2014 The French Had A Name For It: Crème de la Crème

Never let it be said that the Roxie doesn't know a good thing when it sees it.  First, the Roxie presented The French Had A Name For It, a 12 film series from November 14 to 17.  It was so successful that they presented The French Had A Name For It - Redux! from November 21 to 26.  From December 13 to 18, the Roxie presented Crème de la Crème of The French Had A Name For It.

Of the 12 films screened in the original series, I saw two during original series, four during the Redux! and three during the Crème de la Crème edition.  In addition, I had seen two films in the series previously at the PFA.  That means I've seen 11 of the 12 films screened.  The missing link was Les Maudits which I missed at Redux! and didn't screen at Crème de la Crème.  The Roxie added a new film to Crème de la Crème:  Le Monte-Charge.

Summarizing the films I saw during Crème de la Crème,

Le Monte-Charge (Paris Pickup) starring Robert Hossein & Lea Massari; directed by Marcel Bluwal; French with subtitles; (1962)
Chair de poule (Highway Pickup) starring Robert Hossein & Catherine Rouvel; directed by Julien Duvivier; French with subtitles; (1963)
La Vérité (The Truth) starring Brigitte Bardot & Sami Frey; directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot; French with subtitles; (1960)
Un témoin dans la ville (Witness in the City) starring Lino Ventura; directed Eduard Molinaro; French with subtitles; (1959)

As long as I'm writing about film noir, I should mention that the 2015 Noir City schedule has been announced.  This year's theme is "unholy matrimony."  Of the 25 films on the program, I have seen four (Suspicion, The Bigamist, The Thin Man & Clash by Night) of them although I need to check my records more closely.

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Le Monte-Charge - Robert Hossein plays a parolee who returns to his Paris neighborhood just before Christmas.  He meets the mysterious Lea Massari who somehow manages to seduce him with barely a word and with her young son in tow.  She is married to a wealthy man and lives in a flat above his warehouse.  When he arrives there to bed her, he quickly encounters her dead husband.  He runs out of the apartment but against better judgment, he returns...and follows the woman to midnight mass...and helps take her back home after she faints.

It is the type of the film where the protagonist acts in self-destructive ways.  Even after finding out Massari's nefarious scheme, he helps her cover up the crime.  Their ultimate fate is more a comedy of errors than tragic.  Filled with long, pregnant pauses and imagery of steam engine train belching smoke, I thought the film was a little pretentious.  Le Monte-Charge was out of place with the other films in the series.

Highway Pickup was a much better vehicle for Hossein.  He plays a safe cracker who escapes prison and hides out as a car mechanic at remote gas station.  The owner Thomas (Georges Wilson) is eager to have a worker so he can take his wife Maria (Catherine Rouvel) out on the town.  It's hinted that she was a prostitute and her behavior doesn't dissuade anyone from that conclusion.  It just so happens that Thomas has a safe and Maria is very anxious to access the contents of the safe.  Once she gets her hooks into Hossein, the film travels down the noir highway at breakneck speed.

Like most of his films, Chair de poule is an exceptionally well made film.  Rouvel stands out as a particularly memorable femme fatale but all the actors are solid and the plot keeps twisting so you never quite sure how its going to end.  Highway Pickup was one of my favorite films from the series (or three series).

La Vérité was the most anticipated film of the series; at least it was for me.  As backstory, Brigitte Bardot had given birth only a few months before filming La Vérité and it most certainly didn't show.  Although married at the time of filming, Bardot began an affair on the set with her co-star Sami Frey.  Unable to choose between her husband & Frey, Bardot sought refuge in a secluded seaside village.  When the press found her, she slashed her wrists.  This is suspiciously similar to the plot of La Vérité where Bardot plays Dominique Marceau who is on trial for the murder of her lover Gilbert Tellier (Frey).  The trial and examination of witnesses allows the story of their relationship to be told in flashback.  In the end, Marceau slashes her wrists.

All that makes for a juicy prelude to the film but La Vérité is an outstanding film without knowing anything about Bardot's personal life.  It's also well known that Bardot & director Henri-Georges Clouzot clashed on the film.  I first became aware of Clouzot's mistreatment of actors and compulsive behavior from a documentary on his unfinished Inferno.  Bardot was struggling with press reports about her relationship with Frey & her jealous husband.  Clouzot allegedly drugged her drinks to calm her down and it didn't stop Bardot from allegedly slapping Clouzot's face on the set.

