I think this film is a Masterpiece. But I am somewhat uncomfortable with this thought - why? This is a truly great movie - films like this have everything to do with why I fell in love with the idea of living in France. The frankness about love and sex, and about all of the similarities and differences between the two. That still seems so audacious. And the A Team brought its A Game: Carné, Prevert, Alexander Trauner, Maurice Jaubert, Gabin, Arletty, Jules Berry...all killing it. When Gabin puts on the leather jacket and goes through all that torture with a cigarette - it is perfection. Pre - War Existentialism at its finest! The shot of Françoise carrying the flowers down the alley by the factory - this is the kind of poetry that cinema alone is capable of.
So what's my problem? Something a bit unacknowledged - ly "pulpy" in its heart? Ultimately, is it a "real" Work of Art? How many films really are? Does this matter, in any way?
Carné's reputation is complicated. The younger generation - the Nouvelle Vague - really denigrated him, it seems. How much did this have to do with his being seen as a collaborator during the Nazi Occupation, and how much did this actually have to do with his style? He needed Prévert, that seems clear. Prévert - how does he do it? Screenplays with such a deeply poetic quality, still managing to move and inflect. Genius. Gabin - my favorite screen actor. What he doesn't know about screen acting isn't worth knowing. His poise. His coiled energy - that voice that, at the drop of a hat, can modulate from silence and repose into a vicious growl. Arletty - when I first saw her in Children of Paradise I was mesmerized. Every time I've heard someone say "But I don't understand why people fall all over her - she's not really THAT hot!" it has felt like a friendship dealbreaker. At the very least, it evokes Andrew Sarris' great line that anyone who resists Children of Paradise's charm deserves never to see Paris.
Maybe I see through this film a little bit. Maybe some of its gravitas seems not quite earned. But look at that set! That street! The crowds! All those fantastic details - the bored coat - check girl plunged into her book during the dog show. And that ending, with its brilliant pile - up of several key images, one at a time...which makes me think of what we lost when we lost Maurice Jaubert, not just a great film composer, but also a brilliant critic of film music and its meaning:
"In The Lost Patrol - -otherwise an admirable film- - the director was apparently alarmed by the silence of the desert in which the story was laid. He might well have realized the dramatic possibilities of silence, but instead he assaulted the ear -without a moment's pause- with a gratuitous orchestral accompaniment which nearly destroyed the reality of the visuals."
Well, Jaubert practiced what he preached - so much of this film is underscored by little more than subtle and ominous low - register percussion (tympani, but not only, I think...). Are those the storm clouds looming over Europe when this film was made? Or is that reading too much into it all?
And, after that question - one more question: how can the man who made Hôtel du Nord, Quai des Brumes. Le Jour Se Lève and Les Enfants du Paradis be considered more - or - less a Tradition de Qualité hack? These are the mysteries...Subjects for further study and reflection.
So what's my problem? Something a bit unacknowledged - ly "pulpy" in its heart? Ultimately, is it a "real" Work of Art? How many films really are? Does this matter, in any way?
Carné's reputation is complicated. The younger generation - the Nouvelle Vague - really denigrated him, it seems. How much did this have to do with his being seen as a collaborator during the Nazi Occupation, and how much did this actually have to do with his style? He needed Prévert, that seems clear. Prévert - how does he do it? Screenplays with such a deeply poetic quality, still managing to move and inflect. Genius. Gabin - my favorite screen actor. What he doesn't know about screen acting isn't worth knowing. His poise. His coiled energy - that voice that, at the drop of a hat, can modulate from silence and repose into a vicious growl. Arletty - when I first saw her in Children of Paradise I was mesmerized. Every time I've heard someone say "But I don't understand why people fall all over her - she's not really THAT hot!" it has felt like a friendship dealbreaker. At the very least, it evokes Andrew Sarris' great line that anyone who resists Children of Paradise's charm deserves never to see Paris.
Maybe I see through this film a little bit. Maybe some of its gravitas seems not quite earned. But look at that set! That street! The crowds! All those fantastic details - the bored coat - check girl plunged into her book during the dog show. And that ending, with its brilliant pile - up of several key images, one at a time...which makes me think of what we lost when we lost Maurice Jaubert, not just a great film composer, but also a brilliant critic of film music and its meaning:
"In The Lost Patrol - -otherwise an admirable film- - the director was apparently alarmed by the silence of the desert in which the story was laid. He might well have realized the dramatic possibilities of silence, but instead he assaulted the ear -without a moment's pause- with a gratuitous orchestral accompaniment which nearly destroyed the reality of the visuals."
Well, Jaubert practiced what he preached - so much of this film is underscored by little more than subtle and ominous low - register percussion (tympani, but not only, I think...). Are those the storm clouds looming over Europe when this film was made? Or is that reading too much into it all?
And, after that question - one more question: how can the man who made Hôtel du Nord, Quai des Brumes. Le Jour Se Lève and Les Enfants du Paradis be considered more - or - less a Tradition de Qualité hack? These are the mysteries...Subjects for further study and reflection.