It is one of the curiosities in the history of cinema that Jean Renoir who has been busy making Une Partie de Campagne left it for directing a film, theme of which was apparently against his grain. Une Partie is like a painting of his father come to life where nature takes hand in determining the life of a nubile girl in the flush of her adolescence and her first love. The lovers surrender to nature and to their emotions, and go on to live naturally miserable lives apart. If we look at his father’s paintings we see similar tableaux of lovers with certain poses, foliage, sun and shade. But he left it for filming The Lower Depths in 1936.
Whereas The Lower Depths is a closed- in world bearing the superscription as in Dante’s Hell. (Despair is the key that is etched on the souls of its denizens.) What had the Gorky’s gutter play to wean him from the Maupassant story?
In 1936 the rise of Hitler in Germany and the Popular Front in France created within the French Left a new sense of solidarity with the Soviet Union. In that context the Russian immigrant producer Alexander Kamenka asked Jean Renoir to direct a film of Maxim Gorky’s play The Lower Depths. Renoir accepted the offer and before agreeing to take on the project, Renoir insisted that the film be set in France (not Russia), and that some drastic changes be made to the plot. The most significant change was the ending; the tragic denouement in Gorki’s play was replaced with a happier ending, in keeping with the mood of the time.
Trivia: Renoir was obliged to write to Gorki to receive permission for these alterations to the story, which was duly given (although Gorki died a few months before the film was released).
Plot
The story revolves around two characters that represent two ends of the society. One is titled and the other a common thief. The baron (Jouvet ) has stolen 30,000 rubles from the ministry and lost it gambling. Pépel (Gabin) has come to rob the baron’s luxurious house and finds nothing worth stealing there. The baron, returning home in a suicidal mood, interrupts Pépel’s theft. Here in their first encounter, each opens the eyes of the other to the possibility of change. Each glimpses a new possibility, the baron, a life without things; Pépel a life without thefts.
Soon the baron appears at the flophouse. The baron soon finds himself in the swim of things there. If thousand- ruble game in the casino had turned his world upside down he finds life there: he can still indulge his passion in the three-kopek game in the flophouse. If he has lost his class he has found his life. He sheds luxury and prestige without regret. When Pépel finds life in the lower depths unbearable and proposes to leave the flophouse, he asks the baron what he will do. The baron replies without hesitation, “I’ll stay here.” He has no desire to go. Unlike Gorky’s baron, his descent from aristocracy has not been degrading but liberating.
After Pépel leaves the baron’s carrying the bronze horses he steals some apples, then gives them to a child and tells him, “And if someday someone tells you Pépel is a thief, you’ll set them straight.” The film ends with homage to Chaplin's Modern Times as the lovers walk off down the road of life.
Acting:
The film is apart from its dark theme is carried by the acting of the two main characters. The Gabin-Jouvet pairing is a masterstroke, with both actors providing fine performances that are charged with conviction and humanity. Despite their different backgrounds and approaches to their art, the two actors complement each other perfectly, the down-trodden and passionate proletarian played by Gabin making a poignant contrast with Jouvet’s ruined but nonchalant aristocrat. The scene where the two characters meet and, realising the absurdity of the barriers which separate them, become friends is one of the enduring moments of the film, and is certainly in keeping with the ethos of the Popular Front. The large supporting cast gives the film its richness and colour, with notable performances from Suzy Prim, Robert Le Vigan.
Junie Astor as Natasha
While Gabin and Jouvet were excellent there was much to be desired in the acting of Natasha. Dramatically she plays a prominent role in the film, necessary for both the death of Kostylyov and Pépel’s escape from the lower depths. But her performance destroys almost every scene she is in. Renoir said of this, “She’s terrible, isn’t she? She was a friend of the producer. He asked me as a special favor to give her the part. I worked hard with her but it didn’t do much good.
“Some faces are beautiful, made for the camera. Some faces are not beautiful but interesting. But Junie Astor had a face that showed nothing to the camera. It is empty.”Renoir
“…the wonderful opening shot of the film: Jouvet stands upright, the only figure on screen, in the centre of the frame, silent but with an occasional superior smirk escaping him as his unseen superior rebukes him for embezzling ministry funds to pay off his gambling debts; and the camera swings round him first to the left and then further and further to the right finally to reveal his superior reflected in a mirror.
This single opening shot keys us to all the important features of the film: the priority given to star persona and performance; the degree to which the narrative differs from (adds to, opens out) Gorky's original play; and the significance of Renoir's camera style of this time, characterised by deep-focus depth-of-field, the moving camera, and the revelation of off-screen space, the world extending beyond the limits of the frame”(brightlights films.com- Ian Johnston)
Renoir and Kurosawa
Donald Richie calls Akira Kurosawa’s film of The Lower Depths a miracle of ensemble playing. In contrast Renoir makes of the play a vehicle for two fine actors, Louis Jouvet and Jean Gabin. The action of Kurosawa’s film occurs completely within the flophouse, as does the play, but less than half of Renoir’s Lower Depths takes place there. Still the flophouse remains, visually, the most interesting locale in the film, with its chiaroscuro lighting and dramatic shadows, its rough bricks, rude stairways, and old wooden posts that often divide the screen vertically or project diagonally across the frame and its length that lends itself so well to deep focus cinematography.
