The Film: 4/5

Throughout the 1920’s, Paris was inundated with American expatriate artists who flocked to the city in the years following the first World War to soak in its sights, culture, and cuisine and use them as inspiration for their own creations. Authors, painters, poets, and musicians comprised this mass gathering dubbed the “Lost Generation” by the famed American writer Gertrude Stein, and among them was none other than Ernest Hemingway. Having moved to Paris to work as a foreign correspondent, Hemingway’s experiences as part of this fabled artistic collective would help shape several of the classic novels he would write in later years, including his 1926 masterpiece The Sun Also Rises.

As played by Kevin O’Connor (There Will Be Blood), Hemingway appears as an integral character in 1988’s The Moderns, a witty and gently affecting drama where director Alan Rudolph (with the help of his co-writer Jon Bradshaw, who passed away prior to the film’s theatrical release) weaves a tale of love, art, and the intrigue that the first two could easily motivate. Like his friend, mentor, and cinematic collaborator Robert Altman, Rudolph loves the brilliant eccentrics and visionaries who occupy the fringes of society because that is where they have been forced to reside by that eternal enemy of artistic freedom, the establishment.

Keith Carradine (Nashville, The Long Riders), never one to turn down a chance to play charming yet complex scoundrels who can’t help but tangle with the wrong people for the right reasons, leads the cast of The Moderns as Nick Hart, a struggling painter who manages to make a decent living drawing cartoons to accompany the gossip columns written by his friend and fellow transplant Oiseau (Wallace Shawn). His days are spent in a variety of Parisian cafes where he works on his sketches while enjoying good food, better wine, and the ceaseless complaints of Oiseau, who has grown tired of the city and now sees his future writing for the big screen in the warm sun and fresh air of Hollywood.

It's in one of these cafes that Nick becomes enamored with Rachel Stone (Linda Fiorentino), the alluring wife of the charismatic yet ruthless businessman Bertram Stone (John Lone). Rumored to have murdered a man, Stone is evidently not one to be trifled with, but Nick’s attraction to Rachel creates a series of escalating conflicts that form the narrative spine of The Moderns. The original characters created by Rudolph and Bradshaw mingle with giants of the literary world living abroad including Hemingway, Stein (Elsa Raven), and Stein’s life partner Alice B. Toklas (Ali Giron), while the wine flows like the Rhine and the sound of jazz music emanates from the cafes and restaurants all around the city.

Hungry for work but hungrier for money, Nick reluctantly takes a job forging paintings for the wealthy divorcee Nathalie de Ville (Geraldine Chaplin) at the behest of his longtime supportive art dealer Libby Valentin (Genevieve Bujold). Meanwhile, his relationship with Rachel begins to gain steam, though her husband suspects something is going on and takes every opportunity afforded him to subject Nick to a little humiliation. Bertram’s personal style is barely able to suppress a monstrous ego that above all else isn’t satisfied until he can claim ownership over all he surveys, including his wife. I don’t want to reveal too much of how the plot and relationships unfold because that is one of the film’s many pleasures, but some of these people share a history before Paris that is carefully revealed early on and influences nearly everything that happens afterwards.

Rudolph takes us from house to house, dingy apartment to rain-slicked city street with cinematographer Toyomichi Kurita (Sukiyaki Western Django) capturing the luxury, menace, and desperation of each location. Kurita’s camera is relentlessly on the prowl, even when it is seemingly confined to a smaller dwelling. Just as Altman also preferred, Rudolph populates even the most minor bit role with interesting faces and performances. There is always someone to watch, and something is always going on beyond the edges of the main plot, which not even its authors appear to be interested in most of the time. Like a great novel, the characters of The Moderns are allowed to exist independently of the plot when it doesn’t require their presence, and the story rarely acquiesces to convention.

