The movie musical is perhaps the only major genre of filmmaking that has not made a comeback. Even though it was a standard in the sixties (with such award-sweeping classics as The Sound Of Music, My Fair Lady, or West Side Story), the multiplexes have not yet invited song and dance back to their screens. Until now, perhaps.

Evita, the controversial Rock Opera on the life of Eva Peron written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, finally hits the screen after twenty years of troubled planning and production, successfully directed by Alan Parker. It narrates the story of Eva Duarte, a poor and insignificant girl from the middle of nowhere that made it to the top of everywhere, using, abusing, and seducing men and their power to climb up there, growing more glamorous with each stomp. She became a movie actress and became romantically involved with General Juan Peron, creating a powerful union that hypnotized their entire country and beyond. Eva's name was glorified to a saintly level even though her doings under the table were not as well-natured as her beloved working class thought. Despite of her incredible triumphs, Eva's main enemy, her body, defeated her in the end. She died at the age of 33 of ovarian cancer.

Certainly Madonna, Antonio Banderas, Alan Parker, and Jonathan Pryce would nicely decorate any marquee with their names alone. Parker, director of such great dramas as Midnight Express, and Birdy, also has a few musicals under his belt, most popularly Pink Floyd:The Wall, and Fame. Jonathan Pryce is most commonly known for his award-winning performance in the original cast of Miss Saigon, and has had stellar performances on film as well. Madonna performing the lead is also a key ingredient in the visibility of the film. Not just for her star power, but the controversy surrounding her performing one of the most important and challenging female roles in musical theatre, and as an outspoken and unorthodox performer portraying a woman sacred to thousands of Argentines. Also, Madonna's career as a film actress has been less than prestigious.

Although I disagree with the many critics that are already pitching her as an Oscar contender, Madonna' s OK moments compensate well with her many absolutely glorious moments. She takes great personal power from the music since it's her natural element, and surely with a little oomph from director Parker, Madonna presents the performance of her life. It's obvious that the years of voice training she underwent to prepare for the role have paid off. Even before watching the film, I was already holding a duel of skepticism whether the pop diva would perform the role with the strength, dignity, and fragility that this part requires. The girl won.

The movie soundtrack to The Mambo Kings proved to me years ago that Antonio Bandera's singing voice is almost as strong as his acting and unbearable good looks. He performs the role of Che originally written as revolutionary Che Guevara (leader of the Cuban revolution), who was presumed to have lived in Argentina during the Peron dictatorship before moving to Cuba. The movie version of Che is an everyman, a narrator who is a link between the audience and the people and events in the story. Che travels through time and place, and assumes roles pertaining whatever setting he might be caught in, sometimes interacting with the characters, sometimes simply observing. The stage version of Che had a number of lines omitted in the film, which along with his already bitter and cynical attitude, made him a very angry character who magnified the Perons' corrupt ways. Banderas' Che's blade doesn't cut as fiercely, which gives the audience a better chance to make their own mind about Eva's guilt. He portrays his Che with sensibility, controlled anger, sense of humor, and the essential patriotic cynicism required for the role. But Che's most transcendental job is to function as a reflection of Eva's conscience, especially reflected in Waltz For Eva And Che, a particularly theatrical number where in a dream sequence Eva and Che say their good-byes and bring closure to their relationship as she implicitly faces her own guilt when death stares at her in the face. Banderas' main merit is to hold a strong and consistent performance on a character that is no more than a sketch.

The greatest unsurprising surprise came in Jonathan Pryce. Having heard the movie soundtrack, I first felt disappointed in his emotionally bland vocal performance. Seeing him on film, I was instantly reminded on how pros work, as he creates the most three-dimensional and detailed character on the film. He becomes a powerful leader, an intimate companion, and an astute manipulator. If there is a performance nomination for an Oscar, Pryce is the most deserving of the leads.

Bottom Line: This is a great film. However, there is a subdued sense of discomfort to witness a full-length opera on film after more than twenty years since any other. It feels like a foreign medium. An experimental attempt, which is mostly successful since Parker chose to treat most of the film as a more intimate, non-theatrical narrative/dramatic film. But there are at least a couple of scenes which did get the musical treatment and these stick out like a sore thumb, such as the spectacular The Money Kept Rolling In, a song about Eva's famous charitable foundation, where we get to see some solemn-looking nuns with donation boxes sing the chorus of this bouncy song. On the same hand, a few other scenes suffered for the lack of musical treatment, such as the exhilarating Buenos Aires which screams for the need of a bigger dance number.