When Akira Kurosawa made his version of The Lower Depths in 1957 he had seen Renoir’s film. It was perhaps that which led him to try it himself. Unlike Renoir, Kurosawa follows Gorky almost scene for scene. In a style that resembles Renoir’s in its long takes and deep focus cinematography Kurosawa creates his flophouse as the locus of a world. But by the sheer vitality of the life in his film manages to overthrow the despair and pathos that permeate the play.
Kurosawa greatly admired Jean Renoir, thought him one of the greatest masters of cinema. The two met once in the 1970s, late in Renoir’s life when Kurosawa was in Los Angeles to receive an Academy Award and was invited to have dinner with the Renoirs. Kurosawa has written that his own decision to write an autobiography was prompted by reading Renoir’s My Life and My Films “and by the terrific impression Renoir left on me when I met him—the feeling that I would like to grow old in the same way he did.”
Kurosawa’s Lower Depths shows the power that could be achieved in cinema by staying close to the text and setting of Gorky’s work. Renoir did not see Kurosawa’s film until 1977. He watched it with great interest, then remarked, “That is a much more important film than mine.”
Although overshadowed by Renoir’s subsequent masterpieces (La Grande Illusion was made straight after this film), Les Bas-fonds is an impressive work, which, through its very evident humanity, remains a surprisingly modern film. Its wry comic touches have an ironic edge to them, a suggestion perhaps that Renoir might have preferred this to be a much darker work, in the vein of the poetic realists. This is also hinted at by the location filming which uses an almost neo-realist style to convey the grim reality of poverty. Noticeable also in this film is Renoir’s admiration for his two heroes of the silent era, Eric Von Stroheim and Chaplin.
A variant of the Lower Depths was made later where some of the Russian elements of the play were introduced that seems to have prevented the film from being a popular success. The film was well received by the critics, however, and was awarded the first Prix Louis Delluc in 1937.
Cast
* Jean Gabin - Wasska Pepel
* Louis Jouvet - The Baron
* Suzy Prim - Vassilissa
* Junie Astor - Natacha
* Jany Holt - Nastia
* Vladimir Sokoloff - Kostileff
Robert Le Vigan - L'Acteur; Camille Bert - Le Comte; René Génin - Le Vieillard; Paul Temps - Satine; Robert Ozanne - Jabot; Léon Larive - Felix, le domestique; Alex Allin; Maurice Baquet - Accordeoniste; André Gabriello - Le Commissaire; Lucien Mancini - Patron de la guinguette; Sylvain
Credit
Jacques Becker - First Assistant Director, Jean Renoir - Director, Marguerite Renoir - Editor, Jean Wiener - Composer (Music Score), Jean Bachelet - Cinematographer, F. Bourgas - Cinematographer, Arthur Mayer - Producer, Eugène Lourié - Set Designer, Jacques Companeez - Screenwriter, Jean Renoir - Screenwriter, Charles Spaak - Screenwriter, Maxim Gorky - Play Author
Similar Movies
Dodes'ka-Den; Die Freudlose Gasse; Austeria; The L-Shaped Room
(Ack: James Travers,2002, Alexander Sesonske-criterion collection-30Dec,2003)
benny
Showing posts with label French films. Show all posts
Showing posts with label French films. Show all posts
Friday, 22 January 2010
Tuesday, 19 January 2010
Drôle de Drame-1937
In an age of anxiety leading to WWII filmmakers in France coped as best as they could. Judging from Drôle de Drame it would seem Marcel Carné and Jacques Prévert looked past their everyday milieu and set in another era and clime. They set their sights across the Channel and show how silly the Edwardian London was.
A botanist who moonlights as a writer of lurid whodunits , having to cope with a nosy bishop and a psychopath on the loose, is bizarre even by today’s standards. A silly premise it may be as far as the story and ‘types’ are but it is a near classic. No mistake of that.
Carné -Prévert would go on to make a few enduring classics like le quai des brumes(1938), les visiteurs du soir(1942), and les enfants du paradis(1945). A threat of another world war is gone and age old anxiety is still around but we manage nevertheless to move on. Cinema has ceased to be as forceful or creative medium that touched our lives as before. The aforementioned films are a precious record of history of our world reinvented for celluloid.
These films are as tragic as drôle de drame is a black comedy.
