The Moderns Reviews

With THE MODERNS, visionary Alan Rudolph completed his long-standing project about the spirit of Paris in the 1920s. Nick Hart (Carradine) is an American who earns a living as an illustrator, though his heart lies in painting. Into Hart's favorite cafe walks Stone (Lone), a proud American businessman who has amassed a fortune in the prophylactic business and who now wants to buy the best collection of modern art in Paris. With Stone is his wife, Rachel (Fiorentino) who, unknown to Stone, had a few years earlier married (and never divorced) Hart. It's not long before Hart and Stone are embroiled in a brutal struggle for art and romance. Displaying a vision of the world uniquely his own, Rudolph has succeeded in making a very modern period film that can be viewed as a documentary--not of an actual time or place, but of a feeling. Better than any piece of newsreel footage or recorded documents, THE MODERNS re-creates the spirit of Paris in the 1920s, a spirit that is the most important aspect of that era and the essence of all art of that period.