"Ride with the Devil" mades a good impression this week at a French film festival.
"Ride With the Devil" apparently was a hit at the Festival of Deauville for American Cinema in France.
"I loved it, and the people around us loved it," Vicky Henley, manager of the Kansas Film Commission, said, adding that the film received a standing ovation from about 2,000 festival goers.
Henley and Patti Watkins, director of the Kansas City Film Festival, were in France Thursday when the film made its premiere. They sat behind director Ang Lee, actor Tobey Maguire and screenwriter-producer James Schamus during the screening.
"Patti whispered halfway into the movie, 'It's good.' I whispered back, 'Yes, it is,'" Henley said Friday during a phone call from Toronto, where she and Watkins planned to view the film that night during the opening of the Toronto International Film Festival.
Henley said a 30-minute tribute to Lee, whose other films include "Sense and Sensibility," "The Ice Storm," "Eat Drink Man Woman" and "The Wedding Banquet," preceded the film.
The screening was the first time for Henley to see the entire film.
"I started working (on this project) in November 1996, so I'm emotionally attached to it," she said. "I've always wanted to see the Lawrence story on film. " (Ang Lee's) done justice to the story."
"Ride With the Devil" is about the bloody skirmishes along the Kansas-Missouri border during the Civil War and includes the story of William Quantrill's raid on Lawrence. Several Lawrence actors and Kansas University students worked as extras or crew members from March through July 1998 while segments of the film were shot in Kansas and Missouri.
"It's told from a bushwhacker's point of view, but it's done very well," she said.
The film was scheduled to be shown at 9:30 p.m. Friday at the Toronto festival. Henley said that during the first viewing she was looking at how locales in Kansas and Missouri were used and the performances of the actors. Friday night, she said, she was "going to relax" and watch it as a regular movie goer.
"It will be interesting to see the North American response," she said.
A premiere of "Ride With the Devil" is being planned in November in Kansas City, Mo. But Henley said Lee is also interested in premiering the movie in Lawrence. She said discussions are being held with USA Films, which recently bought the movie from Universal Pictures, to bring the film to Lawrence after its Kansas City premiere.
-- Jan Biles' phone message number is 832-7146. Her e-mail address is jbiles@ljworld.com.
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