The film is strong with such fine actors like Michel Simon, Louis Jouvet and Jean-Louis Barrault. The story by minute descends into a calculated chaos and the viewer’s all attempts to predict the direction it takes are foiled by the deranged view of life each character seem to display in response to situations. We can sympathize with a bishop who denounces the prurient interest of his flock in penny novels serializing detective dramas. But if he were to suspect the worst in his cousin and ready to use an impossible subterfuge to visit his home, his sanity may be called to question. Similarly we have a respected botanist whose passion in lucid moments is for his mimosa and it is understandable if he would require an outlet for creative congestion of his brain. He has an alter ego and he is Felix Chapel, who is the subject of the Bishop of Bedford’s wrath. Dr. Molyneux merely has found a way to buy himself some peace from his wife and his neighborhood. This sedate creature who passes his life quietly in harmony with his mimosa nevertheless revels in blood and gore, albeit written by his double Felix Chapel.
It turns out, Molyneux gets the stories from his adopted daughter Eva, who in turn gets them from the milkman, who's madly in love with her. If he has his wife killed off as an excuse to explain a domestic inconvenience we may say for sure there are some loose cannons around and things go from bad to worse. Eventually Scotland Yard is called in to clear things up. How these square off their combined derangement is what makes the film memorable.
Summary
England, the early 1900s. Irvin Molyneux is a quiet botanist who secretly writes pulp fiction under the pseudonym Felix Chapel. His books raise the ire of Archibald Soper, the Bishop of Bedford. Soper invites himself to dinner at the Molyneux’s home one evening, at a time most inconvenient to him. His servants have walked out on him forcing his wife to double as the cook. Molyneux's clumsy attempt to account for the absence of his wife arouses the bishop's suspicions. When he sees Molyneux mysteriously leave the house that evening, he contacts Scotland Yard, convinced that his cousin has murdered his wife. Later, when the Molyneux couple are away from home and the scrutiny of the press, Irvin Molyneux, as Felix Chapel, is invited to write an account of the mysterious Molyneux affair on the scene of the presumed murder. Disguised as Chapel, Molyneux returns to his house, which has been taken over by the police who are still investigating the alleged crime. He does not realize that the psychopath William Kramps, the notorious butcher killer, is in the area, determined to kill Felix Chapel. Meanwhile, the Bishop of Bedford realizes he must return to the houe of Molyneux in disguise...
The film bears affinity to the films of René Clair or Marx brothers as far as to include it as genre of comedy but it is vitriolic all through.
Cast
Michel Simon as Irwin Molyneux alias Felix Chapel
Françoise Rosay as Margaret, his wife
Louis Jouvet as Archibald Soper
Jean-Louis Barrault- William Kramps
and Jean-Pierre Aumont as Billy
Directed by
Marcel Carné
Produced by
Edouard Corniglion-Molinier
Written by
J. Storer Clouston (novel)
Jacques Prévert (adaptation)
Music by
Maurice Jaubert
Cinematography
Eugen Schüfftan
Running time
94 min
benny
A botanist who moonlights as a writer of lurid whodunits , having to cope with a nosy bishop and a psychopath on the loose, is bizarre even by today’s standards. A silly premise it may be as far as the story and ‘types’ are but it is a near classic. No mistake of that.
Carné -Prévert would go on to make a few enduring classics like le quai des brumes(1938), les visiteurs du soir(1942), and les enfants du paradis(1945). A threat of another world war is gone and age old anxiety is still around but we manage nevertheless to move on. Cinema has ceased to be as forceful or creative medium that touched our lives as before. The aforementioned films are a precious record of history of our world reinvented for celluloid.
These films are as tragic as drôle de drame is a black comedy.
The film is strong with such fine actors like Michel Simon, Louis Jouvet and Jean-Louis Barrault. The story by minute descends into a calculated chaos and the viewer’s all attempts to predict the direction it takes are foiled by the deranged view of life each character seem to display in response to situations. We can sympathize with a bishop who denounces the prurient interest of his flock in penny novels serializing detective dramas. But if he were to suspect the worst in his cousin and ready to use an impossible subterfuge to visit his home, his sanity may be called to question. Similarly we have a respected botanist whose passion in lucid moments is for his mimosa and it is understandable if he would require an outlet for creative congestion of his brain. He has an alter ego and he is Felix Chapel, who is the subject of the Bishop of Bedford’s wrath. Dr. Molyneux merely has found a way to buy himself some peace from his wife and his neighborhood. This sedate creature who passes his life quietly in harmony with his mimosa nevertheless revels in blood and gore, albeit written by his double Felix Chapel.
It turns out, Molyneux gets the stories from his adopted daughter Eva, who in turn gets them from the milkman, who's madly in love with her. If he has his wife killed off as an excuse to explain a domestic inconvenience we may say for sure there are some loose cannons around and things go from bad to worse. Eventually Scotland Yard is called in to clear things up. How these square off their combined derangement is what makes the film memorable.
