When the elegant and educated bachelor Charles Swann falls in love with a courtesan, his friends in the most powerful and fashionable circles of Paris in the 1890's warn him against marriage.
Well produced with top credentials in all departments, the result is a unloving, coldly calculated adaptation of Proust's story; alone Hans Werner Henze's excellent score gives an impression of what this movie could have been.
Halliwell**: "Reasonably successful attempt to film part of an unfilmable book. Comparisons with Letter From an Unknown Woman are inevitable."
Maltin**1/2: "Lavish but lifeless telescoping of Proust's Remembrance of Things Past with Irons surprisingly stiff...Redeemed somewhat by the latter [Ornella Muti] and Delon (as a homosexual baron), a sexy under-the-covers scene, and Sven Nykvist photography. "