The production values are stupendous. I truly felt transported to the forties, thanks to the incredible costumes, sets, hair and make-up design, all harmonized and captured through the eye of cinematographer Darius Khondji. Like a rusted gold picture frame, Khondji chose to have a dark and gritty, but elegant atmosphere, with subtle, yet very symbolic backgrounds. He chose very neutral colors throughout the movie, like browns, whites, and blacks, which force the rare appearance of bright colors to stand out very strongly, as in the scene where Eva attends mass, while being sung to by an eerily prophetic choir of children dressed in red representing, I suppose, her ailing womb. It's hard not to label this film as an epic, since it spans almost twenty years in the life of an overly-active woman and a country in the midst of change. Also, the extraordinary amount of sequences, many stuffed with thousands and thousands of extras (all in period garb) force me to call this film, basically, big. The larger numbers, such as her funeral, her inauguration speech (singing Don't Cry For Me Argentina in the balcony of the Presidential Palace) or the mobilization of the unions in A New Argentina are so breathtaking that if you dont catch yourself gasping for air, you'd better check your pulse.

By Javier Bryan Sanchez

Don't Cry for Her, Argentina

Love her or hate her, this fall you'll be hearing a lot of Madonna's single "You Must Love Me," from the forthcoming film version of the 1979 musical Evita. The soundtrack album is scheduled for release in November -- a month before the movie opens. Andy Vajna, the film's producer, and Alan Parker, its director, no doubt expect the music to upstage the singer herself. But Madonna is sure to attract plenty of attention (mostly good) for her makeover into "Evita" -- Eva Peron, the first lady of Argentina, who died in 1952 at age 33 and became an icon in her nation. And Madonna, the pop music icon who turned 39 on Friday, may finally become a film star with Evia. Even her voice sounds stronger.

The plot portrays Evita as a calculating woman who sleeps her way the the top. The entire script is sung, giving the feeling of a two-hour music video. Keeping Madonna company is the studly Antonio Banderas as the film's narrator, Che Guevara, the Argentine-born Cuban revolutionary; Jonathan Pryce as Evita's husband, the Argentine dictator Juan Peron; and of course, the music of Andrwe Lloyd Webber and the lyrics of Tim Rice. Some viewers may be distracted by trying to see if Madonna's pregnancy shows on film. She announced in April that she was expecting her first child in October. Filming ended in late May.

By Jane Ciabattari

Madonna's version of "Evita" could be beaten to the big screen by a rival movie from an Argentinian director.

Juan Carlos Desanzo is rushing to complete a film about Eva Peron, hoping to release it by mid-October, months before the U.S. premiere of "Evita", in which Madonna co-stars with Antonio Banderas.

Desanzo told Daily Variety he hopes his $3 million "Eva Peron" will bow Oct. 17, a date of annual celebration by the followers of Evita's husband, Gen. Juan Domingo Peron.

"Evita," which cost $60 million, is due for release in New York and Los Angeles on Christmas Day.

"Eva Peron" recounts only the last three years in the life of Evita, who died of cancer at age 33 in 1952. Desanzo calls his film "a love story about the true Eva." It stars Esther Goris as Eva and Victor la Place as Gen. Peron.

By Andrew Paxman

FEATURE: 'Evita' Movie Could Help Revive Live-Action Musicals

In recent years, moviegoers have been treated to all-singing, all-dancing dinnerware, crooning candelabras, harmonizing gargoyles and a veritable menagerie of animals breaking into song, not to mention the love duets of a few doe-eyed princesses and strapping heroes sprung from a digital paintbox.

But when was the last time an honest-to-God, flesh-and-blood human being spontaneously burst into song on film? ``Grease,`` anyone?

Indeed, the musical movie, once a staple of the studios' output and still among the most loved genres of Hollywood's golden age, had died a slow, ignominious death in the past few decades, a victim of changing styles and studio economics.

While in the '40s and '50s the studios cranked out Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly vehicles with the same speed and precision they brought to any other genre, by the '60s the rise of television and the demise of the studio system made musical movies an elaborate extravagance the studios could only rarely afford -- and even more rarely remember how to pull off.

At the same time, naturalism became the order of the day, and the conventions of musicals, with characters breaking into song on cue, came to be looked upon as an anachronism that fit uneasily into the contemporary cinema aesthetic.

