Marie Bell is "Christine". She is recently widowed and going through her possessions when she discovers a dance card from her past. On it are the names of various men she knew - to varying degrees - back when she was a debutante attending a ball. She decides to track these men down and the film follows her as she tries to evaluate whether or not she married the right man, encountering each and considering where her (and their) future may have led had events played out differently. It also becomes apparent that these men, too, have found their lives impacted on by their relationship at the time with her. Some of their stories are tragic, some satisfying, some entertaining: we have a hen-pecked local mayor, a recluse, a priest, an hairdresser - who might not have proved to be her cup of tea, anyway. What "Christine" gradually comes to realise is that regret and wishful thinking are a two way street, and the poignancy of her journey is well encapsulated at the end when she meets a young man, much the same age as she was when her card was being filled. Bell is really effective here, she plays the role with nuance and an endearing charisma especially as she begins to realise the reciprocal effects of the characters' behaviour when they were all around sixteen years old. The dialogue is also quite well written with a degree of humour, frankness and realism that helped ensure director Julien Duvivier could sustain what might otherwise have been rather a long, and episodic, 2½ hours. This is an engaging lifetime retrospective that takes it's time and, I suspect, will leave us all with our own choice of whom she ought to have married (if anyone of them).
14 Reviews
Duvivier Didn't Like Women
boblipton3 November 2018
When her husband of 19 years dies at his desk in their magnificent Italian estate, Marie Bell goes in search of meaning to her life by visiting the men of her dance card from her first ball.
It's another example of Julien Duvivier's poetic realism, but from the viewpoint of the femme fatale. And here we have finally exposed what the f.f. Is thinking and it's... not much. After 19 years of married life, she concludes she never loved her husband and goes to find the men who swore they'd love her forever and find out what she's been missing.
In other words, it's another soap opera of the type that does not appeal to me. Mlle Bell has gotten everything she had bargained for, and, being unhappy, feels no need to give up anything in the exchange for happiness.
I suspect Duvivier felt the same way as I. He rarely seemed to like any of the women in his movies.
Despite that, I found this a very enjoyable movie, because of the men she goes to visit. While some of them have depressing stories, some of them have gotten on with their lives, like Raimu, Harry Baur, and in a beautiful performance, Louis Jouvet. The best of them have learned to compromise with their ambitions, and have some satisfaction. The others, not so much.
It's another example of Julien Duvivier's poetic realism, but from the viewpoint of the femme fatale. And here we have finally exposed what the f.f. Is thinking and it's... not much. After 19 years of married life, she concludes she never loved her husband and goes to find the men who swore they'd love her forever and find out what she's been missing.
In other words, it's another soap opera of the type that does not appeal to me. Mlle Bell has gotten everything she had bargained for, and, being unhappy, feels no need to give up anything in the exchange for happiness.
I suspect Duvivier felt the same way as I. He rarely seemed to like any of the women in his movies.
Despite that, I found this a very enjoyable movie, because of the men she goes to visit. While some of them have depressing stories, some of them have gotten on with their lives, like Raimu, Harry Baur, and in a beautiful performance, Louis Jouvet. The best of them have learned to compromise with their ambitions, and have some satisfaction. The others, not so much.
Where is she now?
AAdaSC25 August 2022
Newly widowed Marie Bell (Christine) is clearing out her house when she chances upon her dance-card from her first ball which she attended when she was 16. She is feeling nostalgic and determines to track down each name on the card to see how they are doing in life. Who knows, maybe a love will rekindle?
The film is a series of set pieces as Marie sets about her mission and each name on the card is given a short section. This made the film tolerable to watch as beforehand I was thinking to myself "Oh my goodness, this film is almost 2 and a half hours long!" Well, it doesn't seem like it and that is a credit to the director and the actors and actresses involved. In fact, the film is constantly entertaining even if it does focus on some downbeat situations. You can definitely relate to these people. My favourite story is the one that concerns the priest as it shows how life can move on from sadness in a positive way. I do have 1 question, though - what is that ending about!!? Is that a blossoming romance!!?
