Uncut, 08/01/2001, p.144, "A thinking person's soap, a pocket-size ENGLISH PATIENT..."
USA Today, 05/25/2001, p.6E, "...Intriguing....Cate Blanchett is flamboyantly believable....[The] cinematography is exquisite..."
New York Times, 05/25/2001, p.E14, "...A series of sumptuous mounted tableaus....The film is beautifully recorded and scored..."
Movieline's Hollywood Life, 06/01/2001, p.39, "...Cate Blanchett has great fun with her outlandish role..."
Theatrical release: May 25, 2001
DVD Features:
Region 1
Keep Case
Anamorphic Widescreen - 1.85:1
Audio:
Dolby Digital 5.1 - English
Additional Release Material:
Trailers
Interactive Features:
Scene Access
Interactive Menus
Text/Photo Galleries:
Production Notes
Writer/Director Sally Potter's ambitious historic romance THE MAN WHO CRIED is an epic war drama laced with moral parable and bolstered by lush sets and costumes. The story begins familiarly enough--a young Russian Jewish girl is displaced just before World War II and separated from her family--but Potter has woven around the character of Suzie (Christina Ricci) a labyrinth of color, dance, ethnic music, and culture that transcends a typical or cliched war-time drama. By the use of an eclectic, but brilliant, cast, the complex set of choices made by the characters--all outsiders on some level--help to convey the desperation and strength in each of their situations. In particular, there is Suzie, who was raised in a proper English household after fleeing her homeland. Withdrawn, silently tormented, she longs to find her father (Oleg Yankovsky) who fled to America to find a better life for their family. Poetically, Suzie finds a singing voice to express who she is, traveling to Paris where she becomes part of the Moulin Rouge set. It is here--amidst the glamour and impending doom of Paris in the 1930s--that she meets Lola (an almost unrecognizable Cate Blanchett), a fascinating, sophistocated woman who guides Suzie but loses her own identity in a relationship with a rich singer (John Turturro). Suzie also finds love in the arms of the gypsy Cesar (Johnny Depp), but when the Nazis invade the city, everything must change. In this elegant and moving film, Potter has turned the Paris of today into the Paris of the 1930s, staging many incredible scenes, one in which the Place de la Concorde is actually completely emptied of cars and people.