Despite the occasional spectacular success -- ``Funny Girl,'' ``The Sound of Music,'' ``Grease'' -- the output of musicals slowed to a trickle marked all too frequently by behemoth bombs: ``Paint Your Wagon,'' ``Star!'' ``Doctor Doolittle,'' ``Thoroughly Modern Millie,'' on into the '80s with ``A Chorus Line,'' ``Annie'' and ``Newsies.'' But film genres die hard; witness the recent revival of the Western as a bankable commodity. Led by Alan Parker's highly anticipated ``Evita,'' set for Christmas release, the movie musical may yet make it into the next century.

Robert Wise, the director of two of the last -- and by most accounts greatest -- major movie musicals, ``West Side Story'' (with Jerome Robbins) and ``The Sound of Music,'' believes the genre itself remains viable, but poses problems that moviemakers too often have failed to solve.

``The musicals that have been made in recent years haven't met the challenges of the medium,'' he says. The chief difficulty is in moving a property from the stage, where most recent musicals began, to the screen.

``On the stage, you're not quite in reality, you're once removed, and you've got the proscenium arch; people can go out of dialogue into song, and you don't feel any kind of twinge of embarrassment,'' he says. ``But the screen is a very real medium, and translating things that are so stylized onstage to the reality of the screen makes it difficult.''

``So many of the recent stage musicals have been so highly stylized it's been impossible to find a way to fit them into the reality of the screen. 'A Chorus Line' was a perfect example. I remember sitting at the show in New York thinking, 'Thank God I don't have to put this on the screen.' I wouldn't know where to begin. And they didn't lick it; it was a lousy picture.''

Parker, who has made several movies that have danced along the edges of the traditional musical (``Fame,'' ``Pink Floyd's The Wall,'' ``The Commitments''), is well aware of the genre's pitfalls. ``The basic difficulty has always been suspension of disbelief, which is always the issue whenever you get away from what has become the standard for contemporary cinema -- naturalistic, dramatic film,'' Parker says. ``The genre isn't easy to pull off.''

``Evita'' in particular poses some problems Busby Berkeley never had to face. ``It pushes the genre somewhere else,'' Parker explains, ``because it's 'sung-through,' as Andrew Lloyd Webber calls it. It's not opera as such, which has other connotations, but there's no spoken dialogue. I'm telling the story with images, and in place of the dialogue you have singing.''

Rather than fighting against the kind of realism that is the universal language of today's movies, Parker's ``Evita'' embraces it. ``Film has moved on, the audience has moved on, people's sensibilities have moved on,'' Parker explains. ``So we have to find a way to communicate with music that is different from the way they used to do it. My approach wasn't to make a musical as such, but to approach it in the same way I approach my dramatic films such as 'Mississippi Burning' and 'Midnight Express,' which is to keep it as realistic, as naturalistic as possible -- make it a very contemporary dramatic film that just happens to have music.''

Parker admits marketing will be a challenge, but believes there is a large audience for it, waiting to be wooed away from their TV sets. ``A very important factor is MTV,'' he says. ``You now have an entire generation that is used to being communicated to through music. There's an entire channel devoted to it. So it's not such an unusual idea anymore -- you've got a whole audience waiting for it.''

It cannot hurt that Parker's Eva Peron, Madonna, was a pioneer of the narrative musicvideo genre, and her hefty fan base will likely look more enthusiastically on a musical than they have on some of her previous film forays.

By Charles Isherwood

Madonna Rules. Sounds As Good As She Looks.

Not every day does it seem appropriate to review a trailer. But not every day is a trailer 10 minutes long, featuring Madonna, Antonio Banderas and Jonathan Pryce singing, and designed to promote "Evita."

Tuesday morning the Variety Club Screen Room--the downtown spot where critics see films in advance--showed what was apparently a new variation on the trailer that screened recently at Cannes to much acclaim and shock. For once the media is buzzing because Madonna is in a movie and this time it looks like it will actually be amazing--and NOT IN A BAD WAY.

This advance taste of the film version of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical based on the life of Argentine Eva ("Evita") Peron is not the trailer that will be shown to theater audiences before the film's expected holiday release. In addition to its length, the unusual press sampler follows few trailer conventions.