In real life, sentimental reflections just make me sad so I don't see the point but this film is worth a watch even if the topic is somewhat asking for trouble. I googled a friend when I was reminiscing of past times and found out that he had become a Hollywood stuntman and had jumped from a plane but his parachute failed to open. Miraculously, he survived as some tree branches broke his fall. He broke every bone in his body and his memory has been affected. I wish I hadn't looked him up! This film is a bit like that but more fun.
The film is a series of set pieces as Marie sets about her mission and each name on the card is given a short section. This made the film tolerable to watch as beforehand I was thinking to myself "Oh my goodness, this film is almost 2 and a half hours long!" Well, it doesn't seem like it and that is a credit to the director and the actors and actresses involved. In fact, the film is constantly entertaining even if it does focus on some downbeat situations. You can definitely relate to these people. My favourite story is the one that concerns the priest as it shows how life can move on from sadness in a positive way. I do have 1 question, though - what is that ending about!!? Is that a blossoming romance!!?
In real life, sentimental reflections just make me sad so I don't see the point but this film is worth a watch even if the topic is somewhat asking for trouble. I googled a friend when I was reminiscing of past times and found out that he had become a Hollywood stuntman and had jumped from a plane but his parachute failed to open. Miraculously, he survived as some tree branches broke his fall. He broke every bone in his body and his memory has been affected. I wish I hadn't looked him up! This film is a bit like that but more fun.
Duvivier le magnifique.
dbdumonteil22 July 2002
While Godard and co were still in diapers,Duvivier,Renoir and Carné were inventing the best French cinema that had ever been. I would trade you all M."A bout de soufflé" filmography for "un carnet de bal"
Leonard Maltin gives a four stars rating to this 1937 movie,and all we can do is approve of his judgment.The movie of nostalgia,of time passing by,of disenchantment,"un carnet de bal" is all this and more.
On the banks of a lake -the romantic place par excellence-,a woman is remembering her past.Her madeleine de Proust is her dance card ."Memories tumbling like sweets from a jar".But these sweets leave a bitter taste in the mouth.
She goes back in the past,in search of her long lost dance partners. She will have to delude herself:what she discovers is ruined lives,regrets,embittered characters,human wrecks.Time is a hard Master and it leaves no one unharmed.As always in Duvivier's work,the harder they fall,the better the sketches are.For it is basically a movie made up of sketches,Julien Duvivier's métier.All youth ideals have gone down the drain:the brilliant medicine student has become an abortionist;the lawyer with bright prospects now has a lousy shady cabaret;one of the woman's beaus is dead and his mother gone nuts acts as if he's still alive.Two of them have escaped from a doomed fate:but one has become a priest and the other keeps his love for something else than women .
The movie made up of sketches ,as I said, had always been Duvivier's forte.Here ,there are seven flashbacks,one prologue and one short epilogue :strange how this final resembles that of Mitchell Leisen's "to each his own" (1942),when the boy says to Olivia De Havilland:"I think it's our dance mother".Having directed with a topflight cast "tales of Manhattan" (1942) in America,Duvivier went even further in the "sketches movie":in "sous le ciel de Paris" ,he used intertwined little stories till all these subplots became a seamless whole.
Yes ,Julien Duvivier's importance in the seventh art is incalculable.
Leonard Maltin gives a four stars rating to this 1937 movie,and all we can do is approve of his judgment.The movie of nostalgia,of time passing by,of disenchantment,"un carnet de bal" is all this and more.
On the banks of a lake -the romantic place par excellence-,a woman is remembering her past.Her madeleine de Proust is her dance card ."Memories tumbling like sweets from a jar".But these sweets leave a bitter taste in the mouth.
She goes back in the past,in search of her long lost dance partners. She will have to delude herself:what she discovers is ruined lives,regrets,embittered characters,human wrecks.Time is a hard Master and it leaves no one unharmed.As always in Duvivier's work,the harder they fall,the better the sketches are.For it is basically a movie made up of sketches,Julien Duvivier's métier.All youth ideals have gone down the drain:the brilliant medicine student has become an abortionist;the lawyer with bright prospects now has a lousy shady cabaret;one of the woman's beaus is dead and his mother gone nuts acts as if he's still alive.Two of them have escaped from a doomed fate:but one has become a priest and the other keeps his love for something else than women .
