The Immigrant (2013 film)

In 1921, Polish Catholic sisters Ewa (Marion Cotillard) and Magda (Angela Sarafyan) arrive at Ellis Island, New York City as immigrants looking for a better life after escaping their ravaged home in post–Great War Poland. Magda is quarantined because of her lung disease. Ewa is almost deported, but Bruno (Joaquin Phoenix), who is Jewish and claims to be from the Travelers' Aid Society, notices her and her fluency in English, bribes an officer to let her go, and takes her to his house. Knowing Ewa has to make money to get Magda released, Bruno induces her to dance at the Bandits' Roost theater and prostitutes her. He also makes romantic advances, but Ewa resists.

Ewa looks for her expatriate relatives living in New York, but her uncle by marriage turns her in to the authorities; he says he had heard she had got in trouble for engaging in illicit behavior on the ship from Europe, and he wishes to distance himself from sheltering a prostitute. Policemen take her back to Ellis Island, and once again she is slated for deportation. While at Ellis Island Ewa watches a performance by Emil (Bruno's cousin, making a living as a performing illusionist called Orlando; played by Jeremy Renner); after his performance he hands her a white rose. The next morning Bruno manages to get her released.

Ewa meets Emil again at the Bandit's Roost. Emil asks Ewa to come onstage to aid him in his mind reading trick, but the men in the audience start catcalling at Ewa. The scene ends in a brawl between Bruno and Emil and with Bruno and the girls being fired from the theater. Soon after Bruno has his "doves" parade around Central Park to attract men to sleep with them. Another encounter between Emil and Ewa proves Emil's feelings for her. Emil falls for Ewa, much to Bruno's discontent, which causes continued and intense conflicts between the two men. One violent conflict concludes with Bruno being jailed overnight.

One day, Emil sneaks into Bruno's home to see Ewa. While there, he promises to get her the money to save her sister so they can all leave New York together. Coincidentally, shortly after making such promise, Emil hides as Bruno returns. Bruno also makes a promise to Ewa: he is to arrange for her a meeting with her sister. But Emil interrupts Bruno, as he pulls out an unloaded gun and points it at Bruno. Emil pulls the trigger just to frighten him, but his attempt at intimidating Bruno backfires, as Bruno stabs him to death in apparent self-defense.

Overcoming the shock and distress of the death, Bruno and Ewa dump Emil's body in the street at night to get rid of unwanted police investigations, but the police are told by another prostitute with whom Ewa had had conflicts that Ewa killed Emil. Bruno hides Ewa from the police, who then give him a severe beating and steal a large bundle of money he had been carrying. Ewa learns Bruno had enough money to pay for her sister's release all along but was hiding it from her as he did not want her to leave him. Bruno claims he has now had a change of heart and would help Ewa and her sister if he had any money. Ewa makes another contact with her aunt and successfully pleads for her aunt to give her the money for Magda. With it, Bruno pays his contact on Ellis Island to release Ewa's sister and gives them both tickets to California. Ewa and Magda leave, while a repentant Bruno stays in New York, intending to confess to the police about Emil's killing.

Summarize Timeline Top Qs Fact Check

On May 31, 2011, Deadline reported that James Gray would direct the film, then-titled Low Life, about a woman attempting to immigrate from Poland to New York, starring Marion Cotillard and Joaquin Phoenix, and that Jeremy Renner was in talks to play the third lead.^[4] The working titles for the film were Low Life,^[5] American Dream,^[6] and The Nightingale,^[7] before changing for the last time to The Immigrant shortly before the film's premiere at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.^[5]

Gray said that The Immigrant is "80% based on the recollections from my grandparents, who came to the United States in 1923", and he described it as "my most personal and autobiographical film to date".^[8] Gray co-wrote the screenplay with Richard Menello, it was one of his last screenplays before his death in March 2013, shortly before the film's Cannes premiere.^[5] The Immigrant was Gray's first film with a female protagonist.^[9] Gray wrote the movie for Cotillard and Phoenix. He stated that if the two actors did not want to do the movie, he was not sure he would have made it.^[10][11] Gray had previously worked with Phoenix in The Yards (2000), We Own the Night (2007), and Two Lovers (2008).^[11]