Tagged at the beginning as a work in progress, the trailer shows the film's culminating scene--Eva Person's massive funeral (she died in 1952 at age 32)--and then goes back to the beginning of her story, moving forward in time until her death. The only credits are for director Alan Parker and the top three stars. Rather than showing the best moments from every scene, the trailer concentrates on a few that prove what Madonna, Banderas and Pryce can do musically.

The results are impressive. It's clear that Madonna wasn't kidding when she told MTV she was studying with a top vocal coach. Her voice--which previously has been boosted by supportive songwriting and much emotion--has newfound power and certainty. Gone is the quivering vibrato, the pitch inaccuracy.

In order to embody the confidence of the famous and much loved wife of Argentine President Juan Person, Madonna has conquered many of the vocal limitations that have made her ballad singing appealingly vulnerable but flawed. She now sounds nearly as strong as she's always looked.

And she looks pretty great here. Pop fans have been prepared for the Peron look by Madonna's recent run of Latin-inspired MTV clips, and for the first time in a film, Madonna is shot as flatteringly as she is in her videos. The predominant color is gold, which of course compliments the star's trademark hair color. Despite her lowly beginnings, the real Peron was quite a glamour queen and Madonna parades the appropriate Dior outfits to the adoring Argentine masses.

Banderas--who finally has his good hair back--also sounds surprisingly musical, and Pryce's brief singing part fits the bill. The trailer steers clear of anything that would stir up more controversy in Person's country. (Locals initially flipped out when it was revealed that Madonna would be playing their beloved former leader, but many apparently have been soothed by the star's charm and respect during filming in Buenos Aires.) Spectacular crowd scenes predominate.

And the trailer ends with a Madonna-esque touch. As women keeping a vigil by Evita's window mourn her death, a familiar voice appears on the soundtrack. "You must love me," Madonna sings.

Of course we must.

By Barry Walters (Examiner Staff Critic)

Don't cry just yet for Madonna; early look at 'Evita' promising

All through her wild days, her mad existence, everybody thought Madonna should be a movie star, but no one was quite sure how to do it. After a brief splash in 1985's "Desperately Seeking Susan," the rock star/publicity machine's photo ops were more artistically satisfying than her films ("Shanghai Surprise," "Dick Tracy," "Body of Evidence," etc.)

So when it was announced that she would play Eva Peron in the long-delayed film version of the musical "Evita," eyebrows were raised (so, presumably, was the blood pressure of several movie moguls).

Stars as diverse as Meryl Streep and Michelle Pfeiffer had seen their names attached to the project (both with Oliver Stone as director). The rumor mill had Barbara Streisand and Mariah Carey interested. Madonna herself was almost signed in 1991, with Disney's Hollywood Pictures producing and Glenn Gordon Caron directing. But the budget ballooned and the production stalled.

Five years later, Madonna has resurfaced as Argentina's infamous first lady and this time, Alan Parker ("Fame," "Midnight Express," "Shoot the Moon") is directing. A first look 15 minutes was unveiled at Cannes to positive response, so Disney (yes, what goes around...) has taken its little roadshow on the road, teasing movie reviewers around the country with a taste of its big Christmas hopeful.

Movie Watch's reaction? It looks good and Madonna looks more than good. Of course, the snippet was little more than a cleverly edited extra-long music video, with no real acting scenes and lots of music and visuals. But Madonna just may carry it off. Physically, she's a spectacular look-alike and her rendition of the ubiquitous "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" sent a few chills up the spine.

Less promising was Antonio Banderas as Che Guevara (Mandy Patinkin originated the role on Broadway). He's still sexy, but in the footage presented he just didn't seem to have that dangerous, sardonic, revolutionary edge. Too bad they couldn't have cast Jonathan Pryce, who demonstrated in "Miss Saigon" he could be very dangerous and sardonic. And sing well, too.

Pryce is in the movie. But he's playing Juan Peron. You remember - the guy who was president of the country.