The movie made up of sketches ,as I said, had always been Duvivier's forte.Here ,there are seven flashbacks,one prologue and one short epilogue :strange how this final resembles that of Mitchell Leisen's "to each his own" (1942),when the boy says to Olivia De Havilland:"I think it's our dance mother".Having directed with a topflight cast "tales of Manhattan" (1942) in America,Duvivier went even further in the "sketches movie":in "sous le ciel de Paris" ,he used intertwined little stories till all these subplots became a seamless whole.
Yes ,Julien Duvivier's importance in the seventh art is incalculable.
Incomparable!
raf-582 February 2017
J'adore Ce film! But "Christine"? Where did that come from? I've only ever known it as Un Carnet DE Bal, with Valse Gris permanently etched into my mind.
I saw it first around 1941 when I was 14, during the war, at the long lamented Academy cinema on London's Oxford Street. It turned up there periodically, along with La Femme Du Boulanger, Le Jour SE Leve, The Strange Case of David Gray (a renamed Vampyr), La Fin Du Jour, and some other prewar classics. Great stuff for a schoolboy! Previously I've had it on a censored Korean DVD (the Marseilles sequence had been removed) but now,happily,it's available complete as a gloriously restored Bluray. Gaumont,you have our huge thanks!
It's a magnificent film, a bit wordy perhaps here and there but they're good French words. It's a lasting achievement by a superb cast and crew at the top of their game.
And with great respect let's give thought to Harry Baur and Robert Lynen (Duvivier's Poil de Carotte), both murdered by the Nazis during the occupation.
I saw it first around 1941 when I was 14, during the war, at the long lamented Academy cinema on London's Oxford Street. It turned up there periodically, along with La Femme Du Boulanger, Le Jour SE Leve, The Strange Case of David Gray (a renamed Vampyr), La Fin Du Jour, and some other prewar classics. Great stuff for a schoolboy! Previously I've had it on a censored Korean DVD (the Marseilles sequence had been removed) but now,happily,it's available complete as a gloriously restored Bluray. Gaumont,you have our huge thanks!
It's a magnificent film, a bit wordy perhaps here and there but they're good French words. It's a lasting achievement by a superb cast and crew at the top of their game.
And with great respect let's give thought to Harry Baur and Robert Lynen (Duvivier's Poil de Carotte), both murdered by the Nazis during the occupation.
More Soap Than Ivory Factory - Un Carnet de Bal
arthur_tafero25 March 2022
Labeled "Christine" in American movie houses, this French import was known as Un Carnet de Bal in France. It is a highly stylish soap that examines the fantasies of a wealthy French woman who wonders what happened to the dancing partners she had during a ball in her youth. She seeks them out one by one with various results. The cinematography and music in this film is outstanding and are the real stars of the film. Add a star if you are a fan of soap.