Summary
England, the early 1900s. Irvin Molyneux is a quiet botanist who secretly writes pulp fiction under the pseudonym Felix Chapel. His books raise the ire of Archibald Soper, the Bishop of Bedford. Soper invites himself to dinner at the Molyneux’s home one evening, at a time most inconvenient to him. His servants have walked out on him forcing his wife to double as the cook. Molyneux's clumsy attempt to account for the absence of his wife arouses the bishop's suspicions. When he sees Molyneux mysteriously leave the house that evening, he contacts Scotland Yard, convinced that his cousin has murdered his wife. Later, when the Molyneux couple are away from home and the scrutiny of the press, Irvin Molyneux, as Felix Chapel, is invited to write an account of the mysterious Molyneux affair on the scene of the presumed murder. Disguised as Chapel, Molyneux returns to his house, which has been taken over by the police who are still investigating the alleged crime. He does not realize that the psychopath William Kramps, the notorious butcher killer, is in the area, determined to kill Felix Chapel. Meanwhile, the Bishop of Bedford realizes he must return to the houe of Molyneux in disguise...
The film bears affinity to the films of René Clair or Marx brothers as far as to include it as genre of comedy but it is vitriolic all through.
Cast
Michel Simon as Irwin Molyneux alias Felix Chapel
Françoise Rosay as Margaret, his wife
Louis Jouvet as Archibald Soper
Jean-Louis Barrault- William Kramps
and Jean-Pierre Aumont as Billy
Directed by
Marcel Carné
Produced by
Edouard Corniglion-Molinier
Written by
J. Storer Clouston (novel)
Jacques Prévert (adaptation)
Music by
Maurice Jaubert
Cinematography
Eugen Schüfftan
Running time
94 min
benny
Friday, 15 January 2010
The Earrings of Mme.de...-1953
In one of the three Guy de Maupassant–derived stories of Ophuls’s Le plaisir (1952), the rejected model jumps out of a window and winds up in a wheelchair. The artist, now forcibly married to her, and with plenty of time to work, voices the bitter aphorism, “There’s no joy in happiness.” In the present film Danielle Darrieux invites unhappiness since it is the only way she can feel the pulse of her innermost universe where the heart rules. In Ophulsian universe, men and women occupy separate but equal spheres, and if the men have more power and agency in the world, the women are the conquistadors in the more important realm of the heart. They are the ‘militarists of love’ as Stendhal would call them. For the general’s wife in the Earrings of Madame de… a piece of jewelry serves as nicely as one marries above one’s rank to be reckoned as a woman of importance. Louise is married and she has a lover. 'Loss’ of her earrings presented to her by her husband could set in motion, events of such import as a kingdom lost at the throw of a dice. Such a personal article ( a trifle in itself) could as the kerchief of Desdemona lead to death in some cases or social disgrace. Louisa belongs to the rank and file of the militarists of love who gamble with trouble, knowing tragedy is around the corner. Why do they still do it? I recall a passage where Stendhal (Red and the Black) quotes the case of Margaret du Valois, the wife of Henri IV. She needed such dangers in order to feel her existence. Not having anxiety was as being in a limbo, out of the pale of social respectability her station and rank commanded.
The Earrings of Madame de . . . is based on a 1951 novel by Louise de Vilmorin simply called Madame de, who, in pawning the earrings given her by her husband, sets off a chain of circumstances that, when she falls desperately in love, tightens around her and destroys her. It’s like a brooch, small in scope but filigreed and chiseled masterly as the works of Ophuls often are. The film has a special sheen brought out by incisive wit, irony and understanding. His films are all a treat to watch. It is all on the surface like light caught and the many facets of the stone keep you attentive to what goes on beneath. ''Madame de...'' is one and his ''La Ronde'' (1950) and ''Lola Montes'' (1955) are similarly masterly. Take for instance the scene where he makes Baron Fabrizio Donati writing his lover day after day, with no letter back. Of course Louise frail in health and unable to stay in Paris tears up his letters and throw them out of her train carriage all the more despondent. She must play her part as demanded of her. In her thoughts,-her tears and unhappiness on reading them were as good as replies to them. ‘ I’ve answered all your letters my love,”says she. She lacked the courage to reply in any other manner. Louise is married to a general. Their marriage has style but no substance. In fact as the general observes it is superficially superficial. In the same context he sententiously adds, - it is his way of serious conversation, 'our conjugal bliss is a reflection of ourselves'.
The way she views her earrings is a clear indication of her feelings with regards to marriage. The diamonds, a gift of her husband she doesn’t mind selling since her debts that necessited it, are part of household expenses. She has run up debts in keeping her station in the society while the gift coming from Baron Donati is from desire. She makes it clear in her tryst in his carriage that she will always keeps them by her bedside. That is what love means to her. In the end when she presents the gift to the Church its significance cannot be lost on the viewer.