Movie Watch by Eleanor Ringel

Bob Cappel

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I had a chance to see the 10 minute preview of Evita that everyone has been talking about the other day, and I must say that I was completely blown away. As you know, Evita was the most talked about film of the year and at Cannes, this little preview was the hottest ticket in town. It seems to me that the main reason they are showing this is to prove to everyone once and for all that Madonna was the right choice for the role...and she is. However, I think the most amazing thing is that the real star of this movie may turn out to be Antonio Banderas as a singing Che Guevara. Yes...that's right...singing. And really well, I might add. I've seen many versions of this musical, and for the first time I really felt like someone had nailed this character. The film, by Alan Parker, looks like it will be a stunner. The preview basically quick-scanned the entire movie, pausing briefly on a few key moments. Che's prolougue, Eva's funeral, the famous 'Don't Cry for Me Argentina' scene from the balcony, and Juan (Jonathan Pryce) and Evita in Juan's cell. I'm sure it will be tough for audiences to deal with the fact that there will be no talking in this movie, just singing, but as for me I can't wait. The man in charge of the screening asked afterwards what he thought he should put on the audience reaction form. I said 'You tell them I said it rocked!' It was probably the 10 best minutes of film I've seen all year. Here's hoping the rest is too.

MADONNA PROVES SHE IS A REAL STAR AT LAST.

The biggest revelation to come from Cannes is the extraordinary fact that Madonna can act. What's more her performance in the film version of ALW musical Evita will garner her at the very least, an oscar nomination for Best Actress if not the very bauble itself.

I know this from a 10min reel from Alan Parker's film. If the rest of the picture is as breathtaking and moving as the footage I saw here yesterday, then Madonna has finally got her act together and earned star status.

After 15 years of false starts, with everyone from Elaine Paige and Liza Minnelli to Meryl Streep as Evita contenders, and behind the scenes nightmares and punch ups, the picture is nearly finished.

What I caught yesterday was an actress at the top of her craft. Scenes with Jonathan Pryce as Eva Peron's husband Juan, and Antonio Banderas as the fictional narrator Che, work wonderfully and the songs inform the narrative, rather that stop it stone dead, which is what happened with many movie musicals of old.

Essentially Madonnna has spent her career pulling the wool over our eyes, but at last she presents something with substance. And what substance, Parker's footage based on early scenes shot in Argentina and Hungary produced cries of "WOW" and even some tears from the group of hard bitten movie executives who watched the film with me.

Madonna sings the famous DCFMA as a radio broadcast; and a touching song written for the movie written by Tim Rice and ALW, called "you must love me", is an instant hit. Up till now Madonna has failed to live up to the promise she showed more than a decade ago in Desperately Seeking Susan. Since then every film she has made has been dismal.

Evita which opens in London in December, cost $56 million and the budget is all up there on the screen in crowd scenes, intimate moments and Darius Khondy's awesome cinematography.

Stewart Shimberg

BYLINE: Roger Ebert

DATELINE: CANNES, France

BODY: Don't cry for Madonna, Argentina.

She has not been miscast in the title role of the musical "Evita." In fact, she seems assured and convincing as Argentina's beloved heroine.

That was the bottom line Tuesday, after a top-secret screening at the Cannes Film Festival of 10 minutes from the musical "Evita." The hottest ticket here was the private preview of selected scenes from the movie, spliced together to whet the appetites of film buyers and distributors from around the world. "Evita" is set to arrive in theaters in late fall. Director Alan Parker ("Fame") edited the reel in Buenos Aires, where he is wrapping up a 13-week shooting schedule with Madonna, Jonathan Pryce and Antonio Banderas. The screening, held in a small theater in an obscure corner on the fourth floor of the Festival Palais, was delayed when projectionists had trouble getting the sound right. Outside the room, distributors speculated about the much-delayed project, which has been in development for a decade, has been attached to such directors as Oliver Stone, and has a lead role coveted by almost every actress under 50 who could sing even a little.

After the sound was deemed acceptable, producer Andy Vajna introduced the sampler of scenes showing Madonna, Banderas and Pryce singing. There was also a taste of the film's large scale, in scenes of political rallies and Evita's funeral procession, employing thousands of extras.

Madonna, her hair pulled back in Evita's trademark style, was seen campaigning for her husband, dictator Juan Peron (Pryce); driving in a motorcade through the city; visiting Peron in prison at their lowest moment, and returning to her home during her final illness. During Evita's funeral procession, Banderas is seen singing a lonely song in a bar and then walking outside and through the crowd, which does not seem to notice him.

When the lights went up, Michael Williams-Jones, president of UIP, England's largest distributor, told me it was "the most impressive preview reel I've ever seen." That was not a foregone conclusion. The casting of Madonna in the title role was greeted with raised eyebrows by some Hollywood executives who were mindful of her lack of success at the movie box office, and by many in Argentina, where Eva Peron's near-sainthood status seemed to clash with Madonna's more carnal associations. If the preview is representative of the finished film, Argentina can wipe away its tears.