Shadow Waltz
writers_reign10 September 2006
Warning: Spoilers
This is one of the Great ones: In terms of French cinema in the first full decade of Sound it belongs right up there with Marius, Fanny, Cesar, Quai des Brumes, Le Jour se leve, La Femme du boulanger, La Grande Illusion and you can't put anything higher than that though Duvivier's own La Belle equipe and Pepe Le Moko both come within a whisker. It's the kind of film that would be difficult to make today as would, for example, Dial M For Murder. Frederick Knott wrote Dial as a play in the early fifties and the Hitchcock film version was released in 1954 BUT the entire plot (our old friend the 'perfect' murder) hinged on the fact that in those days only the upper and middle classes had telephones at all and those were in fixed locations and in this era of jack points and cell phones the idea of someone obliged to answer a telephone located on a desk in front of heavy drapes behind which a murderer was lurking ready to strike when the phone was answered would be ludicrous. Carnet is similar inasmuch as 'dance cards' are unheard of today belonging as they do to a world of stately dancing and courtly manners where even a 'nice' girl would as soon turn up to a dance totally naked as without a 'full' dance card - many of us will remember how, in Meet Me In St Louis, Judy Garland and Lucille Bremner 'marked' the dance card of an out-of-towner loading it with every dead-beat in town. So, yes, it is archaic but fortunately those of us who care to can have archaic and eat it courtesy of the Art/Revival House, Movie Channels on TV and/or the DVD. Living by a lake a widow comes face to face with what today we would call a mid-life crisis; vaguely melancholic and slightly wistful lest she did, as she suspects, marry the wrong man, she allows her thoughts to drift to her first dance and the names on her very first dance card who, on a whim, she decides to trace. WE know of course that you can't go home again even if we've never even heard of Tom Wolfe let alone read him but thankfully Christine feels otherwise. It was a nice touch to find that the first name on the card is dead - but try telling that to his mother, the great Francoise Rosay - as if to say right from the word go that love dies, baby, if you neglect it. One by one via a night-club semi racketeer, a monk, a ski instructor, the mayor of a small town, an epileptic doctor with a lucrative sideline in abortion and a gay hairdresser the scales fall and/or are stripped from her eyes leaving her sadder but wiser. Some of the top names in French cinema step up to the plate, Harry Baur, Louis Jouvet, Fernandel etc and no one strikes out. Henri Jeanson and Julien Duvivier brought honour to the French cinema with this one that remains a must-see and before I sign off let me acknowledge a genuine altruistic contributor to these boards who, with exceptional kindness, sent me not only this gem but seventeen others. Watch this space.
High-class (and influential) "chick flick"
gridoon202410 October 2021
Warning: Spoilers
"Un Carnet De Bal" is one of the earliest multi-episode films in screen history, and like most that followed in a similar vein, it is uneven: my favorite segments (out of 7 in total) are the 1st, with Françoise Rosay (a touching treatise on grief), and the 6th, with Pierre Blanchar (which deliberately plays like a horror movie, shot in one apartment, exclusively with titled camera angles, and surrounded by the incessant noise of large mechanical cranes working outside). In a couple of the other episodes, Duvivier gives a tad too much of a free reign to some of the guest stars to "do their thing", deviating from the main storyline. **1/2 out of 4.
A quintessential film of the classic age of French cinema
Peekie24 January 1999
This is one of the quintessential films of the classic age of French cinema. One just has to look at the credits: directed by Duvivier, with Fernandel, Baur, Jouvet (one of his best roles), Marie Bell, Francoise Rosay... all of them at the peak of their form. And held together musically by Jaubert's haunting theme melody, which I can still hum in the nostalgia cupboard of my memory fifty years after I first heard it.
The story is slight. Actually it is a series of vignettes, strung together by the bittersweet pilgrimage of a woman who sets out to find again the men who signed her first dance card. But that is just a pretext for a marvelous set of character sketches played by a marvelous cast of character actors served by a great character director.
The story is slight. Actually it is a series of vignettes, strung together by the bittersweet pilgrimage of a woman who sets out to find again the men who signed her first dance card. But that is just a pretext for a marvelous set of character sketches played by a marvelous cast of character actors served by a great character director.
a film you never forget
bertelis21 March 2003
i saw this film for the first time 1946, and was completely spellbound. last time i saw this film beginning of March 2003. the magic was still there. i understood the film much better,enjoed it more. Who can ever forget the haunting melody of the walz or the final episode with Fernandel.
Solitude is the same everywhere.
brogmiller5 May 2020
'Carnet du Bal' is a beautifully realised piece by one of the truly great directors and comes from the 'Golden Age' of French cinema.
A film of elegance and grace but also of ineffable sadness and regret that deals with failure and the ravages of time.