The premise of La Vérité is that a gold digger/tramp killed a promising symphony conductor.  As the trial unwinds, we see that the truth is more complex as the Bardot is a confused young woman swept up in Paris cafe culture and the upstanding young man is less than innocent.  The root of the problem is this intense sexual desire between the two and Clouzot captures Bardot's ample sexuality with gusto.  If nothing else, La Vérité should be seen to see Bardot at the height of sexiness.  Bardot's performance is noteworthy as well.  She continually layers complexities on to Dominique's seemingly vapid and venal character until the end when I felt her torment as acutely as any movie experience.

On top of the backstory & Bardot's performance, Clouzot adds a cynical and entertaining commentary about the French system of jurisprudence through the machinations and rivalries among the attorneys and other legal participants.  I was very impressed by La Vérité.

Witness in the City wasn't a bad film but it certainly suffered in comparison to Highway Pickup and La Vérité.  Lino Ventura plays a cuckold who kills his wife's lover & murderer.  Unfortunately, a taxi driver witnesses the murder so Ventura must kill again.  He doesn't count on the rather unified cabal of lethal taxi killers.  It was a little absurd towards the end but I can't complain too much.  I became a little bored by the extended end chase.  It was nice to see a young Lino Ventura.

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2015 Noir City Poster

Confessions of a Francophile (Part 2 of 2)

Of the ten French films mentioned in the last post, I saw four at the Sacramento French Film Festival (SFFF).  I saw Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle, La Rayon Vert and The Wages of Fear at the Viz (or as I find myself calling it more frequently, the Film Society Cinema).  I saw Children of Paradise and Grand Illusion at the Castro.  Finally, I watched The Kid With a Bike at the Landmark Center Embarcadero Cinema. 

Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle and La Rayon Vert was presented as a double feature; the first I've attended at the FSC. 

The Kid With a Bike was part of the Film Society's 2011 French Cinema Now series which ran last October/November.  I missed it then so I'm glad I got a second chance.

Children of Paradise also played at the SFFF.  The film underwent a 4K digital restoration by Janus Films.  That version has played at the Castro on two different occasions this year.  That reminds me, I asked one of the SFFF/Crest workers (who was working the control panel) what kind of format the "films" were presented.   He said the short films were digital but the features were all 35 mm.  Indeed, they had problems with the Hôtel du Nord projection which was blamed on an old print.  I wonder how they projected Children of Paradise from celluloid when the Janus website claims they played the digital version.  Perhaps he was referring to the first weekend's screening only.

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The Kid With a Bike was a French language, Belgian film.  I can never recall if the French speaking peoples of Belgian are Flemish or Walloons.  The film was about Cyril (Thomas Doret), a 12 year old boy, living in an orphanage of sorts.  He runs away to be with his father but discovers his father has moved out of their apartment without warning and sold his beloved bike.  With the help of Samantha (Cécile de France), a good Samaritan, Cyril is reunited with his bike and his father; the latter with less than satisfactory results.  Explicitly rejected by his father, Cyril forms a psuedo-maternal retaltionship with Samantha which is tested when he comes under the influence of a local gang leader.

That synopsis does not do justice to the film because Doret's performance as Cyril is alternately exasperating and endearing.  I could quibble with the relative ease with which Samantha situates herself into Cyril's life or the contrived ending but Doret's performance is reason enough to see the film. 

Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle and La Rayon Vert were two mid-career films from Eric Rohmer.  Four Adventures had a whimsical quality and consisted of four vignettes about two girls (one from the country & one from Paris).  My favorite was the fourth with Fabrice Luchini memorably playing a pretentious art gallery owner.

La Rayon Vert translates to "The Green Ray" which is a reference to the title of a novel by Jules Verne.  La Rayon Vert was released as Summer in the US.  Marie Rivière is Delphine, a young woman in Paris who is suffering from a terrible case of ennui.  Delphine is also guarded, difficult to engage and self-pitying.  Frankly, the character resonated with me.  In Delphine's case, she has broken up with her long-time boyfriend and had a cancellation in her vacation plans.  She's stuck in Paris in July & August (the days are stated in intertitles).  Actually, she is not stuck.  She accepts (and rejects) offers from friends and family for a vacation but her restlessness doesn't allow for any peace.  Whether it is her passive-aggressive behavior towards non-vegetarians or her unwillingness to flirt with men, Delphine is uptight and unhappy.  Rohmer never reveals the root cause of Delphine's behavior.  The audience is left to witness her self-imposed travails.  Although I empathized with her character; I can easily see how some in the audience would grow to dislike Delphine.  Rivière delivers a strong performance.  Of the two Rohmer films, I preferred La Rayon Vert.

