the tourist costumes angelina jolie

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Just Any Guy

COSTUME designer Colleen Atwood has turned her hand to the costumes for new film The Tourist and, whilst making Angelina Jolie look elegant may not be the most challenging brief, she was also tasked with ensuring Johnny Depp looked liked any other guy. SEE THE COSTUMES HERE "Elise was of the manor born," Atwood said of Jolie'scharacter. "Intuitive style; almost hereditary, never showy. Frank was Frank - just one of those guys that deserves a second look, but doesn't always get it." The film was shot on location in Venice and Atwood used pieces by Salvatore Ferragamo, Alberta Ferretti and Belstaffto create the characters' looks. But, having created Depp'slooks on films from Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood to Sleepy Hollow and Alice In Wonderland , did she enjoy making one of the world's most attractive men look like everyman? "Each time I work with J.D. is different," she told us. "A contemporary piece is not our usual, but was fun to explore." SEE THE COSTUMES FROM THE TOURIST HERE

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Angelina Jolie’s On-Set Style Secrets

World-renowned Costume Designer Colleen Atwood and Angelina herself let us in on the style secrets of their latest fashion-savvy flick, The Tourist.

The complex dress that Jolie wears in the Gala scene was a gown made of layers of black silk tulle, net, and satin with a pleated layered edge. Atwood and her team took weeks to make two of these Gala dresses all by hand. “We wanted a dress that was really feminine, that harked maybe to another time and elegance, but didn’t take away from the necklace. It framed her face and body beautifully.” To celebrate the release of The Tourist – and to allow you to emulate Angelina’s sophisticated style - we are giving away a Fiorelli Holdall and a £400 Very.co.uk Voucher! Enter now for your chance to win!

All of Jolie’s clothes in the film were designed for her and made by hand – with one exception: a vintage 1950s Charles James gray dress. Atwood couldn’t resist using it in the film “She literally walked into this dress. It was meant for her.” To celebrate the release of The Tourist – and to allow you to emulate Angelina’s sophisticated style - we are giving away a Fiorelli Holdall and a £400 Very.co.uk Voucher! Enter now for your chance to win!

Jolie on Atwood, “She’s a magician with clothing. She has really exquisite taste. I am usually very specific about what I wear and I had a few opinions, but pretty much I let her do her thing. From the first time you see Elise, when she is in a tight skirt and heels, you know who she is.” To celebrate the release of The Tourist – and to allow you to emulate Angelina’s sophisticated style - we are giving away a Fiorelli Holdall and a £400 Very.co.uk Voucher! Enter now for your chance to win!

Atwood also collaborated closely with Angelina Jolie to present Elise as very much the lady. Says Atwood, “We wanted Elise to be extremely feminine and powerful at the same time.” To celebrate the release of The Tourist – and to allow you to emulate Angelina’s sophisticated style - we are giving away a Fiorelli Holdall and a £400 Very.co.uk Voucher! Enter now for your chance to win!

“My designs are a blend of old world and new world together,” says Atwood. “I did a more classic take on fashion as opposed to the latest greatest trends and brightest colors. I really wanted a nod to the architecture of this beautiful city, and the environment is quite busy. So I kept the look for the cast simple.” To celebrate the release of The Tourist – and to allow you to emulate Angelina’s sophisticated style - we are giving away a Fiorelli Holdall and a £400 Very.co.uk Voucher! Enter now for your chance to win!

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Snag Angelina Jolie's Style From The Tourist, Courtesy Of Ferragamo

We've been lusting after Angelina Jolie 's sleek, sophisticated style from her new movie The Tourist ever since we spied the first on-set photos way back in February. And now we--and you!--can score the exact same Ferragamo shoes she wore in the film.

PARIS - FEBRUARY 25: Actress Angelina Jolie films in Place des Victoires of Paris for the Movie "The Tourist" on February 25, 2010 in Paris, France. (Photo by Lorenzo Santini/WireImage)

The "Elise" pumps, pictured here on Jolie in a scene from the film (and named after her character!), were customized by Ferragamo and costume designer Colleen Atwood especially for The Tourist , and are now available at the brand's New York and Beverly Hills boutiques. The actress fell in love with the gold-tipped stilettos on set--"The gold metal heels were my favorite shoes, they helped me feel sexy," she said--and they were a major part of what Ferragamo calls her "bombshell jet set secret agent" style.

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The shoes are available in black, camel, and a dusty rose suede for $750--so while yes, they're a major wish list item, you can't really put a price tag on looking just a little bit more like Angelina Jolie, can you!?

PLUS... check out the sexy dress Jolie wore to the film's premiere ...AND... get the inside scoop on the wardrobe Ferragamo created for Nicole Kidman in Australia !

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Angelina Jolie’s Spectacular Jewels from The Tourist

By Tara Lamont-Djite

Angelina Jolie always awes in her films, but in The Tourist she has the aid of some incredible accessories to make her look even more spectacular.

Apart from the eye candy that is the sumptuous Johnny Depp , the beautiful Asprey jewels and clutches are a feast for the eyes. Here’s an exclusive look at the accessories that the magnificent Miss Jolie wears throughout the film.

1. Ribbon 18ct yellow gold earrings with citrine: $5,350

These sparkling, amber-hued gems offset Jolie’s honey-colored hair and cat-green eyes. Paired with a simple black dress or suit, these are a standout.

2. Pearl Necklace with A-line clasp: $13,250

This classic piece can be worn at any age and never looks dated. It captures the character’s ladylike persona and is a fantasy piece to add to your holiday wishlist; this is a necklace that will lift any outfit and make you look polished!

3. Swirl Pearl Earrings set in white gold with pave white diamonds: $9,700

Angelina has long had a love affair with magnificent statement earrings, and this pearl and diamond pair is no exception.

4. Regent Clutch in gold satin: $1,600

Angelina loves simplicity and elegance, and her taste is reflected in the costumes worn in The Tourist . This gold satin clutch is a perfect alternative to a simple black clutch, and it trasnforms any outfit from day to evening. We can’t wait to see how she wears it!

5. Mayfair Clutch in crocodile: $5,250

Sophisticated, classic and refined; this black crocodile clutch will no doubt be used multiple times throughout the film. It’s not only practical and beautiful, but can be worn with any outfit and kept forever.

All pieces are available at Asprey

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The Tourist

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• angelina jolie
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• colleen atwood

Angelina Jolie - artwork by Matteo Dall'Ava

Angelina jolie e johnny depp - artwork by matteo dall'ava.

Timeless Chic! Here is the rundown of Angelina Jolie 's star style, together with Johnny Depp , in The Tourist , the new romantic thriller filmed in Paris and Venice. In this very Hollywood-esque movie costume designer Colleen Atwood creates for the sensual and enigmatic Elise Clifton-Ward (A. Jolie) a selection of 12 retro looks revisited in a modern key . A balanced mix of vintage and new like the cream colored silk gown inspired on an original Irene of the '30s . To this Colleen has chosen a mocha colored shall, long gloves and a matching clutch. "The idea is to create a world of discreet elegance which reflects in the simplicity of the lines and the colors", adds the costume designer: " The style we've chosen for Jolie is leaning towards the women in Alfred Hitchcock's movies ". Those that look carefully, though, will also find the black suit with the single-breasted jacket and a skirt just under the knee - matched with a set of pearls and big black sunglasses, in the timeless look of Audrey Hepburn in Charade (1963). Accessories are an important part in the Last Diva look . In fact, Angelina is rarely without any jewels. The gems come from her personal jeweler Robert Procop ex London Asprey CEO . Talking about accessories we can't forget about shoes. Throughout the movie you'll see under Angelina Jolie's arm a Salvatore Ferragamo bag brand. It is not just product placement. I t is a true collaboration that brought the Florentine fashion house to create 60 pairs of shoes for the scene : sexy metal stiletto-heeled pump shoes in various shades of fine suede. Ferragamo has declined the shoe with the heel in three different heights, with and without the wedge, depending on the needs of the scene: Johnny Depp, in fact, is not really a giant!