The diamond earrings like RL Stevenson's Bottle Imp turns up often to expose their shallowness as a couple and it echoes Renoir’s La Regle du Jeu: marriage as an institution in the pre WWI France meant for the privileged precious little no more than parading their good breeding and privileges. In this film also disaster follows the woman who makes a false step. Louise will lie to cover the absence of her earrings that makes her lover take offense first and then lead to a duel between two persons who mean most to her. All this will make the viewer agree with the general who quotes Napoleon,"The only victory in love is to flee".
‘The Earrings of Madame de...,' directed in 1953 by Max Ophuls, is one of the most mannered and contrived love movies ever filmed. It glitters and dazzles, and beneath the artifice it creates a heart, and breaks it. The film is famous for its elaborate camera movements, its graceful style, its sets, its costumes and of course its jewelry. It stars Danielle Darrieux, Charles Boyer and Vittorio De Sica, who effortlessly embody elegance. It could have been a mannered trifle. We sit in admiration of Ophuls' visual display, so fluid and intricate. Then to our surprise we find ourselves caring’.( Roger Ebert-2001)
ack: Press Notes: Ophuls, A Pleasure Indeed, Criterion-Sep. 19, 2008
Cast
Comtesse Louise de Danielle Darrieux
Générale André de Charles Boyer
Baron Fabrizio Donati Vittorio De Sica
Monsieur Rémy Jean Debucourt
Monsieur de Bernac Jean Galland
Lola Lia Di Leo
Credits
Director Max Ophuls
Based on the novel by Louise de Vilmorin
Adaptation by Marcel Achard, Max Ophuls and Annette Wademant
Cinematography: Christian Matras
Music : Oscar Straus and Georges van Parys
Costumes: Georges Annenkov and Rosine Delamare
Sound : Antoine Petitjean
Editing: Borys Lewin
* Run Time: 105 minutes
* Filmed In: B&W
benny
The Earrings of Madame de . . . is based on a 1951 novel by Louise de Vilmorin simply called Madame de, who, in pawning the earrings given her by her husband, sets off a chain of circumstances that, when she falls desperately in love, tightens around her and destroys her. It’s like a brooch, small in scope but filigreed and chiseled masterly as the works of Ophuls often are. The film has a special sheen brought out by incisive wit, irony and understanding. His films are all a treat to watch. It is all on the surface like light caught and the many facets of the stone keep you attentive to what goes on beneath. ''Madame de...'' is one and his ''La Ronde'' (1950) and ''Lola Montes'' (1955) are similarly masterly. Take for instance the scene where he makes Baron Fabrizio Donati writing his lover day after day, with no letter back. Of course Louise frail in health and unable to stay in Paris tears up his letters and throw them out of her train carriage all the more despondent. She must play her part as demanded of her. In her thoughts,-her tears and unhappiness on reading them were as good as replies to them. ‘ I’ve answered all your letters my love,”says she. She lacked the courage to reply in any other manner. Louise is married to a general. Their marriage has style but no substance. In fact as the general observes it is superficially superficial. In the same context he sententiously adds, - it is his way of serious conversation, 'our conjugal bliss is a reflection of ourselves'.
The way she views her earrings is a clear indication of her feelings with regards to marriage. The diamonds, a gift of her husband she doesn’t mind selling since her debts that necessited it, are part of household expenses. She has run up debts in keeping her station in the society while the gift coming from Baron Donati is from desire. She makes it clear in her tryst in his carriage that she will always keeps them by her bedside. That is what love means to her. In the end when she presents the gift to the Church its significance cannot be lost on the viewer.
The diamond earrings like RL Stevenson's Bottle Imp turns up often to expose their shallowness as a couple and it echoes Renoir’s La Regle du Jeu: marriage as an institution in the pre WWI France meant for the privileged precious little no more than parading their good breeding and privileges. In this film also disaster follows the woman who makes a false step. Louise will lie to cover the absence of her earrings that makes her lover take offense first and then lead to a duel between two persons who mean most to her. All this will make the viewer agree with the general who quotes Napoleon,"The only victory in love is to flee".