In 2010, Gray collaborated with Cotillard's then-partner, Guillaume Canet, on the screenplay for Blood Ties (2013), Canet's first film in English that Gray helped translate the dialogue.^[12][13] Gray met Cotillard by chance without knowing that she was Canet's partner,^[14] during a dinner at a restaurant in Paris to discuss Blood Ties.^[11] Gray and Cotillard then got into an argument about an actor that Cotillard loved and Gray found overrated, so Cotillard threw a piece of bread at Gray's head, and when she said she thought Gray was a "jerk", he immediately liked her as a result.^[11] Gray did not know who Cotillard was (it was his wife who told him that Cotillard was an actress and had won an Oscar)^[13] and thought she looked like Pola Negri, the Polish actress of silent films, so he wrote the film for her, without ever seeing her on screen, knowing that her face was exactly the one he was looking for.^[14] Gray said he later watched all of Cotillard's films that he could find, and then he knew he had to write something for her.^[15]

When Gray was trying to think of a movie for Cotillard, he was talking to his brother, who found journals from their grandfather who ran a saloon on the Lower East Side in New York in the 1920s, after he came from Kiev, and there were all these low lives frequenting the place. One of them was described by Gray as "a enigmatic, screwed-up, manipulative pimp who used to go to Ellis Island and cruise for women who came to the country by themselves." According to Gray, in the 1920s women trying to get into the U.S. by themselves were not let in specifically because they were targets for prostitution, but through bribery, canny pimps would get around these rules. And so a movie idea was born. Gray said that he had never seen a movie on that subject. "Lower East Side, Ellis Island, pimps; it seemed very vivid to me. So I said, 'that sounds perfect,'" he told. However, getting Cotillard on board wasn't as easy as he'd hoped. Gray sent the screenplay to Cotillard, but then had to wait seven days for an answer after she had promised to read the script over a weekend. "Well, Sunday came and went and it was like getting a colonoscopy over a week," he said of the agonizing wait for an answer.^[15]

After directing Cotillard in The Immigrant, Gray stated that she is the best actor he has ever worked with.^[15]

Gray wrote around 20 pages of dialogue in Polish. Cotillard had to learn Polish to take on the role and speak English with a credible Polish accent. She had only two months to learn her Polish dialogue.^[16]

Gray said that the films that influenced The Immigrant were La Strada (1954), Diary of a Country Priest (1951), Seven Beauties (1975), Nights of Cabiria (1957), and America America (1963).^[17] The film's sepia-toned cinematography was inspired by old autochrome photographs, the works of cinematographers Vilmos Zsigmond and Gordon Willis, and films such as McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) and Heaven's Gate (1980).^[17] He was also inspired by Giacomo Puccini's operas that comprise Il Trittico.^[13]

When Gray met Cotillard, she reminded him of a silent film actress because she had a "haunted quality" of Renée Jeanne Falconetti in Carl Theodor Dreyer's film The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928).^[18] Cotillard's character and the way she was filmed in The Immigrant were based on silent film stars such as Falconetti in The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928),^[17] and also Lillian Gish,^[19] and Louise Brooks.^[20] Gray said he wanted "a kind of Falconetti conception, where the face would have such meaning and would tell you so much."^[21] The character was also partly inspired by Italian actress Giulietta Masina.^[22]

Principal photography on the film began on January 27, 2012 in New York City, under the working title "Low Life".^[23][24][25] Filming was completed on March 17, 2012.^[26][27]

The Immigrant was the first film shot at Ellis Island.^[28][29] Shooting on location was only made possible after cinematographer Darius Khondji suggested they shoot the day scenes at night. The National Park Service reluctantly agreed to let them shoot there for two days, starting at 5:30 pm when the last ferry goes from Ellis Island until sunrise.^[30]

Gray told Salon.com in a May 2014 interview that Phoenix loved Cotillard and would often apologize to her after filming the scenes where his character mistreated her character. There was one scene where Phoenix felt so bad that he hid himself in his dressing room for hours and could not come down. Phoenix kept saying to Cotillard: "I'm so sorry, this is not me, it's not me." Gray said that Phoenix was extremely uncomfortable playing that role, although he was great and "maybe as good as he's ever been", but he was miserable on set.^[29]

Gray said that during filming, Cotillard constantly offered to remove the text, assuring him that she could express everything with her face. Gray was skeptical and thought it seemed impossible, but each time she proved the opposite. "She managed to get incredible things to pass just with her face," Gray said.^[14]

Summarize Timeline Fact Check

In June 2012, The Weinstein Company acquired U.S. distribution rights to the film,^[31] three months after filming had wrapped.^[26] The film was completed in time for the 2012 Toronto Film Festival,^[27] but The Weinstein Company insisted on holding it until Cannes 2013, with Harvey Weinstein hoping he might convince director James Gray to change the ending and give it a Sound of Music (1965)-style ending.^[32] Gray refused to change the ending and the film was only released in the U.S. in 2014.^[33]