Colleen is sure of one thing, the style of Jolie in The Tourist will fascinate many high fashion designers. Fashion Imitates Art, not vice versa. We will see in the next catwalks?

di Matteo Dall'Ava

Published: 12/20/2010 - 07:00

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The (Perfumes) Factory

Angelina Jolie's Costumes in <em>The Tourist</em> Pay Homage to MGM Fashion Designer Irene Lentz

Blogger, The Recessionista

Yesterday, I saw the film The Tourist starring Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp. The film is a good thriller, Hitchcock-like in its amazing twists and turns. The other thing very Hitchcock-like is how beautiful Angelina Jolie looks in the film, and how beautiful her costumes are. You literally can't keep your eyes off her and her amazing jewelry, gowns and dresses. From the film's opening, you are fascinated by her character, and her classic look. It's a very old school Hollywood look, and you never see her character, Elise, wearing pants, jeans or T-shirts. Elise is couture all the way. Elise even wears long gloves, with a cut-out for her watch so she can unbutton a fabric panel to see what time it is without taking off her gloves. While I was watching the movie, I couldn't stop thinking of some of the costumes in the movie, and how they reminded me of designer Irene Lentz's work in film, particularly the costumes she did for Doris Day in the 1960 movie Midnight Lace . The whole time I was watching The Tourist , I kept thinking of Irene. Well, that was kismet. When I looked at this week's People Magazine's StyleWatch , I learned that Irene was actually an inspiration for Angelina's costumes in the movie. "My inspiration for [Jolie's character] Elise's costumes were the Hitchcock movies: minimal elegance," Academy Award-winning costume designer Colleen Atwood tells People . She credits the costume Angelina wears in the opening sequence, "an ivory sheath accented with a camel shawl and gloves" (pictured above) to garments that she was familiar with that had been designed by Irene. "That look was inspired by a dress designed by Irene [Lentz], who is a legendary costume designer," Atwood says. "I took the basic idea and added some flair to contemporize it. The original had a jacket, but I really wanted something a little more luxurious, so I created the cashmere wrap. I've always loved a glove, and was filming in the land of fine gloves, so I used a fine suede glove to finish the look." I love that Irene was an inspiration for this elegant look. I hope we see a return to more beautifully outfitted heroines in film after this movie. It's just so much more interesting to look at beautiful costumes on screen than it is to look at off the rack denim.

Recently, I had my own fashion encounter with Irene . After much searching, I finally bought an exquisite , pre-loved Irene jacket. The buttons on the jacket are a revelation. They are like delicate little pyramids rising from the fabric. Buttons were one of Irene Lentz's key design touches. She spent a lot of time selecting and designing the special buttons for her garments. The price for my timeless Irene was a mere $90.00. This jacket is one of my best fashion finds ever.

I consulted Irene expert Greg LaVoi after making my purchase. He told me, "That jacket will look wonderful with black pants or even jeans." Greg should know. He has the most amazing collection of Irene pieces and uses them effectively on the TV show The Closer to outfit detective Brenda, played by Kyra Sedgewick. In 2011, I hope to find a few more Irene's to augment my collection. I'll also have my eye on costume designer Colleen Atwood for an Oscar nomination for The Tourist. Irene, a leading costume supervisor at MGM in the 1940's, never won an Oscar despite being nominated twice. How sweet it would be if Colleen Atwood, inspired by Irene, could take home some Oscar gold. Ms. Atwood has my vote.

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Movie Review | ‘The Tourist’

Gallivanting Across Europe in High Heels and High Dudgeon

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By Manohla Dargis

• Dec. 9, 2010

It takes a big man to hold the screen level when Angelina Jolie is around — usually the whole thing just tilts in her direction as soon as she struts into the frame. Her partner in crazy-time fame, Brad Pitt, helped keep the balance in “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” their only film together. And now Johnny Depp tries to do much the same in “The Tourist.” Going for muted, eyeliner- and nearly irony-free, he plays an ordinary American who bumbles into a Continental intrigue, which looks like a film you’ve seen before, because you have.

You know that movie. It’s the one in which Cary Grant and Grace Kelly don’t just travel by train, they also trade knowing looks in the first-class dining car as the waiter fills their glasses, and a shady type secretly takes their photo. The people behind “The Tourist” would like you to flash back to 1955 — as Ms. Jolie’s wardrobe of long gloves suggests — a risky strategy, given that you actually might. The truth is that it takes an exceptional director to prevent an entertainment as flimsy as this from collapsing under its own weightlessness. Alfred Hitchcock pulled it off with Grant and Kelly in “To Catch a Thief,” a bauble that sparkles like a jewel because of the world-class scenery, its stars included, and because of, well, the directing.

Stargazing is the only reason bonbons like “The Tourist” are made, dreams of box office bonanzas aside. But stars need just the right setting and a director who knows how to make them shine, as Steven Soderbergh does with Mr. Pitt and George Clooney in the “Ocean’s” franchise. The director also needs to hold his own, which, from the generic look and feel of “The Tourist,” clearly wasn’t the case with Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. He does put personality into the occasional scene, including a mysterious, hushed interlude in which Ms. Jolie stands with her back to the camera as Mr. Depp creeps up from behind — lover or stalker, you’re not initially sure which — before pulling her close for a hungry kiss.

It’s a nice idyll among a wash of clichés that include Russian muscle in service to a big meanie, Shaw (Steven Berkoff), whose quest for stolen loot leads him to Elise Ward (Ms. Jolie). A mystery woman of rare ability (she can pick a lock and wear off-the-shoulder gowns), she eludes Shaw while dodging assorted law enforcement agencies, including Scotland Yard, where Paul Bettany and Timothy Dalton curl stiff upper lips. Elise pauses long enough to slide into a train seat opposite Frank Tupelo (Mr. Depp), who, after gulping at his good fortune, explains that he’s a vacationing Wisconsin math teacher (as if!). Dinner leads to drinks leads to complications, including hailstorming bullets and a few sluggish boat chases in the Venice canals.

On Tour With 'The Tourist'

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Hollywood has a long history of collecting (and devouring) European directors, but Mr. von Donnersmarck was an odd choice for froth like this. A few years ago he attracted some attention for “The Lives of Others,” a 2006 drama about an East German couple being spied on by a Stasi officer. Here, his main job seems to have been to find new and flattering ways to shoot Ms. Jolie as she catwalks from Paris to Venice in soaring heels. He tries to invest this adoration with some self-conscious wit, mostly by having all the men in the movie gawp at Elise as if she were as much a supernova as the one playing her. But all this genuflection — she parts one crowd as Moses does the Red Sea — feels forced rather than mischievous.

It must be tough for Ms. Jolie to find roles that fit. Off screen she remains a fascinating presence, but on screen she now tends to overwhelm her roles and even her movies. Like every memorable screen star, she still has a face you can get lost in, with its push-pull of hard, jutting angles and well-endowed lips. It’s a face built for extremes, though early on she could also make it work for somewhat smaller, human-scaled roles that were nonetheless tricky for her. Superheroes and superfreaks have long been her truer calling, one reason that “The Tourist” seemed vaguely promising. When she first appears in a come-hither outfit and a small private smile, she looks ready for liftoff. She never ignites, and neither does the movie.

Mr. Depp doesn’t fare better with a role that forces him to play meek and disappointingly mild, despite a few screenwriter-supplied tics. (Mr. von Donnersmarck shares writing credit with Christopher McQuarrie and Julian Fellowes.) A brilliant character actor and accidental movie star, Mr. Depp has rarely been persuasive playing average. He likes tunneling into his characters, preferably under a thick smear of makeup and flamboyant threads, which is why he’s never made sense in mainstream romance. There’s no place for him to hide with Frank, so he stands around trying to look hapless as Ms. Jolie grabs the lead. There’s definitely some amusement in watching her come to his rescue, a role reversal the movie only flirts with. But oh how much more fun it would have been if Mr. Depp had really played the girl, eyeliner and all.

“The Tourist” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Bloodless violence.

THE TOURIST

Opens on Friday nationwide.

Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck; written by Mr. Henckel von Donnersmarck, Christopher McQuarrie and Julian Fellowes; director of photography, John Seale; edited by Joe Hutshing and Patricia Rommel; music by James Newton Howard; production design by Jon Hutman; costumes by Colleen Atwood; produced by Graham King, Tim Headington, Roger Birnbaum, Gary Barber and Jonathan Glickman; released by Columbia Pictures. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes.

