Venice 2023: 10 things to know about Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro”.

TO Venice 2023 the day has come Bradley Cooper without… Bradley Cooper! The director and star of Master – who actually came to the Lido incognito last week for the soundcheck of this film he’s been working on for six years – stayed away from the red carpet in support of the strike of Hollywood actors and screenwriters. Too bad: in the Sala Grande, where the gala evenings are held, he would have received a shower of applause… At the screening for journalists and critics? Mhmmm, there was a certain tepidness. Interesting film, for heaven’s sake, but enough to deserve the competition for a review that prides itself on being “International Film Art Exhibition” (this is the exact name)? To you the arduous sentence: Master will be in selected theaters in December and, from the 20th of the same month, on Netflix.

1 The story

Master follows the rules of the genre biopic but focuses only on 35 years of the life of Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990): from 1943, when he made his first big success at Carnegie Hall replacing (with a few hours notice, and without time to rehearse) his teacher, Bruno Walter, to 1978, when his actress wife, Felicia Montealegre Cohn died of cancer. «After a year of research, I realized that the thing that struck me most about Bernstein was his marriage to Felicia. It was a true, unconventional love that I found infinitely fascinating» explained the actor months ago, before the strike was called. But then in the story he focused somewhat reductively on how understanding she was in accepting her husband’s homosexual relationships, suggesting that the torments and depressions of the genius were linked above all to the theme of bisexuality…

2 The genesis of the project

In the beginning the project was by Steven Spielberg, but in the end he limited himself to the role of producer, alongside Martin Scorsese. “When I got the script, I read it quicker than he thought, and within an hour and a quarter he had a ton of messages from me with loads of ideas,” Cooper said. Adding that, when Spielberg decided not to direct it, he immediately nominated himself. “Unlike A Star Is Bornwhich I made in four years with an already existing structure to rewrite, here it took six».

3 The controversy

In this age of extreme political correctness, the controversy has started for the “Semitic” nose of the prosthesis used by Cooper (author: Kazu Hiro, already awarded twice with an Oscar)… It is not even to be commented. In the film the theme of identity Jewish of Bernstein is only touched upon in an initial scene, when he is advised to change his surname because it is too connoted, and in an anecdote about a Bar mitzvah.

4 What’s true

It would be tempting to say everything, but it is all filtered through the words and memories of the three children, Alexander, Jamie and Nina. And especially, from the eldest’s book, Jamie: Famous Father Girl.

5 Bradley & Lenny

Sliding doors… Bradley Cooper, still a child, received a wand as a Christmas present and since then he has frequently led an imaginary orchestra in the Violin Concerto op. 35 in D major by Tchaikovsky, unaware that it was a recording by Isaac Stern directed by Bernstein himself. “In college we had to play a ‘private moment’ in front of the class and I decided to direct that piece,” recalled Cooper, alluding to his time at the New School. “Then Ellen Burstyn came to do a four week workshop where we had to create a character and I wrote a monologue about a conductor arriving at rehearsals. This subject has always been there…».

6 Carey Muligan

Carey Mulligan took the commitment seriously, going to Santiago to meet Felicia’s family, born in Costa Rica to an American father and a Costa Rican mother of European origins. At the age of eight she had moved to Chile, where she and her sisters had attended school in a British convent before arriving in New York in her early twenties. “They were wonderful, full of stories and anecdotes,” Mulligan said of the relatives she met, including Felicia’s brother-in-law. She “she She was over ninety years old and had lived with the Bernsteins in Ansedonia. I have also seen countless original paintings by Felicia, who was a painter as well as an actress. We even went to the school he attended. And all this has helped me a lot. They were so excited that Felicia’s story was actually being told and that she wasn’t just about Lenny.”

7 The locations

The house in the country is the real one of the Bernsteins, in Connecticut, while the New York apartment in the Dakota Building (that of Rosemary’s Babythe one where John Lennon lived and in front of which he was shot) was reconstructed in the studio.

8 The musical part

To believably embody the character, Cooper has followed the rehearsals of numerous orchestras, sitting in the mystical gulf of the orchestra at the Metropolitan Opera House as Gustavo Dudamel and Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducted, and even ensconced among the violas and violins for eight days of Philadelphia Orchestra rehearsals. «One of my favorite quotes from Bernstein reads: “I have to lead with every part of the body, with the shoulders, the wrists, the knees”. Too many directors stop at the wrists, the face of
Lenny was so important. Cooper understood it instinctively» observes Nézet-Séguin who made an important contribution.

9 The Italian presence

The Italian talent also shines in Master: the soprano next to Cooper in one of the final scenes is in fact our Rosa Feola.

10 The format of the film

Master switches from the first 50 minutes in black and white to color, and also changes the format. «In the first part my intention was to give the same impression as in the film Write to me by post (directed by Ernst Lubitsch in 1940, ed) using the 1.33 format,” Cooper explained. «Turning to color, I wanted to convey a perception of awareness of reality, but also a sensation from the seventies with those wide and long shots. Finally came the eighties where everything has a little more polish, the format used is 1.85: it’s much easier to identify with».

iO Woman © REPRODUCTION RESERVED