‘The Earrings of Madame de...,' directed in 1953 by Max Ophuls, is one of the most mannered and contrived love movies ever filmed. It glitters and dazzles, and beneath the artifice it creates a heart, and breaks it. The film is famous for its elaborate camera movements, its graceful style, its sets, its costumes and of course its jewelry. It stars Danielle Darrieux, Charles Boyer and Vittorio De Sica, who effortlessly embody elegance. It could have been a mannered trifle. We sit in admiration of Ophuls' visual display, so fluid and intricate. Then to our surprise we find ourselves caring’.( Roger Ebert-2001)
ack: Press Notes: Ophuls, A Pleasure Indeed, Criterion-Sep. 19, 2008
Cast
Comtesse Louise de Danielle Darrieux
Générale André de Charles Boyer
Baron Fabrizio Donati Vittorio De Sica
Monsieur Rémy Jean Debucourt
Monsieur de Bernac Jean Galland
Lola Lia Di Leo
Credits
Director Max Ophuls
Based on the novel by Louise de Vilmorin
Adaptation by Marcel Achard, Max Ophuls and Annette Wademant
Cinematography: Christian Matras
Music : Oscar Straus and Georges van Parys
Costumes: Georges Annenkov and Rosine Delamare
Sound : Antoine Petitjean
Editing: Borys Lewin
* Run Time: 105 minutes
* Filmed In: B&W
benny
Thursday, 7 January 2010
Les Visiteurs du Soir-1942
The film (aka: The Devil's Envoys)
is unquestionably a masterpiece that came out of France under the most trying conditions. Despite the Nazi Occupation with the restrictions on materials and media we have two films that have achieved high watermark in the history of French cinema. Les vistieurs is one film and Les Enfants du Paradis is another (1945). Both are backward looking in the sense one appears to be a simple romantic fable set in a fairy tale castle with demons, knights and princesses while the 1945 film deals with the theatrical world of a century before. Both came out of the fruitful collaboration between director Marcel Carné and screenwriter Jacques Prévert. The film was hailed as a major cinematographic achievement upon its release in 1942 and remained one of the most popular films made under the Nazi Occupation.
The film begins with the title: in this lovely month of May 1485 Messire Satan on earth sent two of his creatures to despair men ..."
Summary
In the 15th Century, two traveling musicians named Gilles and Dominique arrive at the castle of Baron Hugues, amid celebrations for the impending marriage between Hugues’ daughter Anne and a knight Renaud. The two musicians are in truth emissaries of the Devil, sent to disrupt the wedding for their own amusement. Whilst Dominique seduces Renaud, Gilles makes an easy conquest of Anne. However, Anne’s purity overwhelms Gilles and he in turn falls in love with her. This unexpected turn of events forces the Devil into making a personal appearance...
On the surface, the film appears to be a simple romantic fable but there is clearly more to this film than first meets the eye. Many have seen an allegorical sub-text in this seemingly innocuous romantic fable. The reluctance of the two lovers Gilles and Anne to separate in the second half of the film, despite the best efforts of man and Devil, can be understood as a covert message to the French nation to hold out against the German overlords. Historically we may see the parable as apt. The Third Republic may be an edifice in stone stripped of marble and gold by the fall of France but there shall still beat the Gallic spirit as the pair of lovers in the film.
One feature from the film that stands out even after so many decades is its cinematography. Not content with conventional photographic techniques, Carné developed some new methods for creating just the effect he was after as In Les Enfants. (In the latter Carné was particular of giving the shirt front of the notorious thief and murderer Lacenaire an unnatural luminosity contrasted with Baptiste the man in white.) In Les Visiteurs he makes the dance scene memorable, where the film is slowed to give the impression of time coming to a halt, allowing the two Devil’s emissaries to commence their evil machinations. Later on, a similar trick allows Carné to transport his fated lovers to a dreamlike garden. The arrival of the Devil in the second half of the film is no less impressive, using a combination of noise and lighting to conjure up an instant sense of drama and anticipation.
A combination of an excellent script, creditable acting from Jules Berry and Arletty sets this film apart from many other of the 40s French films. Berry is at his best playing the role of the Devil with a burlesque relish, and with villainous charm.
* Director: Marcel Carné
* Script: Jacques Prévert, Pierre Laroche
* Music: Maurice Thiriet
* Cast: Arletty (Dominique), Marie Déa (Anne), Fernand Ledoux (Le baron Hugues), Alain Cuny (Gilles), Pierre Labry (Le seigneur), Jean d'Yd (Le baladin), Roger Blin (Le montreur de monstres), Gabriel Gabrio (Le bourreau), Marcel Herrand (Le baron Renaud), Jules Berry (Le diable)
* Runtime: 120 min; B&W
benny
is unquestionably a masterpiece that came out of France under the most trying conditions. Despite the Nazi Occupation with the restrictions on materials and media we have two films that have achieved high watermark in the history of French cinema. Les vistieurs is one film and Les Enfants du Paradis is another (1945). Both are backward looking in the sense one appears to be a simple romantic fable set in a fairy tale castle with demons, knights and princesses while the 1945 film deals with the theatrical world of a century before. Both came out of the fruitful collaboration between director Marcel Carné and screenwriter Jacques Prévert. The film was hailed as a major cinematographic achievement upon its release in 1942 and remained one of the most popular films made under the Nazi Occupation.
The film begins with the title: in this lovely month of May 1485 Messire Satan on earth sent two of his creatures to despair men ..."