WITH: Angelina Jolie (Elise Clifton Ward), Johnny Depp (Frank Tupelo), Paul Bettany (Inspector John Acheson), Timothy Dalton (Chief Inspector Jones), Steven Berkoff (Reginald Shaw) and Rufus Sewell (the Englishman).

Today’s Film Reviews: AND EVERYTHING IS GOING FINE, a documentary directed by Steven Soderbergh. 17 BEIJING TAXI, a Mandarinlanguage documentary directed by Miao Wang. 10 THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER, directed by Michael Apted. 16 THE COMPANY MEN, directed by John Wells. 10 THE FIGHTER, directed by David O. Russell. 1 HEMINGWAY’S GARDEN OF EDEN, directed by John Irvin. 14 THE TEMPEST, directed by Julie Taymor. 10 THE TOURIST, directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. 8 VENGEANCE, an English-, Cantonese- and French-language film directed by Johnnie To. 17 YOU WONT MISS ME, directed by Ry Russo-Young. 15

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The Tourist (I) (2010)

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• This Is Not Angelina Jolie’s Big Comeback

It’s been three years since Angelina Jolie appeared in a movie, though she’s been making a retreat from stardom for a lot longer than that, pulling back pieces of herself from the public sphere as well as from the persona she projects onscreen. Gone are the days of the blood-vial-wearing wild child or the bombshell whose chemistry with co-star Brad Pitt in Mr. and Mrs. Smith made their coupling up feel inevitable. As a celebrity, she’s stripped sex from her image entirely, emphasizing instead her identity as a filmmaker, a human-rights activist, and a mother of six. As an actor, she’s voiced a tiger in the Kung Fu Panda franchise as often as she’s actually appeared onscreen over the last decade, and in the live-action films she has taken on, her roles have been increasingly defined by her character’s aloof beauty and elegant suffering. I can’t begrudge Jolie her desire to armor up and put more layers between herself and a public that’s been ingesting the intimate details of her life since she was scarcely old enough to legally drink. But I also can’t deny that I’ve found this Madonna-martyr phase in her career less than compelling. At her best, Jolie is thrilling, a talent who’s capable of bursting into the frame and making you believe she’s about to devour the world whole. In her more recent roles, even when running headlong through a raging forest fire, she feels only half there.

That tendency holds true in Maria , the new film from Chilean director Pablo Larraín, in which Jolie plays legendary opera singer Maria Callas. The role is her most ambitious in ages, and yet it doesn’t feel like a reemergence so much as it does a project that’s been constructed around the strategically withholding presence she’s become. The part comes with all sorts of details that serve as the heralds of its legitimacy, like the fact that Jolie spent months in training to sing opera, her real voice blended with Callas’s famous one whenever her character performs. Despite that, there’s something bloodless about what Jolie actually does onscreen, a level of remove that makes it seem like she’s playing a woman who’s playing Maria Callas. Some aspect of that is intentional — Maria is the final part in a trilogy from Larraín that began with Natalie Portman as Jackie Onassis in Jackie and continued with Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana in Spencer , and while it’s the weakest of the three, it is, like the previous installments, as much about image-making as it is about the iconic woman at its center. Its Maria, living in Paris toward the end of her life, hasn’t sung onstage in years but still can’t stop performing — whether it’s burbling an aria in the kitchen for her housekeeper, Bruna (Alba Rohrwacher), or playing the diva for a TV journalist (Kodi Smit-McPhee) who’s actually a pill-induced hallucination.

All three of these Larraín films play coy with the idea of image as both power and a prison, acknowledging how absurdly elevated a problem that is to wrestle with, while at the same time trying to treat it with the seriousness its subjects demand. But Maria has the toughest time finding that balance and reconciling the imperiousness it wants from its subject with its insistence that she spent most of her life trying to please those around her. The film slips between the miniature productions that make up Maria’s day-to-day in 1977 and ones she did in the past onstage, but there’s nothing behind these displays, no fleshly substance to the character underneath the theatrical costumes and even more sumptuous everyday outfits. The purplish script, by Steven Knight, is written as though every other line were intended not to be spoken as part of a scene but to be highlighted in an eventual trailer. “What did you take?” demands Feruccio (Pierfrancesco Favino) — Maria’s butler and, alongside Bruna, other constant companion — when trying to monitor his mistress’s pill consumption. “I took liberties, all my life, and the world took liberties with me,” she answers. When Feruccio manages to arrange for Maria to see the doctor she’s been avoiding, that doctor tells her reassuringly that he “needs to have a conversation with you about life and death, about sanity and insanity.”

Is Maria insane? She’s definitely meant to be a mess, teetering out of the grasp of her doting domestic help, causing scenes at cafés, and imagining an interview with Smit-McPhee, who shares a name with her preferred brand of downers, when she isn’t trying to rediscover her voice with the help of a pianist (Stephen Ashfield) who might also be a figment. And yet, Maria remains so fastidious with its main character, as well as the actor playing her, unwilling to admit that there might be something as pleasurable as there is tragic about the spectacle of an opera star tearing apart her dressing room in search of a few last Quaaludes. Jolie looks incredible in the film, all angular cheekbones and brocade housecoats, divine in a cat flick eye and beehive in black-and-white flashbacks to her romance with Aristotle Onassis (Haluk Bilginer). Maria looks incredible, too, with cinematographer Edward Lachman giving ’70s Paris the exact look of a vintage postcard, and Larraín staging flights of fantasy that involve choirs turning up out of the crowds on the Place du Trocadero and orchestras sitting on the steps in the rain. But despite the obvious effort that went into the making of Maria , there’s so little life. For a movie built around a performance meant to be lauded for its bravery, there’s no sense of anything risked.

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Angelina Jolie Is Magnificent in a Draped Gown and Fur Wrap on the Venice Film Festival Red Carpet

Old Hollywood glamour at its best

Angelina Jolie was the picture of Old Hollywood as she arrived at the world premiere of her film Maria at the 81st Venice International Film Festival.

The actor and director made an entrance on the Italian red carpet in a magnificent draped beige gown, custom-made by Tamara Ralph, which wrapped around her body and fell into a breezy chiffon train at the back. Jolie elevated the monochrome look further with a faux-fur wrap in a soft brown, to which she pinned a sculptural gold flower brooch.

She continued the golden accents with a woven gold bracelet and a coordinating ring, as well as several small gold and diamond earrings. Adding to the timeless movie-star look, Jolie painted her lips a bold red, with a glossy red manicure to match, and wore a dark smoky eye. Her hair was down in a straight, side-parted style.

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The glamorous sand-colored ensemble is Jolie’s third outfit of the day. The Maleficent star previously attended events for her film on Lido di Venezia in two different Saint Laurent dresses . The first was a flowy brown maxi dress with a plunging neckline, which she wore with a matching brown smoky eye. The other was a classic little black sleeveless dress that the actor elevated with a Cartier leopard brooch.

Maria , directed by Pablo Larraín, is a biographical drama about the late opera singer Maria Callas. Jolie’s actual singing voice appears in parts of the movie, while in other scenes, recordings of Callas’s voice are used.

Rosa Sanchez is the senior news editor at Harper's Bazaar, working on news as it relates to entertainment, fashion, and culture. Previously, she was a news editor at ABC News and, prior to that, a managing editor of celebrity news at American Media. She has also written features for Rolling Stone, Teen Vogue, Forbes, and The Hollywood Reporter, among other outlets. 

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Angelina Jolie Will Get Another Oscar Nod for ‘Maria’

Jolie delivers a tour de force in Pablo Larráin’s biopic of Maria Callas, which just premiered at the Venice Film Festival. It’s too bad the film doesn’t live up to her work.

Barry Levitt

Freelance Writer

Pablo Larraín/Venice International Film Festival

VENICE, Italy—A legend of the stage, few people have become as synonymous with an art form as Maria Callas has with opera. Known affectionately as “La Divina” (or “The Divine One”), Callas’ once-in-a-lifetime voice and performance abilities made her an unbeatable name in the world of opera. Callas is finally receiving a long-overdue treatment in Pablo Larráin’s Maria , starring Angelina Jolie , her first role in three years, as Callas.

