

‘Lost Illusions’ – How Great Literature Makes Great Entertainment

Sophie Brachini

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Honoré de Balzac wrote “Human Comedy” in France in the first half of the 19th century. There, without indulgence, but with great acuteness, he saw the rise of capitalism, the merging of social classes into a great post-revolutionary maelstrom, a change in which the courageous and the less conscientious could reap the benefits of change. I drew a world where world order. It was an exciting time, but a brutal one. It was a youthful age like Lucien de Lebamppre, the main character of the movie “Lost Illusion”, which was performed for a week on August 26th at the Olinda Theater. This French film with English subtitles has all the elements of the novel, and while his comedy of today’s human may be played on a different stage, the characters are the same, so it reflects the modern day. It has become the best entertainment with many elements. Le Bampré is a romantic young man who dreams of becoming a published poet. He feels himself overgrown in his small provincial town. His only door to the sophistication he craves is Mrs Burgeton, an aristocrat married to her rich but naive old husband. She and Le Bampré become lovers, and he follows as she flees to Paris and her family. A young man is thrown unprepared into a complex world where social norms circumvent him. Soon separated from his patrons, he must fend for himself, finding outlets for his wit in writing for controversial liberal publications. The gifted young man soon chooses to master the rules of that world full of deception and manipulation, sacrificing his conscience to begin his own social ascent. However, the enemy he made during his ascension uses his vanity to summon his death. The era described here is the era of the beginning of capitalism. Profit, fake and pretense lead the dance. Businessmen and bankers are a growing force that takes on everything at once. Investments are still being made in legal and proliferating liberal publications, and financial corruption is rampant. Compromise is an inevitable step for the non-aristocratic and poor who want to succeed.? Some players in human comedy are pure. Some people are saved by true talent and love. Most will not survive, and the naive will perish. The actors who play the leading roles are attractive. The innocent, the rotten, the hypocrite and the righteous are perfectly depicted. The cinematography is beautiful, old Paris, palaces, miserable districts, places of entertainment, costumes, all add to the eye pleasing given by the film.It is a long film of two and a half hours, but the rhythm is very much Time flies when you’re watching it because things are happening. The characters in the story stay with the audience long after the movie ends. It’s hard not to touch on this dive into the roots of our capitalist world. Lost Illusions will run for a week starting August 26th at the Olinda Theater and will be brought to Contra Costa County by La Morinda’s nonprofit International Film Showcase.Tickets available at www.Orindamovies.com

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