Carradine has the right look and natural worldly charm to play a good-natured artist, albeit a mediocre one, who is probably better at forging the works of superior talents than painting his own. His chemistry with Linda Fiorentino (The Last Seduction) works well in service of the narrative but we never get the sense that the romance between Nick and Rachel is going to last and maybe their mutual attraction is merely skin deep. Fiorentino has always been gifted when it came to playing strong women, and though Rachel acknowledges her role as Bertram’s wife and is comfortable being by his side, she never appears confined by a marriage which is for her driven by convenience. Bertram is the obvious heavy of The Moderns, but John Lone’s (Year of the Dragon) performance gradually discloses a vulnerable soul that desires the love of a wife he fails to connect with and the acceptance of Paris’ high society through the acquisition of an art collection that he doesn’t have the good taste to fully appreciate. O’Connor and Wallace Shawn (The Princess Bride) supply the film with its cynical wit, cognac-soaked wisdom, and a begrudging fondness for the impact great art can have on the world.

Geraldine Chaplin, who previously worked with Rudolph in the ensemble drama Welcome to L.A. and is a veteran of several Altman productions, brings her own grace and poignancy and grace to the morally uncertain Nathalie, while Genevieve Bujold (Dead Ringers) forges a more convincing relationship with Carradine onscreen than he does with Fiorentino with loving optimism and intelligence. The music score composed by Mark Isham (Point Break) beautifully evokes both the Roaring Twenties and the modern era with memorable contributions from the prolific French musician and multi-media artist Charlelie Couture, who also appears in the film as the piano player in a café frequented by Nick and his friends.

Audio/Video: 4/5

The Moderns was remastered in 2K resolution from original 35mm film elements for its U.S. Blu-ray debut. Since the film was never that impressive in the visuals department with its drab earth tones and gloomy exteriors, the 1080p high-definition transfer, presented in the film’s original 1.85:1 widescreen aspect ratio, does what it can to preserve Kurita’s cinematography and looks about as good as can be. The image is clean and grain is kept to a consistent minimum most of the time - though select night exteriors feature more than the rest of the film – and the only signs of permanent print damage and wear are restricted to the archival black & white footage of 1920’s Paris, which is understandable. Details gain an improvement in sharpness usually during close-up shots, but from a distance they appear a tad hazy and smeared, but this could be due to the condition of the film elements used for the transfer and not the result of excessive digital noise reduction.

The film was released theatrically with a Dolby Stereo sound mix and Shout! Factory offers two similar-sounding options, both in English DTS-HD Master Audio. As the soundtrack, though well-crafted and featuring some fine music, does not boast a dynamic range of effects for your home theater to spotlight, it won’t matter a bit if you choose the 2.0 track over the 5.1, though the latter option performs well in dispersing the various sound elements generously across the multiple channels with absolutely no trace of distortion or damage. Dialogue, music, and sound effects are professionally integrated into the complete mix and neither element ever threatens to drown out or be overwhelmed by the rest. Manual volume adjustment never becomes a problem. Two English subtitle options have also been provided, one for the entire film and one that just translates the French language dialogue.

Extras: 3/5

I had a feeling that the producers of this Blu-ray would be able to bring together some of the surviving members of the film’s cast and crew for fresh supplemental interviews, but I didn’t expect a feature-length documentary to be the result. Nevertheless, “Art and Artifice in The Moderns” (97 minutes) extensively charts the development and production of the film via retrospective insights from Rudolph, Carradine, and producer Carolyn Pfeiffer. Just about every inch of ground is covered with regards to the film that the director and Jon Bradshaw (to whom the final cut was dedicated) first wrote back in the 1970’s, from the research into the look of 1920’s Paris and the era’s fashions and interior dedication that helped make the low-budget production as authentic as possible to the performances and music and the film’s reception and everything else in between. Participation from the other actors and technical personnel would have been greatly appreciated and made the documentary even better, but this is a pretty all-compassing look back at how The Moderns came to be.

The original theatrical trailer (2 minutes) is the last of the bonus features, and the Blu-ray cover sleeve features reversible artwork.

Overall: 4/5

For the true aficionados of early 20^th century literature, art, and music, The Moderns is a geeky blast of irreverent fun. It celebrates the human beings who fuel their creations with love and imagination, while simultaneously permitting director Alan Rudolph to paint his own work depicting the endless struggle between art and commerce as well as the compromises artists often must make even when faced with the perversion of their labors. Filled with exquisite period detail, anachronistic visuals, and delightful performances, this is a modest little indie winner that gets an excellent Blu-ray from Shout! Factory with improved picture and sound and a terrific retrospective documentary. Highly recommended.