Classic Cannon: Duet for One (1986) - Reviewed

Courtesy of Cannon Films

Julie Andrews for most of the moviegoing public is synonymous with the upbeat escapist musical, canonized by her Best Actress win in Disney’s Mary Poppins and a year later in the Rodgers and Hammerstein Best Picture winner The Sound of Music.  Though appearing in Alfred Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain, the British actress is usually the face of the big opulent Hollywood musical film.  Around the 1980s however, with her collaborations with Blake Edwards and in today’s Classic Cannon review Duet for One, that picture perfect wholesome image like Shirley Jones who also featured prominently in R&H productions began to transform into a more provocative output including but not limited to nudity and/or portraying irascible foul-mouthed characters.

 
With Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky (early in his Cannon tenure) directing the two-hander play by Tom Kempinski who adapted his own screenplay and produced by Golan/Globus, the searing drama Duet for One represents another example of classy indie filmmaking with the Go-Go Boys keeping out of the way.  While Cannon was often notorious for interfering with film productions to steer the film in the directions they saw fit, in general they left Konchalovsky alone to tell his stories the way he always has before briefly emigrating to America.  Mostly, with this true story loosely based on the life of cellist Jacqueline du Pre (later dramatized in the 1998 film Hilary and Jackie), Duet for One offers audiences a side of Julie Andrews they’re not used to seeing onscreen.

 
Stephanie Anderson (Julie Andrews) is a world-renowned violinist on the cusp of another concert tour with her conductor husband David Cornwallis (Alan Bates) and her trusted pupil Constantine (Rupert Everett) when tragedy strikes and she succumbs to multiple sclerosis, screeching her career and life to a halt.  After Constantine leaves her, she begins unsuccessfully seeking therapy from a mostly unhelpful psychiatrist Dr. Louis Feldman (Max von Sydow reprising his role from stage to screen).  On the side as her husband begins an affair with another woman while Stephanie starts pawning her instruments and paraphernalia off to local vagrant Totter (Liam Neeson) whom she also takes into her bed.
 
Co-written by Kempinski, Konchalovsky and Jeremy Lipp, the film is a bit of an Oscar bait drama though Konchalovsky always gets great performances from his veteran cast members and Andrews as the once prominent and powerful violinist seeing her faculties disappear is ferocious as well as vulnerable onscreen in this.  Featuring an orchestral score by Cannon regular Michael Bishop (Bloodsport; Death Wish 4) and lensed by legendary (no pun intended) Legend cinematographer Alex Thomson, Duet for One looks and sounds beautiful, capturing the glowing golden aura of the concert halls to the dreary and drab isolation of her empty home alone with her illness.  Though the subject of multiple sclerosis (and specifically this instance of it) has been brought to film and television more recently, in 1986 it was unexpected and new to moviegoers. 

 
Made one year after directing arguably the greatest Cannon film with Runaway Train, this tense and affecting drama shows Konchalovsky slowing down the action in favor of getting inside the confining space of a professional musician losing control of her own life and displays a side of Julie Andrews that brings her down from the skies of Mary Poppins back down to Earth with the rest of us.  In the director’s checkered oeuvre, Duet for One is a bit quieter and smaller in scale but no less of a pillar of cinematic strength.  Though he has had some missteps later in his career, Konchalovsky probably remains the savior of Cannon Films and is most certainly one of Russia’s greatest storytellers.

--Andrew Kotwicki