Summary
In the 15th Century, two traveling musicians named Gilles and Dominique arrive at the castle of Baron Hugues, amid celebrations for the impending marriage between Hugues’ daughter Anne and a knight Renaud. The two musicians are in truth emissaries of the Devil, sent to disrupt the wedding for their own amusement. Whilst Dominique seduces Renaud, Gilles makes an easy conquest of Anne. However, Anne’s purity overwhelms Gilles and he in turn falls in love with her. This unexpected turn of events forces the Devil into making a personal appearance...
On the surface, the film appears to be a simple romantic fable but there is clearly more to this film than first meets the eye. Many have seen an allegorical sub-text in this seemingly innocuous romantic fable. The reluctance of the two lovers Gilles and Anne to separate in the second half of the film, despite the best efforts of man and Devil, can be understood as a covert message to the French nation to hold out against the German overlords. Historically we may see the parable as apt. The Third Republic may be an edifice in stone stripped of marble and gold by the fall of France but there shall still beat the Gallic spirit as the pair of lovers in the film.
One feature from the film that stands out even after so many decades is its cinematography. Not content with conventional photographic techniques, Carné developed some new methods for creating just the effect he was after as In Les Enfants. (In the latter Carné was particular of giving the shirt front of the notorious thief and murderer Lacenaire an unnatural luminosity contrasted with Baptiste the man in white.) In Les Visiteurs he makes the dance scene memorable, where the film is slowed to give the impression of time coming to a halt, allowing the two Devil’s emissaries to commence their evil machinations. Later on, a similar trick allows Carné to transport his fated lovers to a dreamlike garden. The arrival of the Devil in the second half of the film is no less impressive, using a combination of noise and lighting to conjure up an instant sense of drama and anticipation.
A combination of an excellent script, creditable acting from Jules Berry and Arletty sets this film apart from many other of the 40s French films. Berry is at his best playing the role of the Devil with a burlesque relish, and with villainous charm.
* Director: Marcel Carné
* Script: Jacques Prévert, Pierre Laroche
* Music: Maurice Thiriet
* Cast: Arletty (Dominique), Marie Déa (Anne), Fernand Ledoux (Le baron Hugues), Alain Cuny (Gilles), Pierre Labry (Le seigneur), Jean d'Yd (Le baladin), Roger Blin (Le montreur de monstres), Gabriel Gabrio (Le bourreau), Marcel Herrand (Le baron Renaud), Jules Berry (Le diable)
* Runtime: 120 min; B&W
benny
Wednesday, 6 January 2010
Pépé Le Moko-1937
In 1931, the year France celebrated the centenary of the conquest of Algeria Pépé Le Moko, a thriller written by “Détective Ashelbé” (a pseudonym for Henri La Barthe – Ashelbé is a homophone for the initials H.L.B.), was published. The Exposition coloniale staged in Paris was the culmination of the celebration of French colonialism. Designed to “give the French an awareness of their Empire,” the exhibiton reconstructed habitats, and displayed folkloric dances, artifacts and merchandise, from North and West Africa, Indochina. Colonialism is dead and gone which is a good thing. The film is to be seen as a souvenir that one might every now and then pick up with nostalgia.
Directed by Julien Duvivier in 1936, with a prestigious technical crew and starry cast headed by Jean Gabin, Pépé Le Moko came out on January 23, 1937. It was a box office and critical success which on release was described by Jean Cocteau as “a masterpiece” and by Graham Greene as “one of the most exciting and moving films I can remember seeing.” ( According to a BBC documentary, it served as inspiration for Greene's acclaimed novel, The Third Man.)
Pépé Le Moko has since continued to fascinate. The film was remade twice in Hollywood, as Algiers in 1938 and Casbah in 1948. There were other echoes, tributes and parodies to the spoof Toto le Moko (1949), which now gives its name to a Roman pizzeria. (Morrissey uses excerpts of the film in the song You Were Good in Your Time of his 2009 album Years of Refusal.)
The book is by Ashelbé who is a contemporary of Georges Simenon and wrote at a time when the thriller was undergoing a spectacular boom in France. His contemporary published his first Maigret books also in 1931. Unfortunately the book has not worn well with time as the film has.
It is a tale of French petty criminals sheltering in the Casbah at Algiers. Pépé Le Moko ('Moko' is slang for a man from Marseilles) unlike Jean Renoir’s La Grande Illusion, which also appeared in 1937, is not a classic in the sense as the Renoir film touching greatness thematically or technically. Pépé Le Moko despite its unsavory world and common style, transcends its pulp fiction material, and turns it into a powerful emotional statement on identity, desire and loss.
Pépé Le Moko is a classic because it is key to the French film noir tradition of the 1930s. As T.S. Eliot put it in a different context, it “represents the perfection of the common style.” Lastly of course it stars Jean Gabin.