Maria , which just premiered at the Venice Film Festival , takes place in the week before the opera singer's death. It’s framed around an extensive interview of Maria Callas, conducted by Mandrax (Kodi Smitt-McPhee), a journalist keen to learn about every aspect of her life. Maria is happy to participate, even answering questions Mandrax doesn’t press her on. She’s surprisingly vulnerable despite her reputation for being quick to anger. Perhaps that’s all because the interview isn’t real and exists entirely within her mind, and Mandrax is also the name of her medication.

This is a compelling hook for a biopic, a storytelling method that often gets stuck into the same ebbs and flows. But Maria is a swirling, fragmented recollection of Callas’ life, one that leaves things frustratingly on the surface. Larraín has an incredible eye, and Maria is a richly textured visual feast. Brought to life by cinematographer Ed Lachman, the film makes beautiful use of Paris in the Autumn, reveling in a warm palette. The style sometimes gets away with itself, including a jarring first-person shakycam shot of a clothing rack, but it mostly works. And the visuals all work to serve Jolie’s pivotal performance.

But a performance is not an entire film, and the script keeps things frustratingly surface-level. This is a film that gets lost in its beauty and languishes through a two-hour runtime. Larraín is no stranger to an unconventional biopic, having directed both Neruda and Jackie , but the script gets away from him, indulging in a visual feast that struggles to find real substance. Maria languishes in sadness, offering little else in its story besides a date with misery.

That’s a shame because Jolie is sensational as Maria Callas. Despite the film focusing on Callas’ last days on Earth, Jolie never gives into the temptation of going for broke with some sort of manic desperation. She exudes the essence of a diva without the stereotypical hysterics. Maria’s internal organs may be failing her, but her exterior is poised and rigid. As Callas, Jolie walks with an almost ethereal quality as if strolling on clouds.

Angelina Jolie

Her otherworldly confidence rarely gives way, but when it does, Jolie brings a chilling vulnerability to her performance.The film has Callas revisiting her past while reckoning with her future, which gives Jolie plenty of opportunities to explore her character. Not one for scenery chewing, Jolie looks inside Callas, channeling a remarkable pain behind her eyes, conflicting with her welcoming smile. Jolie is almost unbearably glamorous, draped in exquisite gowns and costumes courtesy of costume designer Massimo Cantini Parrini.

And then there’s the singing. While all the songs in the film are recordings of the real Callas, Jolie embodies the singer exquisitely, lipsyncing the numbers with such gravitas and power that you’d think she became a trained opera singer for the role. There’s a clear difference between her singing in the flashbacks to her past—shot in vivid black-and-white—and the film’s present. In the past, she was an unstoppable force, but in the present, there’s a shakiness to the performance as she tries to find the voice she’s no longer physically capable of producing. Jolie is especially spellbinding here as the veins bulge in her forehead, bringing Callas’ legendary presence to life.

Jolie doesn’t bear much of a physical resemblance to Callas—and thankfully Maria avoids drowning Jolie’s expressive face in a sea of prosthetics. When the credits roll and the footage of the real Callas plays, Jolie embodies the operatic diva so well you’d be forgiven for thinking it's the actress herself on screen.

Though Jolie delivers something truly special that only a true movie star can unearth, Maria lags behind her brilliance. The worlds of fantasy Maria has concocted in her head don’t converge satisfyingly with reality. While Jolie gives Callas interiority, the script is disjointed, focusing on so many seemingly disparate elements of the singer's life, including her love affair with Aristotle Onassis (Haluk Bilginer) that seems conspicuously absent of love. Aristotle frequently mentions how ugly he is, but Bilginer is undeniably handsome. The chemistry between the pair is lacking, and you never get the sense that Maria spends time with him for any other reason than obligation.

Though the film is often sluggish, especially when the focus occasionally shifts away from Callas, Jolie’s performance ranks among her finest. The festival season is enticing to many because it typically signals the beginning of awards season, where the biggest and brightest come out to remind everyone why they’re superstars. That’s precisely what Jolie does in Maria —even if the film isn’t quite worthy of her efforts.

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In 'The Tourist,' A Clumsy Game Of Cat And Mouse

Ella Taylor

Average Joe Meets Femme Fatale: Angelina Jolie, left, plays the mysterious Elise, who gets Johnny Depp's American tourist, Frank, into hot water when she leads her enemies to believe he is someone else. Peter Mountain/Sony Pictures hide caption

The Tourist

• Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
• Genre: Drama/Thriller
• Running Time: 103 minutes

Rated PG-13.

With: Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie, Paul Bettany, Timothy Dalton, Rufus Sewell

Watch Clips

'Burn This Letter'

Credit: Sony Pictures

'I'm Elise'

'Who Are You People?'

Throw a ton of money, two marquee names, a glam Venice location and a prime holiday release at a filmmaker whose Hollywood reach exceeds his grasp, and what do you get? In all likelihood, better box office than The Tourist deserves, followed by a brisk DVD run and early oblivion.

In 2006, German director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck struck gold with The Lives of Others, a capably made, superbly acted bit of nonsense about a ruthless Stasi agent who converts to humanism after a revelatory afternoon spent listening to Mozart. The movie did well with audiences and won, among scores of other awards, an Oscar for Best Foreign Film, which in turn brought von Donnersmarck his first studio assignment. The result is The Tourist , an awkward jumble of half-assed thriller and lumbering romantic comedy, less competent by a wide margin than The Lives of Others. It's also a whole lot sillier, though not in a good way: von Donnersmarck, to put it charitably, has only the dimmest grasp of the fluid, breezy rhythms of a Hollywood action picture, and he seems ill at ease with the glitz required to carry off a studio love story.

Angelina Jolie's glamour doesn't need a lot of accessorizing, but just to be sure, Von Donnersmarck decks her out in Brigitte Bardot hair and Sophia Loren raccoon-eyes to play Elise, a mystery Brit with a passable command of French and Italian phrasebook greetings. She sits around fancy European cafes, smirking enigmatically, seemingly serene in the knowledge that she's under randy computer surveillance by assorted bumbling cops from European Interpol, supervised by a nervous nellie (Paul Bettany) in London.

For no apparent reason, Elise puckers up the famous Jolie lips and plants a lingering smooch on the lips of a dorky American named Frank, thus triggering what is commonly described in studio production notes as a deadly game of cat-and-mouse. Gamely played by Johnny Depp in an unhelpful knave-of-hearts bob, Frank is, so he says , a math teacher from Wisconsin who's tooling around Europe to mend a broken heart.

Perhaps that's why, when confronted by La Jolie in a champagne negligee in a ritzy Venice hotel room, Frank spends the night on the couch in his striped jammies. Then: "You're ravenous," he tells Elise when she appears dolled up for dinner, only to confess that she too pines for a lost love. "Do you mean ravishing?" she asks. "I do," he replies, mouth agape. " You're ravenous," she says, and whisks him off to a candle-lit dinner.

Mistaken Identity? Paul Bettany, left, plays Agent Acheson, who interrogates Frank (Johnny Depp) about what's up. Peter Mountain/Sony Pictures hide caption

Mistaken Identity? Paul Bettany, left, plays Agent Acheson, who interrogates Frank (Johnny Depp) about what's up.

With banter like this -- the script is credited to the very odd combo of von Donnersmarck, Christopher McQuarrie, who wrote The Usual Suspects , and Julian Fellowes, who writes tony British costume dramas like Gosford Park -- the smart money perforce has to be on the plot. Enter the villain (Steven Berkoff), whom we know is up to no good by the fact that he is Steven Berkoff, by the murderous glint in his glassy blue eyes, by a sharp acceleration in the strings sawing away on the soundtrack, and by the whispered news that he "owns most of the casinos and brothels between here and Nervous Bisque." (Novosibirsk, I'm guessing.)

There follows a lot of inept scampering across scenic rooftops and toppling into the churning waters of the Venice canals as Frank and Elise fall in love, hotly pursued by posses of burly chaps talking into their wrists. Mostly, though, there's a lot of scenic boating with Elise in regal silhouette at the helm, and a swank ball or two with Elise in slinky silks and laces and stuff. In due course, it is revealed that no one is who or what they say they are, and we are invited to have a good-humored chuckle about that.

And really, there's not much more to say about a movie whose funniest line goes to a hotel desk clerk -- except to suggest that before Mr. von Donnersmarck tries to make another thriller-slash-caper-slash-romantic-comedy, he may want to hunker down and watch either version of Ocean's Eleven.

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Angelina Jolie Wears Real-Life Jewelry Belonging to Opera Legend Maria Callas in Biopic “Maria” — And on the Red Carpet

Jolie walked the Venice International Film Festival red carpet in a designer brooch that actually belonged to Callas

Alessandro Levati/Getty

Angelina Jolie  has a fashionable way of channeling  Maria Callas on the red carpet — the iconic opera singer she portrays in  Pablo Larraín 's new biopic,  Maria .

On Thursday, Aug. 29, the actress, 49, stepped out on the red carpet at the Venice International Film Festival wearing a Tamara Ralph chiffon gown and faux fur stole, according to Vogue — and a designer brooch that actually belonged to Callas, who died in 1977.

Per the magazine, many of the storied opera singer's brooches now live in the Cartier Collection, and Maria costume designer Massimo Cantini Parrini worked with Cartier to obtain some of Callas' finest jewelry. According to Jolie, she wore the real designer pieces as a nod to Callas not just on the red carpet, but also on screen in the biopic.

Related: Maria Reviews: What Critics Are Saying About Angelina Jolie's Transformation and Singing as the Opera Diva

Andreas Rentz/Getty

Her red carpet brooch was a 1972 Rose Ouvrante in the shape of a flower, that features diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, and rubies. The jewelry — which Jolie wears in the movie — also has a special mechanism that makes the flower petals open and close.

"I was also charmed at how it transformed from a closed flower that then blooms," Jolie told Vogue . "I like to think it made her smile. The little secret in the piece."

Earlier on Thursday, Jolie paired one of her own Atelier Jolie black dresses with a 1971 Panthère brooch, featuring the classic gold Cartier panthers with emeralds for eyes alongside a white chalcedony gemstone, the magazine reported. This brooch was also featured in Maria, Jolie added.

"You can imagine how special it was to wear a piece of jewelry that was hers," she said.

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Jolie has previously been candid about how she felt connected to Callas — whose life is known as somewhat tragic — and fully submerged herself in the world of opera to understand her character. Earlier on Thursday, she spoke at a press conference alongside other cast and crew about how she related to Callas' story.

JB Lacroix/FilmMagic

Related: Angelina Jolie Says She Shares 'Vulnerability' with Maria Callas at Venice: 'There's a Lot I Won't Say'

"Well, there's a lot I won't say in this room, that you probably know or assume," Jolie told the crowd with a laugh.

"I think the way I related to her may be a surprise — [it was] probably the part of her that's extremely soft and doesn’t have room in the world to be as soft as she truly was, and as emotionally open as she truly was," the Oscar winner said.

Pablo Larraín

She added of Callas, "I share her vulnerability more than anything."

Based on true accounts about Callas,  Maria  will tell the "tumultuous, beautiful and tragic story of the life of the world's greatest opera singer, relived and reimagined during her final days in 1970s Paris," according to a press release.

Details about Callas' life have previously been explored in Lyndsy Spence's biography about the star  Cast a Diva: The Hidden Life of Maria Callas , which was excerpted in an April 2021 article from  The Guardian .

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‘I Like to Think It Made Her Smile’: Angelina Jolie on the Deeper Meaning Behind Her Dazzling Cartier Jewelry in Maria

It’s the night before the premiere of Maria —the Pablo Larraín–directed Maria Callas biopic that is already the most talked-about film at this year’s Venice Film Festival —and its star, Angelina Jolie, is feeling reflective. “I met Pablo many years ago and told him how much I respected him as a filmmaker and hoped to work with him one day,” Jolie tells Vogue of how she decided to take on this once-in-a-lifetime role. “To be asked to play Maria was an honor and the most challenging role I have ever taken on—above all, because I do feel so strongly about her as an artist and a woman that I worried about not doing her justice.”

On that, Jolie need not worry. With Maria, she delivers arguably the greatest performance in her already remarkable career, fully embodying the legendary Greek opera singer in her 1970s twilight years in Paris: her striking kohl-rimmed eyes, her fraying voice, and her tempestuous moods. To achieve it, Jolie dedicated herself to an intensive training process so that she wasn’t just delivering a portrait of Callas but instead became her, somehow. “Pablo expected me to work very hard, and he expected me to sing,” she says. “I went into classes for six or seven months to learn to really sing, to take Italian classes, to understand and study opera, to immerse [myself in it] completely and do the work. For Maria, there was no other way.” However grueling that journey may have been, it was a process that left Jolie feeling creatively fulfilled. “I am deeply grateful to Pablo for having faith in me to do this,” she adds.

Yet there was another equally important element of Callas’s life that Jolie was fully committed to realizing on screen: her style. For Callas, fashion wasn’t just the clothes she dressed in every day but an armor that allowed her to step out into an at times hostile world. As a result, Callas became a couture client to some of the greatest designers of her day, including the Italian couturier Biki, Christian Dior, and Yves Saint Laurent. (The opera star is still inspiring designers: Just look to Erdem’s fall 2024 collection , which featured gestural swoops of paint across floral gowns mimicking the designs of Salvatore Fiume’s sets in her 1953 La Scala production of Medea, accompanied by the only surviving recording of Callas speaking in Greek.)

While Jolie worked closely with Maria ’s costume designer Massimo Cantini Parrini on the outfits that would inform her performance, the extra sparkle that helped her embody Callas came via Cartier. Throughout her lifetime, the singer amassed an extensive collection of gems—but few were as prized as the pieces she acquired from the legendary French fine-jewelry house. One such piece is a figurative Panthère brooch made in 1971, featuring one of Cartier’s signature gold panthers (complete with emeralds for eyes) sitting atop a carved white chalcedony gemstone.

It turns out Callas’s actual brooch is now in the Cartier Collection and was worn by Jolie both in the film and at the press conference for Maria in Venice today, affixed to her black Atelier Jolie column dress. “You can imagine how special it was to wear a piece of jewelry that was hers,” Jolie tells me of both wearing the brooch during the film’s production and stepping onto the global stage to promote Maria with a little bit of Callas on her chest.

Elsewhere in the film, Jolie also wears a Rose Ouvrante 1972 flower brooch, featuring diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, and rubies, with a special mechanism that allows the petals to be opened and closed. Tonight, Jolie wore the piece for the evening premiere of Maria with a Tamara Ralph chiffon gown and faux fur stole. “I was also charmed at how it transformed from a closed flower that then blooms,” Jolie adds. “I like to think it made her smile. The little secret in the piece.”

For Cartier, it feels like a full-circle moment too. “Like so many other important women of the time, Maria Callas chose Cartier for jewelry that reflected her personality,” says Pierre Rainero, Cartier’s image, style, and heritage director, before going on to quote the iconic Mexican actor María Félix: “Cartier has always been known as the jeweler of the aristocracy of blood, but also of talent.”

Ahead of debuting her Tamara Ralph look on the red carpet at the Palazzo del Cinema tonight, Jolie noted we should expect the unexpected when it comes to her Venice wardrobe. “I chose not to copy [Maria’s] looks because they are hers, and her Venice carpets were stunning, so I gave a little nod to her—in a different way,” she says, before adding: “But I made sure to wear something ladylike in her honor.” (Earlier today, Jolie also wore a Saint Laurent dress with Grecian-style sleeves that served as a subtle homage to Callas.)

Still, having worked on this project for nearly two years, how does it feel now it’s finally out in the world? And ultimately, what does Jolie hope the audience will take from this movie? “I just hope this film helps Maria to be more understood and respected.” If Jolie’s performance is anything to go by, it will do all that and more.

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• Pablo Larraín’s <i>Maria</i> Strives, and Fails, to Capture the Magic of La Diva Callas

Pablo Larraín’s Maria Strives, and Fails, to Capture the Magic of La Diva Callas

Y ou don’t have to love opera to love Maria Callas . She was bold but vulnerable, her life roiled by drama. Her voice reflected all the colors of paradise, as it was before Adam and Eve were kicked out. And her beauty was halfway between mythical and mischievous, as if she’d been drawn by the gods’ caricaturist-in-chief: her mismatched features—the take-charge nose, the almondine eyes—met in a kind of haphazard classical perfection.

If you have room in your life for only one opera singer, Callas is the one—she’s enough. No wonder Pablo Larraín wanted to add her to his gallery of great troubled ladies, which already includes Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (2016’s Jackie ) and Princess Diana (2021’s Spencer ). In Maria —playing in competition here at the 81st Venice Film Festival— Angelina Jolie plays La Diva Callas in the final days of her life, in 1977 Paris. Like a gothic ghost, she glides through her gilt-and-brocade apartment in fairytale dressing gowns, eating nothing but popping the sedative known as Mandrax in plentiful quantities. She has stopped performing and all but stopped singing, though she’s considering a comeback: she stands at the entrance to her kitchen and commands her loyal housekeeper Bruna (the reliably terrific Alba Rohrwacher) to listen and respond as she works her way through an aria: Bruna dutifully, and not unkindly, tells her boss what she wants to hear, even though the sound coming out of that mouth is shaky and pale, a shadow approximation of its former self. On a whim, Maria also orders her other loyal servant, Ferruccio (played by the wonderful Italian actor Pierfrancesco Favino), to move her piano from one end of the apartment to the other; in the next breath she’ll inquire about his messed-up spine. It's all in a day's work for Bruna and Ferruccio. Maria is their very own lovable, troubled tyrant.

Meanwhile, too many times to count, Jolie’s Maria gazes into the middle distance, mourning the person, the presence, the artist she used to be, reflecting aloud on her one true love, the “ugly and dead”—as she puts it— Aristotle Onassis . (When he appears in the movie's flashback scenes, a wily gnome in evening dress, he’s played by Turkish actor Haluk Bilginer.) Every gesture Jolie makes is tragic and quivering; when she smiles, it’s the wan, magnanimous kind, as if she really couldn’t be bothered. This is a performance from the “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful” school, a great artist’s final days rendered with a self-conscious sheen that has nothing to do with the inherent grandness, or sadness, of Callas’s life.

It's not Jolie’s fault: Maria is a movie made with great respect, almost adulation, but very little that qualifies as real feeling. That’s not to say Larraín doesn’t feel for his subjects; oh, how he loves his suffering ladies! It’s just that he can’t translate those feelings into anything but tasteful, mannered kitsch. In Jackie , Natalie Portman worked valiantly to capture both her subject’s frostiness and her guarded sorrow, despite all the clever-arty filmmaking around her. And in Spencer, Kristen Stewart, one of the most original young actors we’ve got, played Princess Diana as a deeply tragic figure, which is never the same as playing a person. The movie’s most famous scene involves its lonely heroine's symbolic gobbling of a pearl necklace. The point, if the hammer hasn’t hit your head hard enough, is that poor Diana was just so hungry, for food, for love, for everything. Larraín has his loyal fans, and lovers of Jackie and Spencer may adore Maria. But to me, Larraín's allegedly sympathetic psychoportraits are the movie equivalent of Madame Alexander dolls lined up on a dresser: extremely pretty, but not made for touching.

I do acknowledge that that’s the point. These are intentionally stylized exercises, designed to come off as inventive and extreme. But their fussiness is exhausting. The plot of Maria is built around an extended visit from a TV interviewer—is he real or imagined? Does it matter?—who goes by the not-unsymbolic name of Mandrax. (He’s played by Kodi Smit-McPhee.) Dear Ferruccio, who’s trying desperately to get Maria off the pills, has told her that Mandrax—both the man and the drug—is not her friend, but to no avail. She entrusts Mandrax with her deepest secrets, including one involving her craggy, disloyal lover Onassis, who left her abruptly for that other Larraín doll-subject, Jacqueline Kennedy. Callas read about their marriage in the papers, and as Jolie’s Maria lets that truth drop, something cracks inside her—it’s the only truly moving sequence in the movie. Mostly, though, Maria is preoccupied with telling, not showing. “I am quite rebellious by nature!” Maria informs the awestruck Mandrax, as she surveys him coolly through her Nefertiti eyes. It's just one of the movie's many lines of dialogue drawn from the You Don't Say? catalog. (The screenplay is by Steven Knight, who also wrote Spencer. )

There’s much to admire in Maria, if admiration is what floats your boat. Jolie trained, with great dedication, so she could do her own singing; at times, her voice and that of Callas are melded, in various proportions, into a single track. It all sounds OK—though you might feel an instinctive shiver when the mix is heavier on Callas. The film is gorgeous to look at, thanks to ace cinematographer Ed Lachman , as well as production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas and costume designer Massimo Cantini Parrini. Jolie gets to wear some smashing ’70s-luxe togs, including several lithe tunic-and-pants ensembles and a combo dressing gown/evening coat in regal, fur-trimmed brocade. Callas had killer clothes and wore them beautifully— Maria gets that right.

Larraín doesn’t shy away from the darker corners of Callas’s life. Her mother apparently put her and her sister to work “entertaining” German and Italian soldiers during the Axis occupation of Greece; Larraín dramatizes one such episode deftly and discreetly. Yet even so, Maria captures nothing of the spirit of Callas. Jolie plays her subject as haughtily cool and deeply insecure, but captures none of her imperious charisma. Callas could be demanding, but it was all part of her sterling self-discipline: she believed in her talent above all else. And there was a great aura of joy around her, which made her vulnerability that much more piercing. Larraín does his movie no favors by using footage of the real Maria Callas in the closing credits sequence: To see her laughing just as she sang, with her whole being, or even just to catch her lost in troubled thought, is to get a jolt of all the vitality Jolie and Larraín have failed to capture. Callas, only 53 when she died , was bigger than life. Maria may burnish her legend. But it also snuffs out her spark.

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Is There More to ‘Maria’ Than Being a Best Actress Frontrunner?

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If the reaction to the film out of its world premiere at Venice is any indication, Jolie has nothing to worry about. The film, which imaginatively recounts the Callas’s final days got one of those infamously long applauses on the Lido that rockets its recipients to Oscar frontrunner status.

To dive deeper into the film’s awards ambitions, though, we must first talk about this year in film. Unlike last year, when the majority of the Best Picture nominees premiered in the first half of the year, 2024 has been pretty dire from an Oscars standpoint. The Academy guarantees 10 nomination slots for Best Picture, but the only film this year to have both the critical and commercial success to feel like a shoo-in for Academy Award recognition is “Dune Part Two” (and that may still be dampened by the fact it is a sequel).

Prognosticators and voters alike are looking to fall film festival premieres to finally provide a more competitive landscape, so there is already an inclination to want to like “Maria.” It also helps that Larraín’s previous two films, with which “Maria” is in conversation, “Jackie” and “Spencer,” got a Best Actress nomination at the very least.

Also at the Venice press conference for the film, when asked what her similarities to Callas are, she said, “There’s a lot I won’t say in this room that you probably know and assume,” slightly nodding to the contentious divorce from Brad Pitt that has played out in the public for nearly a decade. Though her official answer was they both have a softness and vulnerability the public never quite gets a chance to see.

“Maria” is so much of a star vehicle for Jolie that co-stars like Pierfrancesco Favino, Alba Rohrwacher, and Kodi Smit-McPhee never quite get their own moment in the film to elevate them to a Supporting Actor or Actress nomination. This is a film whose Oscar chances are much, much higher in the below the line categories.

Though Larraín is working this time with costume designer Massimo Cantini Parini, rather than his “Jackie” collaborator Madeline Fontaine (who received an Oscar nomination for the 2016 film), his work in “Maria” is still right up Academy voters’ alleys with its gilded opera costumes and period outfits fit for Paris in the 1970s. Same goes for the film’s production design by Guy Hendrix Dyas, though the movie may be too confined to Callas’ admittedly palatial apartment to put it at the top of voters lists in that category.

In terms of categories where “Maria” has less of a shot, it does not have an original score, taking it out of one category “Jackie” got nominated for. Though sound is clearly a major factor in a portrait of one of the most influential singers of all time, the Best Sound category tends to gravitate toward more masculine titles like recent winners “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Dune,’ and “Ford v Ferrari.” It is also far from the type of film that becomes a Best Visual Effects nominee.

Netflix has acquired the U.S. rights to “Maria” after acquiring “Emilia Perez” at Cannes and producing the latest August Wilson adaptation “The Piano Lesson,” so their awards slate is starting to get packed. “Maria” has a long fall festival run coming, having been added to the lineups for Telluride, TIFF, and the New York Film Festival. Right now, it is being positioned as a Best Actress vehicle rather than a Best Picture contender, but a lot can change in the next few weeks, and Netflix, of all places, knows how to pivot its attention to another one of its films should the awards buzz start building for it.

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Pablo Larraín debuted "Maria" at the Venice Film Festival on Thursday.

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Leonard Bernstein called her “The Bible of Opera.” Yves Saint Laurent once said she was the “Diva of Divas.” The critics gave her the nickname of “La Divina” or “The Divine One.” But in the new film by Pablo Larraín starring Angelina Jolie, Maria Callas is simply “Maria.”

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Callas had a long partnership with Madame Biki, a Milanese dressmaker who is credited for the singer’s status as a style icon. Biki numbered the clothes and accessories so Callas would know how to style them together.

Christian Dior and Yves Saint-Laurent were also fans and collaborators of Callas. Saint Laurent became a close friend of hers, as they both moved in similar high-society circles in the late ’50s. The designer was one of her guests at Callas’s first recital in Paris at the Opéra Garnier in 1958.

One of Saint Laurent’s creations for Callas was worn by Monica Bellucci, who starred as the soprano in Tom Volf’s production of “Maria Callas: Letters and Memoirs” between 2019 and 2023.

“I couldn’t believe it was just perfect,” Bellucci told WWD. “To put this dress on gave me the sensation that I was in touch with her in some way. I could feel the ’60s. I could feel her.”

Jolie nodded to Callas’ partnership with Saint Laurent, wearing a look from his fashion house during her arrival at the 2024 Venice Film Festival, where the film debuted on Thursday.

In many ways, Callas’ style was the definition of Old Hollywood glamour. The singer would often wear gloves, feathered fans, fur coats and dramatic hats, adding to her diva persona. Over the years, she has been referenced in works by Valentino, Dolce & Gabbana, Stéphane Rolland, Burberry and John Galliano, who once named Callas as his favorite singer in an interview with the Corriere Italiano.

In 2020, Riccardo Tisci, still the creative director of Burberry, created costumes inspired by Callas for Marina Abramović’s opera project, “ 7 Deaths of Maria Callas .” In 2023, the Victoria & Albert Museum featured Callas in the “Diva” exhibition.

Erdem was one of the latest fashion houses to channel Callas’ fashion essence with its fall 2024 ready-to-wear collection, notably titled “Viva la Diva.” “For his pre-fall collection he imagined the American-born Greek diva’s private and public life, and for fall he took a deeper dive,” WWD reported in February.

Callas’ diva persona is explored by Larraín in “Maria,” which he described as a “creative imagining and psychological portrait of Maria Callas.” The film focuses on a period in her life when she had lost her voice. “Maria” debuted on Thursday during the Venice Film Festival and will be released by Netflix at a future date yet to be announced.

Opera Singer Maria Callas’ Style File From the Archives: Best Fashion Moments [PHOTOS]

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‘maria’ review: angelina jolie’s maria callas suffers at a chilly distance in pablo larraín’s biopic.

This chronicle of the final week in the life of the opera legend follows ‘Jackie’ and ‘Spencer’ in the Chilean director’s trilogy about famous women caught in the emotional headlights.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

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Doubling down on icons brings a lot of weight for a role to bear. It results less in a kinship between actor and character than a twofold remove — an exercise in character study, a tad glacial and distancing, rather than a flesh-and-blood portrait.

The movie is beautifully crafted, of course, graced with sumptuous visuals from the great Ed Lachman. The cinematographer captures the City of Light in 1977 in soft autumnal shades highly evocative of the period and shifts into black-and-white or grainy color stock for Callas’ many retreats into memory. Lachman, who was Oscar-nominated for his breathtaking chiaroscuro work on Larraín’s last feature, El Conde , shot Maria using a textured mix of 35mm, 16mm and Super 8mm, along with vintage lenses.

The DP’s outstanding work enhances the refined contributions of production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas and costume designer Massimo Cantini Parrini. The latter’s stunning gowns include chic ensembles worn at public occasions and exquisite costumes for Callas’ famed stage roles, some of which the singer is seen burning as she separates herself from the past.

“I’m in the mood for adulation,” Callas tells a Paris waiter when he suggests she might be more comfortable inside than at an outdoor café table. “I come to restaurants to be adored.”

The balance doesn’t seem quite right when you feel more for the loyal household staff who love and protect her than you do for the woman lying dead on the carpet by the grand piano. That image opens the movie, preceded only by a slow pan around Callas’ stately apartment.

Knight employs the pedestrian framing device of an interview, with a TV arts reporter and cameraman coming to Maria’s home. The journalist’s name, Mandrax ( Kodi Smit-McPhee in a thankless role), is a tipoff that he’s a product of Maria’s mind given that it’s also the name of the medication on which she’s most dependent — more commonly sold as Quaaludes in the U.S.

In what seems a ritual maintained for some time, Maria’s hyper-vigilant butler, Ferruccio ( Pierfrancesco Favino ), removes the pills from her dressing table and later from the handbags and coat pockets where she has stashed handfuls of them around the room. She has also stopped eating for days at a time, feeding meals prepared by her housekeeper Bruna ( Alba Rohrwacher ) to her poodles.

She becomes peevish about the dire warnings of her doctor (Vincent Macaigne) that her heart and liver are completely shot and that the stress of attempting to perform plus the meds she would need to get through it risk killing her.

Maria’s memories are additionally crowded with her triumphs in the world’s most prestigious opera houses — Covent Garden, The Met, La Scala — flooding the movie with glorious music. The naked emotionality and piercing tragedy of the immortal operatic heroines is a poignant fit for Callas’ end-of-life story and a useful counterpoint to her studied poise and aloofness in this interpretation. The power of work by Verdi, Puccini, Bellini, Donizetti, Catalani and Cherubini goes a long way toward delivering the pathos that often seems muted by Larraín’s approach.

Passages from some of the most celebrated classical operas effectively supplant the role of a score. The soul-stirring choice of musical bookends for the film starts with Desdemona’s supplicant prayer, “Ave Maria,” from Otello , and closes with “Vissi d’Arte” from Tosca , in which a woman who lived for art and love feels abandoned by God. Opera enthusiasts will find much here to savor when the movie drops on Netflix at a date to be determined .

A number of striking moments use music to show memory and fantasy bleeding into Callas’ diminishing hold on reality. For instance, Maria strolling through the city with the Eiffel Tower in the background, in her mind marshaling a crowd of everyday Parisians singing the “Anvil Chorus” from Il Trovatore ; or a full orchestra on the steps of one of the French capital’s grand historic buildings, playing in the rain while a throng of costumed geishas perform the “Humming Chorus” from Madama Butterfly . That ineffably moving passage of music, representing Butterfly’s calm vigil as she waits for Pinkerton’s return, adds emotional heft to the tragedy looming in Maria’s life.

Conflict surfaces when a music reporter for Le Figaro pulls a dirty trick and then confronts Maria outside the rehearsal auditorium with the view that her voice is irreparably ragged. But Knight’s script doesn’t capitalize on this as a moment of self-reckoning, instead limiting the scene to a distressing invasion of privacy.

The movie aims to depict a celebrated woman, whose life has been as much about sacrifice as reward, seeking to take control, to look back and see the truth as death approaches. But its moments of illumination are hazy. There’s little that comes close to the compassion and insight Larraín brought to his portraits of Jackie Kennedy and Princess Diana, even though it’s very much of a piece with those movies.

In fact, the most heartbreaking moment for me came at the end, when the film returns to the day of Callas’ death from a heart attack, aged just 53. A high-pitched shriek that at first sounds like some strangled note from an aria is revealed to have come from one of her poodles, the dog’s cry of anguish becoming a loud expression of the hushed sorrow shown by Ferruccio and Bruna (Favino and Rohrwacher are both wonderful) as they reach for each other’s hand for comfort.

Still, Maria is a far more daring and unconventional take on the final chapter of the legendary soprano’s life than Franco Zeffirelli’s boilerplate 2002 biopic, Callas Forever , starring Fanny Ardant. And Larraín’s film becomes retroactively more affecting when the lovely archival images of Callas over the end credits, full of vitality at the peak of her career, widen the perspective on her sad, accelerated decline.

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Angelina Jolie Goes Full Glam in Draped Gown for Maria Red Carpet Premiere at Venice Film Festival

Jolie plays opera singer Maria Callas in the new movie

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Angelina Jolie never misses.

The actress, 49, hit the red carpet at the 2024 Venice Film Festival for the Aug. 29 premiere of her newest film Maria , where she stars as the title character. In the biopic, she plays opera singer Maria Callas.

Jolie wore a custom strapless beige Tamara Ralph gown with a fur stole covering the sleeves (which added a touch of wintery glamour), romantic drapery down the silhouette and a pleated skirt hem.

Her blonde hair was styled in an effortless side-part look while her glam was equally simplistic — save for the bold red lip that matched her nails and overall elevated the monochromatic earth-tone ensemble.

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Jolie touched down in Venice on Aug. 27. She was seen waving as she arrived, wearing a khaki-colored belted trench coat over navy bottoms, dark sunglasses and black boots, with her hair down in a straight style over her shoulders.

She continued her rounds on Aug. 29, making appearances on the grounds in a black dress with a low back revealing her tattoos and a flowy brown chiffon dress that made her look like the goddess of Venice.

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Directed by  Pablo Larraín ,  Maria  is part of the  in-competition lineup  at Venice. The film also stars  Kodi Smit-McPhee , Pierfrancesco Favino, Alba Rohrwacher and Haluk Bilginer.

In 2022, ahead of filming, Jolie said of taking on the role : "I take very seriously the responsibility to Maria's life and legacy. I will give all I can to meet the challenge. Pablo Larraín is a director I have long admired. To be allowed the chance to tell more of Maria's story with him, and with a script by Steven Knight, is a dream."

Larraín added, "Having the chance to combine my two most deep and personal passions, cinema and opera, has been a long-awaited dream. To do this with Angelina, a supremely brave and curious artist, is a fascinating opportunity. A true gift."

The movie tells the "tumultuous, beautiful and tragic story of the life of the world's greatest opera singer, relived and reimagined during her final days in 1970s Paris," according to a press release.

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Angelina Jolie pays homage to Maria Callas with opera singer’s actual Cartier jewelry at Venice Film Festival

Angelina Jolie is singing the praises of this opera icon.

The “Maleficent” star, 49, hit the 2024 Venice Film Festival in a sleek black dress ahead of the premiere of her new movie, “Maria,” Thursday, and she honored the memory of legendary opera singer Maria Callas — whom she plays in the biopic — by wearing one of the late star’s Cartier brooches.

Jolie told Vogue that while she’s not into full-on method dressing, she wanted to pay tribute to Callas with her wardrobe at the festival, stepping out in an Atelier Jolie gown with a gold Cartier Panthère brooch “sitting atop a carved white chalcedony gemstone.”

“I chose not to copy [Maria’s] looks because they are hers, and her Venice carpets were stunning, so I gave a little nod to her—in a different way,” she told Vogue, adding, “You can imagine how special it was to wear a piece of jewelry that was hers.”

Jolie also wears the 1971 Cartier brooch in the film, along with several other vintage pieces belonging to the soprano.

Even if she didn’t go the way of Margot Robbie or Zendaya in Venice, the “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” star said she “made sure to wear something ladylike” to “honor” Callas.

And when it came time for the premiere Thursday night, she stunned in a champagne-hued gown with a matching fur stole, pinning what appears to be one of the Cartier brooches she described in her Vogue interview pinned to the wrap.

Jolie described the piece — a “Rose ouvrante 1972 flower brooch featuring diamonds, emeralds, sapphires and rubies” with moving petals — in her interview, telling the mag she was “charmed at how it transformed from a closed flower that then blooms.”

“I like to think it made her smile. The little secret in the piece,” she added.

The humanitarian also paid tribute to the opera star by wearing a brown Saint Laurent design earlier in the day, sporting a Grecian-style Saint Laurent gown that nodded to Callas’ on-stage costumes with its draped style.

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Forget Fall, Angelina Jolie’s Faux-Fur Shrug Gown Says It’s Winter

Winter is coming.

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With Labor Day just around the corner, white shoes everywhere are being tucked away to make room for fall accessories, but Angelina Jolie just skipped autumn altogether and jumped right to winter with her most recent red carpet look.

On Thursday, the actress attended a screening for her upcoming movie, Maria , at the 2024 Venice Film Festival in a dress that proved she is ready for cooler temperatures. Jolie traded in her quiet luxury linens for mob wife in a Champagne-colored Tamara Ralph gown with draped fabric all down the skirt and a Watteau train, complete with an off-the-shoulder tan faux-fur shrug.

Stephane Cardinale - Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images

Jolie accessorized with stud earrings, a chunky chain bracelet, and gold ring. Her blonde highlighted hair was worn straight and styled in a deep side part, and she finished off her glam with smudged liner and a vibrant red lip.

Alessandra Benedetti - Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images

Jolie will portray the iconic opera singer Maria Callas in the Pablo Larraín-directed movie. Jolie opened up about playing the vocalist during her final days, saying that learning opera was “the therapy I didn’t realize I needed.”

“I had no idea how much I was holding in and not letting out,” Jolie said in a statement to the press, per The Hollywood Reporter . "I got very lucky, because the best way in was that I got to be taught by Maria. When she approached her work, she said the first thing you do—she called it straight jacketing —you don’t think about how you feel or what you want. You just try to understand the music and the intention of the composer. And you are disciplined, and you do the work exactly as intended, and you practice and practice. So, I did that. Then, she said, and the final thing is you let your personal and your emotions come in, only then and only when you’re ready. And then, I was so fortunate to be with Pablo, where he protected me. So, when I was able, I would let that emotion in, and I could try to do something I’d never done before.”

While there is no release date yet for the movie, Maria was picked up by streaming giant Netflix ahead of the festival.

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The queen of the silver screen Angelina Jolie has finally descended upon the 81st Venice International Film Festival and fashion fans can’t get enough of her statement 'Quiet Luxury' looks. 

Spotted on Thursday en route from her hotel to attend the photocall for her new biographical psychological drama film Maria , the acclaimed actress solidified her style status once again, donning a seriously dreamy sheer chocolate brown gown.

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In true Italian Riviera fashion, Angelina arrived via canal boat to her destination, waving to the cameras like the Hollywood VIP that she is. For the occasion, Angelina opted for a simple, yet elegant Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello dress, complete with intricate architectural ruching detailing around her waist, draped sleeves, an open back, a semi-plunge neckline and a full-length maxi skirt.

The 49-year-old mother, humanitarian and filmmaker let her voluminous 'bronde' locks roam free in a swooping side part, while a simple black eyeliner look and rose-toned lipstick choice emphasised her striking blue eyes.

Time and time again, Angelina has proved that tonal brown shades are her colour of choice. Earlier this year, she was spotted in a striking deep ochre-toned cape look to attend the opening night of The Outsider in New York City. 

Prior to her cape moment, she attended the premiere of her starring film Eternals in a decadent strapless gown from Balmain’s Resort 2022 collection. 

Angelina’s gilded gown comes just days after she was spotted oozing quiet luxury elegance in an uber-chic Dior trench coat , which she paired with an understated white tank top, a silky black slip skirt and a set of statement-heeled leather boots. 

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Angelina is set to stun on the red carpet later this week to celebrate her new film, which means fashion fans around the globe are in for yet another wardrobe inspo look, likely consisting of a glamorous gown in her favourite shade. We can hardly contain our excitement…

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