Evita takes genre to the limits

So how did Parker turn one of the musical theatre's great productions seen worldwide into a film? The first thing he did was to abandon thoughts of copying anything from the celebrated production by Hal Prince. Instead he went back to the original concept album created before the show was staged. ``The decisions Hal made bore little relevance to a cinematic interpretation,'' he says.

``I read everything that was possible to read about Evita and Peron, but it was always that album I came back to. I played it and played it while I was writing the script. I had always thought the album cinematic and when it first appeared I asked whether they wanted to make a film of it, but they wanted to do a stage show. It is a long time since I saw the show and I cannot remember what Prince did. I had to start again, to find the cinematic way of dealing with it. I did not want to cheat. I wanted everyone doing the acting to sing.''

Parker is the man who got to make the film, but there has been a list of directors and possible stars as long as one's arm who were going to do it. They included Elaine Paige, who created the role, Patti LuPone, Raquel Welch, Anne-Margret, Meryl Streep, Bette Midler, Barbra Streisand, Liza Minelli, and even Pia Zadora, the most likely candidate being the last in line, Michelle Pfeiffer. As for would be directors, the included Ken Russell, Hector Babenco, Franco Zeffirelli, Michael Cimino, Richard Attenborough, and Oliver Stone, who got closest.

Parker was never mentioned. Yet he got the job, one for which he is supremely qualified unlike pretty well every other candidate. The film musical is virtually a lost art and he is one of the few directors around with experience of making musicals with Bugsy Malone, Fame, and The Commitments to his credit.

He says he was first approach-ed by Robert Stigwood in 1979, but having just done Fame did not want to make another musical, and if he had made it then he would not have made as good a film as he believes he has done.

He has restructured the original, notably the last act from which several minutes of recititative, totally unacceptable in a movie, he says, have been cut and a new song inserted for Evita's death scene. It could well be the film's hit single since Lloyd Webber has come up with a romantic ballad, You Must Love Me, for which Rice wrote the words.

``I wanted the scene to be ironic and he has written a very sweet love song which articulates something completely

different in the film that inspired her?''

He has also eliminated the character of Che Guevara who acted in the stage show as narrator, always a rather strange concept since he and the Perons had no links. In Parker's view it was very much a 70s theatrical device, a red herring device by Price. Instead, the character played by Antonio Banderas is known simply as Che, a common name in Argentina, has been turned into a Brechtian Everyman, the conscience of Argentina, the alternative voice.

He is there commenting on the scenes as Eva rises from bit part actress to world figure and saint to the poor. ``My feeling was Che Guevara's actual story should not be cosmetically or dishonestly grafted onto ours and probably deserved a film of its own, and it wasn't to be this one,'' Parker says.

``Eva Duarte was a confusing, perplexing woman. She was a mixture of saint and whore, and it is this that makes her life such an extraordinarily interesting subject. This woman who came from nothing met the most famous man in her country, became his wife, and then became one of the most famous, if not the most famous, women in the world. When she returned from her Rainbow Tour of Europe she threw herself into good works, and then suddenly, at the height of her celebrity and political power, she was struck down by cancer. It is almost the synopsis of a Hollywood movie!''

Parker's own attitude to Evita is ambivalent. He was, in any case, restricted by the approach adopted by Lloyd Webber and Rice which treats her as a heroic figure and does not raise any of the awkward questions. She is, after all, the heroine of a musical and must be sympathetic. Parker evades the question as to where he stands. ``I think I am as knowledgeable as one can be, but nobody truly knows,'' he says. ``It has to be a personal point of view. I asked almost everyone I met in Argentina about her, people who loved her, people who hated her, without receiving satisfacory explanation. The truth vanished in a cloud

of Argentine cigar smoke.''

Filming in Argentina had its hazards. The film crew received a hostile reception from Peronist extremists, but in the event they proved small in number and did not carry out their threats. Madonna also played her part, persuading Carlos Menem to allow them to film the scenes which involved the presidential palace, the Casa Rosada, in the real palace.

It is from a balcony that Evita sings the show's most famous number, Don't Cry For Me Argentina. Menem, after being closeted with the star, whose enthusiasm for Eva Peron is real, was convinced the film and actress were not going to traduce Argentina's saint and what you see in the film is the real thing.

Not all, however, is Buenos Aires. Eva's funeral, which took place in July 1952, was shot in Budapest, which makes a convincing substitute for the Buenos Aires of half a century ago. Parker says he would like to have stayed in Argentina, but the plans had been made and there were a lot of nervous people in Hollywood involved. And at least he was not doing the one thing he wanted to avoid - shooting the film on a Hollywood sound stage.

So how did Madonna end up in the role? Pfeiffer was to have played the part, but she had two small children and had no wish to leave Hollywood.

Then Madonna wrote to Parker saying nobody could play the part as well as she could and promising to put everything else on hold. She and Parker had previously been in discussion about a remake of The Blue Angel.

Madonna, her pregnancy apart, kept her promise and spent three months working with a voice coach so that she could meet the demands of the music Lloyd Webber had written. The cast then assembled in London to record the score.

Parker says it was a bit like making two films, one in a recording studio and one with a camera on a film set. Although much of the film, which is sung through and has no spoken dialogue, was filmed to the recorded playbacks there are some scenes, especially towards the end where Evita is dying, which are sung live.

How does Eva Peron come over? Her supporters called her The Lady of Hope, her detractors The Charming Child with a loaded gun. The answer is as a heroine.

The big questions waiting to be answered are whether the film will make Madonna a film star, whether the marketing of the Evita look will work, and whether the cast and director will feature in the 1997 Oscars.

Eva Duarte was a confusing, woman. She was a mixture of saint

and whore

The film crew received a hostile reception from Peronist extremists