http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034478/
released August 6, 1942 in France.
I love Pierre Fresnay. There, I've said it. And there are scenes in this film that are fun like the first Thin Man is fun, all wit, and sparkle, and surprise. Suzy Delair plays the female lead, (bad) singer Mila Malou. She's a French actress, but her character may in fact be American in the film - she is certainly obnoxious, and very much in the style of the earnest, uppity all-American girl - except that there are a number of very spicy jokes that would never, ever have made it past Joe Breen in the USA at this time. She also appears to live with Inspector Wens, (Fresnay) without the benefit of marital vows. And she spends part of one scene trying to get him to let her pop his blackheads while they talk.
Besides the dialogue scenes between Fresnay and Delair, it's a fairly flat mystery, of the "one of you in this parlor/boarding house/boat/train" committed the murder and I'm going to figure out who!" kind. A small surprise at the end, but the best is all between Fresnay and Delair.
dbdumonteil on IMDB said "All Clouzot's work, all that he will brilliantly develop in subsequent works is already here: a rotten microcosm (the boarding-house with a lot of wicked old people predates the school in "les diaboliques" and the small town in "le corbeau". " True.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Friday, December 18, 2009
Les amoureux sont seuls au monde, or "The Insufficient Muse"
Louis Jouvet (Gerard Favier), Renée Devillers (Sylvia), Fernand René , Philippe Nicaud , Janine Viénot , Brigitte Auber (Christine), Maurice Lagrenée , Emile Drain , Jean Le Fort , Lucien Carol
I've been looking for the Decoin film "Battement de coeur" for a long time, as part of a project on remakes. As it turns out, this is the first Decoin I've been able to see. The text is by Jeanson, and of course with Jouvet as the main character it's perfectly done. The prologue scene is particularly nice - he and his wife reenact their first meeting, 19 years before. The reenactment slips into a renarration, first of many scenes of overlapping and linking dialogue in the movie. Conditional shifts to present tense to past tense to present tense, and they are invited to play for a rural wedding that finds itself without a band. At this point, unless you got it from a synopsis, you don't know yet that Gerard Favier (Jouvet) is a famous classical composer, or even that they are already married, and not just meeting for the first time. It's somewhat painfully obviously studio-shot, but well done in the classical style. The perfect lighting is occasionally distracting for me.
Internet rumour has it that there were two endings to the film, a happy ending and a sad ending, where Sylvia kills herself. This is the version I saw. A little extreme, really - she convinces herself that the sweet young thing will make him happier, and poisons herself. Noble. Convenient. Very unlikely. But hey, she loved him so, right? Except for the part about she was wrong about who he loved...
So, interesting bits in it about the power of suggestion, since it's a tabloid article that plants the seed of this story, which then grows into a big ugly fact-plant in everyone's minds except (perhaps) Jouvet. And no one is really shocked or offended, and the young girl, thus freed from the moral context she had assumed surrounded her, falls over gobsmack in love with the guy and turns into an enormous pest.
The idea of a muse, and then of an aging muse, structures the whole plot. Sexual performance and creative performance are linked throughout the film. Sylvia says she'd be willing to sacrifice herself if the other girl would make him happy, but the thing that pushes her over the edge isn't happiness, it's creativity. When Jouvet composes for Monelle the love song he was never able to compose for Sylvia (and lies about it, telling Sylvia he composed it for her alone, and that he was alone when he did it) Sylvia takes her own life.
It's odd because the Sylvia character is actually quite good, very charming, lovely, and loved by her husband. So the overall structure of the film and her own self-narrative reduces her merits to her ability to inspire (or not) her composer husband (remember the metaphor of sexual prowess for creativity?) and yet the scene-by-scene representation of their marriage doesn't support this supposition. The melodrama/tragedy aspect of it is that while she might be right about the creativity question, her husband really does love her best.
I've been looking for the Decoin film "Battement de coeur" for a long time, as part of a project on remakes. As it turns out, this is the first Decoin I've been able to see. The text is by Jeanson, and of course with Jouvet as the main character it's perfectly done. The prologue scene is particularly nice - he and his wife reenact their first meeting, 19 years before. The reenactment slips into a renarration, first of many scenes of overlapping and linking dialogue in the movie. Conditional shifts to present tense to past tense to present tense, and they are invited to play for a rural wedding that finds itself without a band. At this point, unless you got it from a synopsis, you don't know yet that Gerard Favier (Jouvet) is a famous classical composer, or even that they are already married, and not just meeting for the first time. It's somewhat painfully obviously studio-shot, but well done in the classical style. The perfect lighting is occasionally distracting for me.
Internet rumour has it that there were two endings to the film, a happy ending and a sad ending, where Sylvia kills herself. This is the version I saw. A little extreme, really - she convinces herself that the sweet young thing will make him happier, and poisons herself. Noble. Convenient. Very unlikely. But hey, she loved him so, right? Except for the part about she was wrong about who he loved...
So, interesting bits in it about the power of suggestion, since it's a tabloid article that plants the seed of this story, which then grows into a big ugly fact-plant in everyone's minds except (perhaps) Jouvet. And no one is really shocked or offended, and the young girl, thus freed from the moral context she had assumed surrounded her, falls over gobsmack in love with the guy and turns into an enormous pest.
The idea of a muse, and then of an aging muse, structures the whole plot. Sexual performance and creative performance are linked throughout the film. Sylvia says she'd be willing to sacrifice herself if the other girl would make him happy, but the thing that pushes her over the edge isn't happiness, it's creativity. When Jouvet composes for Monelle the love song he was never able to compose for Sylvia (and lies about it, telling Sylvia he composed it for her alone, and that he was alone when he did it) Sylvia takes her own life.
It's odd because the Sylvia character is actually quite good, very charming, lovely, and loved by her husband. So the overall structure of the film and her own self-narrative reduces her merits to her ability to inspire (or not) her composer husband (remember the metaphor of sexual prowess for creativity?) and yet the scene-by-scene representation of their marriage doesn't support this supposition. The melodrama/tragedy aspect of it is that while she might be right about the creativity question, her husband really does love her best.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
