Royal Balls and Mansion Retreats
By: Josh Tierney
This is another selfish list in which I start with little and beg for more. Although these high society soirées are often depicted in scathing, satirical lights, I personally find them engaging as depictions of class struggle in miniature (with the help often foregrounded, such as in ‘Rules of the Game’ and ‘Fanny and Alexander’). Rereading War and Peace, I realise more and more that these scenes of princesses and princes, cigarettes and cigars, artifice and corruption, flings and yawns are a viable means of escapism for me. I’m not entirely sure why. I would sum up the best of these scenes/films as character whirlwinds, where the characters are cared for, if only by the director/writer/actor/themselves.
Notes:
The family gathering in the first part of Bergman’s ‘Fanny and Alexander’ is what places it on this list.
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01Martin Scorsese
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02Stanley Kubrick
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03Federico Fellini
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04Jacques Rivette
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05Max Ophüls
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06Luis Buñuel
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07Ingmar Bergman
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08Alain Resnais
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09Jean Renoir
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10Ingmar Bergman
