Reversal of Fortune

Description

Join the Festival for a very special award night celebrating the career of one of cinema’s great acting talents, Jeremy Irons. Named for the longtime San Francisco benefactor of arts and charitable organizations, Peter J. Owens (1936-1991), this award honors an actor whose work exemplifies brilliance, independence and integrity. The evening will include a clip reel of career highlights and an onstage interview with the artist, followed by a film screening.

Adapted from Alan Dershowitz’s account of the Claus von Bülow case, Barbet Schroeder’s audacious film tells the fact-based story of socialite Sunny von Bülow who slips into an unexplained diabetic coma and her icily charming husband Claus who is accused of her attempted murder. After being found guilty in his first trial, the widely disliked Claus needs someone powerful and persuasive to represent him in his appeal and overcomes Dershowitz’s initial resistance by agreeing to finance his representation for another case. In a classic bit of client/attorney conversation, Dershowitz tells him, “You are a very strange man.” “You have no idea,” Claus replies. Besides these darkly humorous asides, there are many things that make Reversal of Fortune a remarkable film, the preeminent one being Irons’s masterful performance for which he deservedly won the Oscar. Seguing from angry hauteur to wildly inappropriate comments, his Claus has an impenetrable shield with a many-hued patina. Nicholas Kazan’s script takes the ingenious tack of using Sunny as the film’s narrator, giving the story emotional resonance and allowing Glenn Close to express some of what’s happening behind her character’s placid, bed-ridden existence. Part courtroom drama, part Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous satire and part coal-black comedy, Reversal of Fortune is one of the 1990s’ key cinematic triumphs.

– Rod Armstrong

Trailer

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