In a 2015 interview with Hammer To Nail, Gray said that if he had made the changes that Weinstein suggested, the film would have been a disaster financially and critically, and it would not have been his film; adding that he learned his lesson after The Yards (2000), in which the version released in theaters was not the ending that he wanted and the film was criticized for that.^[34] Weinstein denied rumors of editing-room tensions in a 2014 interview with Variety and praised The Immigrant, calling it "everyone's story — my story, my grandparents' story. This is our country", and comparing it to Elia Kazan's film America America (1963).^[35] In a January 2015 interview with IndieWire's Ryan Lattanzio, Cotillard was asked why The Weinstein Company had failed to support the film, to which she answered; "There a lot of things that I cannot really talk about". Lattanzio then stated that the film should have been an Oscar contender, to which Cotillard replied; "Well, you need money to do that, and we won't have this money!".^[36]

Gray stated in a March 2017 interview with The Telegraph that Weinstein bought the film without his approval from the equity people who raised the money for him in the United States.^[32] Gray did not want Weinstein to buy The Immigrant and told the equity people that selling him the film was a terrible idea, but he had no say over the matter.^[32] Gray said that when the film was released in the U.S., Cotillard won virtually every critical award without any support at all, and that Weinstein "could have easily gotten her an Oscar nomination, maybe even won her an Oscar, if he'd put his machine behind her." However, the film did not receive any Oscar nomination.^[32]

In a March 2022 interview with Le Monde, Cotillard said that Weinstein did not respect Gray much less his film, and that he wanted to prevent The Immigrant from premiering at the Cannes Film Festival and release it direct-to-TV without a theatrical run. Cotillard said she wrote Weinstein telling him that even if he despised Gray, that he should at least respect the people who admire the director. Cotillard added that even if Weinstein went beyond the limits of his power, he should at least not damage the film.^[14]

In a November 2022 interview with Vulture, Gray said that Weinstein threatened to release the film on the TV channel Lifetime over his refusal to change the ending, which Gray felt was very important, but Weinstein hated the last shot. On the morning that Weinstein's daughter was born, he called Gray telling him that he was in the editing room working on The Immigrant, and Gray replied that he did not ask him to do that and then they started arguing, with Gray telling Weinstein that he was trying to be a frustrated director, to which Weinstein replied: "Fuck you! I'm Harvey Weinstein! I'm God's editor!", according to Gray.^[37] Gray stated that Weinstein's cut had a runtime of 88 minutes, was "completely incoherent", had a voice-over all over it and that Weinstein wanted the ending to be a combination of Titanic (1997) and Sound of Music (1965), with soaring music playing to Cotillard's character in old-age makeup walking over a mountain with her sister, as if she was saying: "When I was younger, this is what my life was, but now my sister and I are living great."^[37]

The Immigrant had its world premiere at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival on May 24, 2023, where it competed for the Palme d'Or.^[1][38] It also screened at the 2013 Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival, the 2013 New York Film Festival,^[39] the 2013 Chicago International Film Festival,^[40] the 2014 Miami International Film Festival, the 2014 Newport Beach International Film Festival,^[41] and the 2014 Sedona Film Festival.^[42]

In September 2013, it was announced that The Immigrant would be released in the United States on video on demand (VOD) in early 2014 by Radius-TWC (The Weinstein Company's VOD branch).^[43][17] However, the film was finally released theatrically in the U.S. by The Weinstein Company on May 16, 2014.^[44] Gray credited the audience's positive response to the film as the reason it got a theatrical release in the U.S. instead of a VOD release.^[17] By the time of its U.S. release, the film had already been released theatrically in countries such as France and Belgium in 2013,^[3] and had already been released on DVD in France.^[33]

On July 14, 2014, the film was made available for streaming in the U.S. via Netflix,^[45] eleven days after the end of its theatrical run on July 3, 2014.^[3]

Weinstein also bought the UK distribution rights to the film, but it was never released theatrically in the region.^[46] It was only released in the UK via streaming on BFI Player in March 2019.^[47]

The film was released on DVD and Blu-Ray in the U.S. by The Weinstein Company and Anchor Bay Entertainment on April 7, 2015.^[48] Extras include a feature commentary by Gray and the visual inspiration for The Immigrant.^[49]