Plot
Pepe le Moko (Jean Gabin) is a well-known criminal mastermind who eludes the French police by hiding in the Casbah section of Algiers. He knows he is safe in this labyrinthine netherworld, where he is surrounded by his fellow thieves and cutthroats. Police inspector Slimane (Lucas Gridoux), who has developed a grudging respect for Pepe, bides his time, waiting for Pepe to try to leave the Casbah. When Gaby Gould (Mirielle Balin), a Parisian tourist, falls in love with Pepe, the inspector hopes to use this relationship to his advantage. He tells Gaby that Pepe has been killed, knowing that the heartbroken girl will return to Paris -- and that Pepe will risk everything to go after her. The part where the ship takes to sea with the foghorn tooting signals the poignant resolution to a love story that is too gossamer thin to be real.
Similar Works
Le Grand Jeu (1934, Jacques Feyder)
Moontide (1942, Fritz Lang, Archie Mayo)
Port of Shadows (1938, Marcel Carné)
Au-Dela Des Grilles (1948, René Clément)
La Bandera (1935, Julien Duvivier)
Le Jour Se Lève (1939, Marcel Carné)
Casablanca (1942, Michael Curtiz)
The Conspirators (1944, Jean Negulesco)
Other Related Works
Is related to: Casbah (1948, John Berry)
Is spoofed in: Totò le Moko (1949, Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia)
Has been remade as: Algiers (1938, John Cromwell)
(Ack: Hal Erickson-allmovie., Ginette Vincendeau, from the introduction to Pépé Le Moko , a monograph published by the British Film Institute-1998., www.Filmforum.org)
benny
Directed by Julien Duvivier in 1936, with a prestigious technical crew and starry cast headed by Jean Gabin, Pépé Le Moko came out on January 23, 1937. It was a box office and critical success which on release was described by Jean Cocteau as “a masterpiece” and by Graham Greene as “one of the most exciting and moving films I can remember seeing.” ( According to a BBC documentary, it served as inspiration for Greene's acclaimed novel, The Third Man.)
Pépé Le Moko has since continued to fascinate. The film was remade twice in Hollywood, as Algiers in 1938 and Casbah in 1948. There were other echoes, tributes and parodies to the spoof Toto le Moko (1949), which now gives its name to a Roman pizzeria. (Morrissey uses excerpts of the film in the song You Were Good in Your Time of his 2009 album Years of Refusal.)
The book is by Ashelbé who is a contemporary of Georges Simenon and wrote at a time when the thriller was undergoing a spectacular boom in France. His contemporary published his first Maigret books also in 1931. Unfortunately the book has not worn well with time as the film has.
It is a tale of French petty criminals sheltering in the Casbah at Algiers. Pépé Le Moko ('Moko' is slang for a man from Marseilles) unlike Jean Renoir’s La Grande Illusion, which also appeared in 1937, is not a classic in the sense as the Renoir film touching greatness thematically or technically. Pépé Le Moko despite its unsavory world and common style, transcends its pulp fiction material, and turns it into a powerful emotional statement on identity, desire and loss.
Pépé Le Moko is a classic because it is key to the French film noir tradition of the 1930s. As T.S. Eliot put it in a different context, it “represents the perfection of the common style.” Lastly of course it stars Jean Gabin.
Plot
Pepe le Moko (Jean Gabin) is a well-known criminal mastermind who eludes the French police by hiding in the Casbah section of Algiers. He knows he is safe in this labyrinthine netherworld, where he is surrounded by his fellow thieves and cutthroats. Police inspector Slimane (Lucas Gridoux), who has developed a grudging respect for Pepe, bides his time, waiting for Pepe to try to leave the Casbah. When Gaby Gould (Mirielle Balin), a Parisian tourist, falls in love with Pepe, the inspector hopes to use this relationship to his advantage. He tells Gaby that Pepe has been killed, knowing that the heartbroken girl will return to Paris -- and that Pepe will risk everything to go after her. The part where the ship takes to sea with the foghorn tooting signals the poignant resolution to a love story that is too gossamer thin to be real.
Similar Works
Le Grand Jeu (1934, Jacques Feyder)
Moontide (1942, Fritz Lang, Archie Mayo)
Port of Shadows (1938, Marcel Carné)
Au-Dela Des Grilles (1948, René Clément)
La Bandera (1935, Julien Duvivier)
Le Jour Se Lève (1939, Marcel Carné)
Casablanca (1942, Michael Curtiz)
The Conspirators (1944, Jean Negulesco)
Other Related Works
Is related to: Casbah (1948, John Berry)
Is spoofed in: Totò le Moko (1949, Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia)
Has been remade as: Algiers (1938, John Cromwell)
(Ack: Hal Erickson-allmovie., Ginette Vincendeau, from the introduction to Pépé Le Moko , a monograph published by the British Film Institute-1998., www.Filmforum.org)
benny
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)