A rich widow comes across a dance card of a ball she attended at the age of sixteen. She decides to seek out the men with whom she danced to see how Life has treated them. None of them alas has realised his dreams or fulfilled his potential which will no doubt strike a chord with most viewers. The film at least ends on an upbeat as she adopts the son of the first man on the card who had committed suicide for love of her.The success of this film resulted in Julien Duvivier being invited to direct'The Great Waltz' in Hollywood. He would return to the multi-story format on more than than one occasion but not as effectively. The cast is pure gold and represents France's finest, the likes of whom are gone forever.
Poetic and beautiful
cobros15 June 2000
"Un Carnet de Bal" is a poem made movie. Like Christine, everybody had gone into his past, looking for the point of break, which decided one way, in order to rectify ours errors.
Finally, "Un Carnet de Bal" is a film for all the time.
Finally, "Un Carnet de Bal" is a film for all the time.
"Go fool someone else"
evening113 December 2020
Warning: Spoilers
What an incredible film!
This ethereal experience comes to us through the consciousness of new widow Christine (Marie Belle), a woman of wealth and sensitivity who is "alone in the world" -- but for misty memories of her first ball, 20 years earlier, at age 16. "One must know how to live -- I never learned."
So Christine sets out to find the young men with whom she had danced on that night of far-off youth. What she discovers both moves and stuns her. She's a consummate listener, that rare soul on whom nothing is lost.
"Girls are cruel at 16 -- unaware of the pain a single word can cause." Ah, yes, how very true, I recognized as the mom of an 18-year-old boy. There are many moments of recognition in this film.
It's powerful to see how the men are affected by Christine's reappearance. Most remember her distinctly.
There's failed lawyer and petty thief Jo, with whom Christine had explored the poetry of Francis Jammes (who penned "Marie, je vous salu," immortalized by the Georges Brassens ballad).
Then there's "mon pere," the priest who had aspired to compose and now patiently directs a choir of rowdy boys. "I've seen many die," he tells Christine, on learning she's a widow. "People think I have everything," Christine tells him. "My life is empty." Others in the teenage musician's audience had been rapt at his creation, but Alain had noticed Christine distracted by another boy, and it changed his life's course. "God has been good to me," he says. "He led me to seek."
Then there is a rugged, skiing mountain man. Christine can envisage remaining with him. But he's fatally restless, unwilling to focus, refuses to say she was pretty. There's been a fatal avalanche, and "Il faut que j'aille," he says. Ah, the man who can't commit -- I also know him well! Wisely, Christine departs.
And, le maire. He recognizes Christine instantly, as if she's never left his mind -- "J'etais fou de toi." His ability to appreciate runs deep. Despite success in leadership, this man's been bitterly stung -- in the form of an adopted, hooligan son. We sense he'll find some comfort in his new bride -- "I'm lucky to have you, old girl." (Along the way we learn he nearly drowned for Christine: "A fellow who has never drowned himself for a woman has never been young.")
And then there's a half-blind doctor, a veteran of Indochina and "the bush," seemingly reduced to performing abortions for a living, but too depressed by a horrible marriage to leave his bed most of the time. He finds a moment of hope in being called a friend, and imagines "perhaps reading the same books" as the lady traveler.
Once back at home, Christine muses that "not a one lived up to his youth." But there's one man left from her dance card -- Gerard -- perhaps the only one of the bunch whose love she'd returned. And Christine finds her happy ending, of a most unexpected kind. Indeed, it's hard to imagine any film ending as happily as this one.
And yet, along the way, for all its musings about love, the movie (for me) shows the folly of moving from the courting stage to one of permanence. This is highlighted by the mayor, as he asks his maid -- and soon-to-be wife -- to call him Sir one more time. There is something in the jump from fantasy to what's real that seems to eliminate the magic.
In the end our Christine becomes a "stepmother." And maybe it's family ties that are as good as it gets.
This ethereal experience comes to us through the consciousness of new widow Christine (Marie Belle), a woman of wealth and sensitivity who is "alone in the world" -- but for misty memories of her first ball, 20 years earlier, at age 16. "One must know how to live -- I never learned."
So Christine sets out to find the young men with whom she had danced on that night of far-off youth. What she discovers both moves and stuns her. She's a consummate listener, that rare soul on whom nothing is lost.
"Girls are cruel at 16 -- unaware of the pain a single word can cause." Ah, yes, how very true, I recognized as the mom of an 18-year-old boy. There are many moments of recognition in this film.
It's powerful to see how the men are affected by Christine's reappearance. Most remember her distinctly.
There's failed lawyer and petty thief Jo, with whom Christine had explored the poetry of Francis Jammes (who penned "Marie, je vous salu," immortalized by the Georges Brassens ballad).
Then there's "mon pere," the priest who had aspired to compose and now patiently directs a choir of rowdy boys. "I've seen many die," he tells Christine, on learning she's a widow. "People think I have everything," Christine tells him. "My life is empty." Others in the teenage musician's audience had been rapt at his creation, but Alain had noticed Christine distracted by another boy, and it changed his life's course. "God has been good to me," he says. "He led me to seek."
Then there is a rugged, skiing mountain man. Christine can envisage remaining with him. But he's fatally restless, unwilling to focus, refuses to say she was pretty. There's been a fatal avalanche, and "Il faut que j'aille," he says. Ah, the man who can't commit -- I also know him well! Wisely, Christine departs.
And, le maire. He recognizes Christine instantly, as if she's never left his mind -- "J'etais fou de toi." His ability to appreciate runs deep. Despite success in leadership, this man's been bitterly stung -- in the form of an adopted, hooligan son. We sense he'll find some comfort in his new bride -- "I'm lucky to have you, old girl." (Along the way we learn he nearly drowned for Christine: "A fellow who has never drowned himself for a woman has never been young.")
And then there's a half-blind doctor, a veteran of Indochina and "the bush," seemingly reduced to performing abortions for a living, but too depressed by a horrible marriage to leave his bed most of the time. He finds a moment of hope in being called a friend, and imagines "perhaps reading the same books" as the lady traveler.
Once back at home, Christine muses that "not a one lived up to his youth." But there's one man left from her dance card -- Gerard -- perhaps the only one of the bunch whose love she'd returned. And Christine finds her happy ending, of a most unexpected kind. Indeed, it's hard to imagine any film ending as happily as this one.
And yet, along the way, for all its musings about love, the movie (for me) shows the folly of moving from the courting stage to one of permanence. This is highlighted by the mayor, as he asks his maid -- and soon-to-be wife -- to call him Sir one more time. There is something in the jump from fantasy to what's real that seems to eliminate the magic.
In the end our Christine becomes a "stepmother." And maybe it's family ties that are as good as it gets.
One of the great classics of 1930's French cinema.
MOscarbradley23 July 2023
One of the great classics of 1930's French cinema and one of cinema's great ;memory' pictures, "Un Carnet de Bal" has, sadly, fallen out of fashion in these more cynical times despite its being a surprisingly hard-nosed and often bleak movie. The plot revolves around recently widowed Christine as she tracks down the men she danced with from an old dance programme of twenty years before, (when she was sweet sixteen). Of course, each of them has changed drastically, almost to the point where they are no longer recognizable; in fact two are already dead and as Christine explores her past some harsh truths emerge.
Marie Bell is a luminous Christine, the great Francoise Rosay is magnificent as the mother of a boy who may have killed himself for love and a whole host of great French actors of the period play the survivors and potential suitors. There are flawless performances from Harry Baur, Pierre Blanchar, Fernandel, Louis Jouvet, Raimu and Pierre Richard-Willm. It also represents the high point in Julien Duvivier's career and was at one time considered among the greatest films ever made. It cries out for rediscovery.
Marie Bell is a luminous Christine, the great Francoise Rosay is magnificent as the mother of a boy who may have killed himself for love and a whole host of great French actors of the period play the survivors and potential suitors. There are flawless performances from Harry Baur, Pierre Blanchar, Fernandel, Louis Jouvet, Raimu and Pierre Richard-Willm. It also represents the high point in Julien Duvivier's career and was at one time considered among the greatest films ever made. It cries out for rediscovery.
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