The Wages of Fear is a Henri-Georges Clouzot film which I missed during the PFA series earlier this year.  Set in a small South American town (in Venezuela?), Wages of Fear essentially tells the story of polyglot bunch of refugees who came to town to make their fortunes drilling for oil.  Once the Americans arrive, they freeze out the non-Americans who are stuck in the small town.  Few jobs to be had and not enough money to afford passage on the airplane out of town (which is the only way out of town).  Bored and disconsolate, they are resigned to their fate.  Clouzot uses the first hour to set up the situation, develop Yves Montand & Charles Vanel's character and display the considerable sex appeal of his wife, Véra Clouzot...no woman ever looked sexier scrubbing the floors.

The second half of the film is a hair-raising thriller involving transporting nitroglycerin by trucks over rough roads to put out an oilwell fire.  The harrowing trip brings out the best and worst of the truckers.  Charles Vanel's Jo experiences a notable change in demeanor.  Bristling with unnecessary anti-Americanism, Wages of Fear would have been more effective if it had dispensed with the political commentary and simply placed the men in their situation which has existed since history began.  However, it was intertesting to see Clouzot's criticism of American hegemony in 1953...a scant 8 years after WWII ended.

Somewhat silly at times, Wages of Fear is a taut thriller in both its depiction of the journey and into the psyche of the men who risk their lives on the journey.

Grand Illusion is a very famous film by Jean Renoir with Jean Gabin & Pierre Fresnay as two French aviators who are shot down by German Baron von Rauffenstein (Erich von Stroheim).  French Capt. de Boeldieu (Fresnay) is an aristocrat while Lt. Maréchal (Gabin) comes from the working class.  Maréchal & de Boeldieu are moved from POW camp to POW camp.  Never able to form a true friendship due to the class differences, they learn to accept each other along with Lt. Rosenthal (Marcel Dalio), a Jewish nouveau riche who forms the third leg of Renoir's exploration of the social classes.

Later von Rauffenstein reappears as a POW camp commandant and rekindles his friendship with de Boeldieu who appears to have more in common with his German captor than his French comrades.  Von Rauffenstein & de Boeldieu are officers and gentlemem so they carry out their duties which leads to de Boeldieu's death and Maréchal & Rosenthal's escape.  The final portion of the film find the two fugitives taking refuge at a German widow's (Dita Parlo) farmhouse. 

Grand Illusion takes the humanist view of war as all the characters are terribly decent given their suffering.  As such, Grand Illusion is nothing like Stalag 17 or The Great Escape.  Renoir's film aspires to celebrate the human condition and condemn warfare.  With von Stroheim leading an extremely capable cast, Grand Illusion is a great film which transcends its pre-WWII overtones.

Children of Paradise & Hôtel du Nord were both directed by Michael Carné.  They depict a time and mentality which simply don't exist anymore and as such they look out of place today.  They both feature Arletty who was 47 and 38 when the films were released, respectively.  I don't know if it was the magic of moviemaking but she was quite attractive at age 47.  Well made films both, I couldn't really get excited about either.  I recognized their merit and the skills of the director and performers but neither film captured my excitment.

Romantics Anonymous, which will play at the Roxie starting July 20, was a delightful romantic comedy about a shy chocalatier and her new boss, who is anxiety ridden, tongue tied and profusely perspiring.  A non-threatening and nice film which showcases the comedic performances of Benoît Poelvoorde & Isabelle Carré.

A View of Love is a film I could not quite embrace either.  Moving back and forth between 1980s Aix-en-Provence and 1960s Algeria, the film focuses on the deferred romance between a high-end real estate agent (Jean Dujardin) and his wealthy client/childhood sweetheart (Marie-Josée Croze).  Full of intrigue (perhaps over-stuffed), the affair never really sizzles although Marie-Josée Croze is certainly a sexy woman.  Sandrine Kiberlain, who I have recently seen in The Women on the 6th Floor and Polisse shows up as Dujardin's wife.  I'd really like to see her in a lead role.

My favorite film of SFFF was Empty Days.  The 1999 film explores the romance between a corporate executive (Patrick Dell'Isola) and mousy housewife (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi).  Both have been unemployed for an extended period which takes its toll on their psyches and self-esteem.  Looking for support from each other, the two fall into an illicit romance (they are both married).  Both have their character flaws - the man is conceited while the woman is lacking in self-confidence.  They give each other a needed sense of validation as they spend their days passing time.  The film is loaded with small nuances such as their grocery shopping sojourns and Tedeschi's numerous facial expressions to show her insecurity.  I thought Tedeschi quite attractive so I wasn't sure about her character's obsession with losing weight but she displayed the character's diffidence in subtle ways. 

Empty Days was an extremely fulfilling film which combined the anxiety of long-term unemployment, the camaraderie of the unemployed and the need for empathy that even a spouse cannot provide.  Two people who wouldn't otherwise associate and who know their relationship is doomed still proceed because of their desparate isolation resulting from their unemployment and subsequent loss of self-worth. 

Dell'Isola and Tedeschi give outstanding performances. Tedeschi is the older sister of Carla Bruni, the wife of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Henri-Georges Clouzot: The Cinema of Disenchantment

The PFA presented a series called Henri-Georges Clouzot: The Cinema of Disenchantment in January and February. The series looked interesting but ran up against Noir City, Mostly British and SF Indiefest. I was only able to see four of the films in the series.

The Murderer Lives at Number 21 starring Pierre Fresnay & Suzy Delair; French with subtitles; (1942)
Quai des Orfèvres starring Louis Jouvet & Suzy Delair; French with subtitles; (1947)
Le corbeau starring Pierre Fresnay & Ginette Leclerc; French with subtitles; (1943)
Manon starring Cécile Aubry & Michel Auclair; French with subtitles; (1949)

All films were directed to Clouzot.

I become aware of Clouzot a little over a year ago when the Roxie screened Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno, a documentary (co-directed by Serge Bromberg) about the making of L'Enfer (English translation Inferno). Directed by Clouzot but beset by his indecisions and obsessive behavior, Inferno had an unlimited budget financed by Columbia Pictures. Made in 1964 but never released, Inferno remains the stuff of legend. Clouzot's widow told Bromberg that she had 185 reels of the film in storage which would be approximately 40 hours of raw footage. The clips of Inferno which were shown in the documentary were stunning and made me yearn for a finished product.

When I saw the Clouzot series on the PFA calendar, I resolved to see as many of the films as I could.

The Murderer Lives at Number 21 was notable for being made while France was under Nazi occupation. The film was a mystery-comedy hybrid involving a serial killer, the police detective trying to identify him and the cop's girlfriend - a scatterbrained actress who helps by going under cover at the boardinghouse where the killer is staying.

Number 21 had a large budget by occupation era standards. Intended to replace the big budget Hollywood films which were banned by the Nazis, I would guess that Number 21 was trying to achieve something between screwball comedy and The Thin Man. It didn't achieve it. Suzy Delair, who was Cluouzot's girlfriend at the time of filming, was very attracting and at times funny, but overall the comedy seemed forced and too contrived.

Quai des Orfèvres was a more traditional mystery/noir. Delair plays an aspiring actress with a jealous husband (for good reason) and a wealthy "benefactor." When said benefactor turns up murdered, the husband becomes the prime suspect. The motivations of Delair's character and some vivid characterizations of the supporting characters elevates Quai des Orfèvres beyond the standard pulp.

Le corbeau was my favorite of the four films. French for "the raven," Le corbeau is bleak film about a series of anonymous letters which sets a small town against itself. Based on true events from the 1920s, Le corbeau masterfully balances the mystery aspects of the author's identity against the observations of human behavior. All the characters have dirty secrets and behave disgracefully at times. Truly a cynical view of humanity (which likely mirrored Clouzot's own outlook), Le corbeau was later condemned by post-WWII French authorities seditious. Clouzot was blackballed for several years as a result of the film.

Another cynical tale, Manon is the story of Manon Lescaut (Cécile Aubry), a young woman about to be lynched for collaborating with the Nazis. Robert Dégrieux (Michel Auclair), a French Resistance hero is charged with guarding. They fall madly in love despite her likely collaboration and ample evidence of deceit in other areas. Convinced he has found his true love, Dégrieux helps Manon escape to Paris where the seek the help of her brother, a black marketeer. Quickly adapting to her brother's lavish lifestyle, Manon supplements her income by working in a high-end brothel. Seeing an opportunity to marry an American Army officer, Manon's brother detains Dégrieux so that Manon can sneak away. Enraged by her deception, Dégrieux kills the man. This is the point the film begins; like all good noir films, the story is told in flashbacks.

Manon, like Le corbeau, allows Clouzot to fully express his low opinion of humanity...at least, the French variation which he felt had mistreated him after misinterpreting Le corbeau. Based on the novel Manon Lescaut by Abbé Prévost, the film reminded me of another French classic - Madame Bovary. Ruining his own life for the love/lust of a woman, which is a very noir theme, Dégrieux is like so many other noir protagonists. Aubry, only 20 at the time of filming, shines as Manon. Retiring from film before age 32 and having acted in nine films, Manon only whetted my appetite to see more of Aubry which is unfortunately a severely limited endeavor.

Documentaries on French Film Directors

I saw two documentaries at the Roxie about French directors in February.

Two in the Wave; directed by Emmanuel Laurent; French with subtitles; (2010) - Official Website
Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno; directed by Serge Bromberg and Ruxandra Medrea; French with subtitles; (2009) - Official Website

Two in the Wave documented the relationship between François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno told the story of the making of Clouzot's L'Enfer (Inferno). Clouzot was plagued with indecision (possibly the result of a nervous breakdown) during the filming and never completed the film despite shooting 15 hours of footage. Salon.com calls it "The Greatest Film Never Made."

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It was until recently that I learned that Truffaut, Godard and Claude Chabrol wrote for Cahiers du Cinema at the same time in the 1950s. It was during this period that Truffaut and Godard became friends. Truffaut's The 400 Blows was the hit of the 1959 Cannes Film Festival and made him world famous. Using his newfound influence, Truffaut helped to get Godard's Breathless made in 1960. Godard and Truffaut share screenwriting credits on Breathless. Throughout the 1960s, Godard and Truffaut were preeminent in French cinema.

The two remained friends and shared politcal causes until the late 1960s when Godard's politics and film took on more radical elements. A series of public letters between the men created a permanent break in their relationship. Truffaut and Godard did not speak for the last decade or so of Truffaut's life (he died in 1984).

Two in the Wave documented the men's relationship and their films. It didn't add too much insight but presented the known facts in a clear manner so that people unfamiliar with their shared history (like me) could get an introduction.

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Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno was more provocative. Clouzot was best known for Diabolique (1955) but had a string of well received French films in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In 1964, Columbia Pictures gave him an unlimited budget to film his screenplay for Inferno. He cast popular German film star Romy Schneider as the female lead and Italian born Serge Reggiani as her jealous husband. The plot involved the husband's increasing jealous and ultimately madness.

Given Clouzot's unlimited budget and the discipline he showed on past films, much was expected from Inferno. Instead, Clouzot dithered during filming. He was unable to make decisions, argued with his actors and endlessly shot take after take of certain scenes. Clouzot had suffered from clinical depression earlier in his life. During the making of Inferno, Clouzot appeared to be suffering from some mental condition that made him obsessive about every aspect film to the point that nothing could get made. Reggiani walked off the set after several weeks of shooting and soon thereafter, Clouzot suffered a heart attack. The film was abandoned shortly afterwards.

Director Serge Bromberg was trapped in a elevator for two hours with Clouzot's widow. She told him about Inferno and the 185 reels of film she still had in storage. Bromberg decided to make a documentary on the film that never was. Bromberg used some of the original footage as well as interviews with surviving cast and crew (director Costa Gavras was part of the crew) and actors to enact scenes which weren't filmed.

Bromberg use of Clouzot's original footage is spectacular. Clouzot mixed tinted lenses and reverse motion photography to create stunning images. There are scenes of Schneider water skiing which a submlime as her hips sway when she makes a turn. In other scenes, she wears blue lipstick that give her an otherwordly appearance and must have been used to express her husband's descent into madness. Bromberg samples an array of Clouzot's footage and the effect on me was almost like an inferno. I longed to see the entire film which of course is impossible. Clouzot was clearly as master and Inferno could have been a masterpiece if he had held it together long enough to complete it. As for Schneider, I wonder if I can ever see a film with her without comparing it to her scenes in Inferno.