Turgenev's novella is hardly more than a short story, a character piece about a well-meaning but immature and rudderless young man far from home, who falls in love too easily, and is too easily manipulated. The film pulls the action in more tightly, introducing all the main characters earlier, but this puts the seductress in the frame right away, depriving us of the intoxication of first love with the pure young girl - that's hurried over, and we don't see the stages by which the hero loses his head, and hears himself making declarations and promises that he hasn't thought through. The role of the family, including the little brother, in taking this stranger immediately to their hearts, is also lost. The complicity of the husband in the seduction game is also missing, making the seductress a more enigmatic and possibly pitiable character.
The ending is changed, again in a way that brings the story closer to the dramatic unities, but we're left with the impression that he regrets the loss of both women. Spoiler - in the novel he does follow the seductress and her voyeuristic husband, until he is discarded.
I think I might have been puzzled what to make of the film if I hadn't read the novella first.
I would watch it again for the glorious 1840s costumes and for the dancing and the Venice carnival dream sequence.
The ending is changed, again in a way that brings the story closer to the dramatic unities, but we're left with the impression that he regrets the loss of both women. Spoiler - in the novel he does follow the seductress and her voyeuristic husband, until he is discarded.
I think I might have been puzzled what to make of the film if I hadn't read the novella first.
I would watch it again for the glorious 1840s costumes and for the dancing and the Venice carnival dream sequence.