Volume 44, Number 3 · February 20, 1997
Working Girl
By Sarah Kerr
Evita
a film directed by Alan Parker, with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, lyrics by Tim Rice
The Making of Evita
by Alan Parker, with an introduction by Madonna
Collins Publishers, 125 pp., $20.00 (paper)
Santa Evita
by Tomás Eloy Martínez, translated by Helen Lane
Knopf, 371 pp., $23.00
Eva Perón
by Alicia Dujovne Ortiz, translated by Shawn Fields
St. Martin's Press, 325 pp., $24.95
Evita: In My Own Words
translated by Laura Dail
New Press, 119 pp., $8.95 (paper)
Since the theme of Evita is fame, it's worth noting that during the early Thirties, when Eva Duarte was a skinny, sickly young outcast living on the Argentine pampas, the two consolations in her life were reciting florid poems about death and buying a fan magazine for the glamorous stills and the news that it brought of her favorite Hollywood actress. From our late-century perspective, her choice, Norma Shearer, looks odd. Today we easily remember actresses who came along just two or three years later. Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck: we remember their fierceness, their elegantly hunched posture, the way they wore chorus-girl shorts or antebellum gowns. Compared with them Evita's heroine seems like something primordial, a one-cell precursor of the real stars who were about to arrive.
Review, 2901 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |