Heiners Filmseiten – The Revolving Doors (en)

The Revolving Doors (Les portes tournantes)

German title: Türen in die Vergangenheit
Spain title: No disparen a la pianista
Russian title: Вращающиеся двери
Original title: Les portes tournantes

Alternative titles:
Drehtüren | Revolving Doors | Puertas giratorias

Family drama – Canada, France
Production year: 1987
Movie length: 101 minutes

Director: Francis Mankiewicz
Writer: Francis Mankiewicz, Jacques Savoie
Cinematograph: Thomas Vámos
Music: François Dompierre

Movie description:

A quiet painter, separated from his wife for a year, receives a suitcase in the mail from his mother, whom he hasn’t seen since infancy. He believes she abandoned him to his wealthy, paternal grandparents. The suitcase contains mementos and a diary, a long letter to him, written over the years, with details of her youth, her first job as a pianist at a cinema, the coming of talk-ies, her marriage, and how he came to live with his grandparents. As he reads through the materials and her story comes to life, his son Antoine, who’s about 10 or 12, tries to break through his father’s silence and sorrow by taking matters into his own hands.

Set in a small Quebec town in the late ’20s, this moving drama follows the life and exploits of Celeste Beaumont, a talented young pianist, who gains local celebrity at the town movie theater for her gifts as a silent film accompanist. As an added attraction, Celeste dons ornate gowns for each performance. Audiences are just as interested in her ever-changing apparel as they are in the film. Awkward Pierre Blaudell is her biggest fan and eventually convinces Celeste to be his wife. Shortly after she bears his son, Pierre joins the army. She insists on joining him at the base and his meddlesome, snooty parents insist she give them her son. After Pierre is killed in battle, Celeste flees to New York where she finds steady employment as a jazz pianist. She finds a life-long companion with a black musician and chronicles her experiences in a diary that she passes on to her son after he grows up. He becomes a painter and once his own son is grown, reads him the story of Celeste, the youth’s grandmother. Intrigued, the young man heads to the Big Apple in hopes of finding her.

Boy Actors