The movie's middle section has a pain and desolation perhaps not seen since in Rohmer's work, as the musician slowly slides into homelessness, poverty and borderline madness. Rohmer, with a perfectly measured tone, captures all the tiny escalating humiliations as he wanders through a largely deserted Paris in the heat. Then the musician takes up with a wandering clown, and the movie takes on a broad comic tone again, not seen since in Rohmer, creating an odd symmetry with the movie s early section, when the musician wrongly thinks he's won an inheritance and parties himself into the state of poverty. That kind of symmetry is emblematic of the movie's weakest element - its unenlightening interest in fate and chance and paths of destiny (inherent in the title, in the deus ex machina ending which finds him inheriting the money after all when his cousin's killed in a freak accident, and in the final shot - after his friends have found him and taken him away to restart his life - which pulls away from the earth to show a heavenly constellation (of Leo, I suppose)). There's little here of the smart conversation and introspection that marks Rohmer's later movies, and what there is verges on parody - the smart set gets to seem pretty trivial and inconsequential against the travails of its protagonist. The sequences of him eyeing food, eavesdropping on snippets of life, trying unsuccessfully to shoplift etc. are utterly stark and simple and moving.
12 Reviews
LE SIGNE DU LION (Eric Rohmer, 1959) ***
Bunuel19762 July 2006
Warning: Spoilers
I've said often enough that the fact that Eric Rohmer (together with Yasujiro Ozu and Jacques Tati) is a film critics' darling is something of a mystery to me. Still, I've persevered and watched 9 films of his so far (I could have sworn they had been less myself!) and I'll probably rent MY NIGHT AT MAUD'S (1969) as well in the near future...
Anyway, since this film came out during that initial burst of creativity which propelled the French Nouvelle Vague movement onto the international stage, I did not wish to miss an opportunity to watch it even if only via an Italian-dubbed version. Indeed, some of its detractors decry the fact that, being Rohmer's first feature-length film and released as it was in between Truffaut's THE 400 BLOWS (1959) and Godard's BREATHLESS (1960), the film is tinged more with a predisposition towards cine-verite' (and perhaps mercifully so) than with Rohmer's uniquely sensitive style which he subsequently became renowned for. Having often found his films relentlessly talky and frustratingly mundane, those of his fans which have yet to experience this one (or have perhaps stayed away because of this difference in directorial ideology), I will reassure them by saying that the film's first third was typically Rohmerian. This section, however, was alleviated for me by the surprising (and amusingly silent) appearance of Jean-Luc Godard who plays a party guest (who even seems to come out of nowhere) moodily walking through the living room, smoking a cigarette and forever fiddling with a gramophone! Other notable 'friends' contributing to Rohmer's first feature-length venture are screenwriter Paul Gegauff, producer Claude Chabrol and actress Stephane Audran.
The story deals with an American ex-patriate (Jess Hahn) who apparently inherits a vast sum of money from his dead aunt and consequently celebrates himself into a state of extreme poverty. However, as luck would have it, he had misinterpreted the telegram and all his inheritance effectively went to a distant cousin. The film's lengthy (and mostly silent) middle-section consists of nothing but an increasingly disheveled Hahn walking the streets of Paris, going in and out of telephone boxes and hotel lobbies asking after his "friends" in the hope that they'll lend him a sum of money enough for him to get a roof over his head and a loaf of bread into his belly! While at first I was ready to beg for something to actually happen during this section of the film, in hindsight this was perhaps its highlight and certainly a remarkable sequence coming from Rohmer. Of course, the continuous location shooting was not only required by the film's narrative but must have proved fundamental in keeping the production costs down.
The third and final section, then, sees a reversal of fortune for Hahn's character. After taking up with a clownish tramp (who sarcastically dubs him "The Baron") and performing their routines on the streets to the bourgeois restauranteurs, a journalist friend chances upon him in the gutter one night whereupon he informs him that Hahn's rich cousin has met with a fatal car accident and that he is now effectively a member of high society! As they drive exuberantly off in the journalist's car, Rohmer ends the film by panning to a wonderfully inspired shot of the constellation (presumably to justify the title). Incidentally, I'm of the Sign of Leo myself...
Anyway, since this film came out during that initial burst of creativity which propelled the French Nouvelle Vague movement onto the international stage, I did not wish to miss an opportunity to watch it even if only via an Italian-dubbed version. Indeed, some of its detractors decry the fact that, being Rohmer's first feature-length film and released as it was in between Truffaut's THE 400 BLOWS (1959) and Godard's BREATHLESS (1960), the film is tinged more with a predisposition towards cine-verite' (and perhaps mercifully so) than with Rohmer's uniquely sensitive style which he subsequently became renowned for. Having often found his films relentlessly talky and frustratingly mundane, those of his fans which have yet to experience this one (or have perhaps stayed away because of this difference in directorial ideology), I will reassure them by saying that the film's first third was typically Rohmerian. This section, however, was alleviated for me by the surprising (and amusingly silent) appearance of Jean-Luc Godard who plays a party guest (who even seems to come out of nowhere) moodily walking through the living room, smoking a cigarette and forever fiddling with a gramophone! Other notable 'friends' contributing to Rohmer's first feature-length venture are screenwriter Paul Gegauff, producer Claude Chabrol and actress Stephane Audran.
The story deals with an American ex-patriate (Jess Hahn) who apparently inherits a vast sum of money from his dead aunt and consequently celebrates himself into a state of extreme poverty. However, as luck would have it, he had misinterpreted the telegram and all his inheritance effectively went to a distant cousin. The film's lengthy (and mostly silent) middle-section consists of nothing but an increasingly disheveled Hahn walking the streets of Paris, going in and out of telephone boxes and hotel lobbies asking after his "friends" in the hope that they'll lend him a sum of money enough for him to get a roof over his head and a loaf of bread into his belly! While at first I was ready to beg for something to actually happen during this section of the film, in hindsight this was perhaps its highlight and certainly a remarkable sequence coming from Rohmer. Of course, the continuous location shooting was not only required by the film's narrative but must have proved fundamental in keeping the production costs down.
The third and final section, then, sees a reversal of fortune for Hahn's character. After taking up with a clownish tramp (who sarcastically dubs him "The Baron") and performing their routines on the streets to the bourgeois restauranteurs, a journalist friend chances upon him in the gutter one night whereupon he informs him that Hahn's rich cousin has met with a fatal car accident and that he is now effectively a member of high society! As they drive exuberantly off in the journalist's car, Rohmer ends the film by panning to a wonderfully inspired shot of the constellation (presumably to justify the title). Incidentally, I'm of the Sign of Leo myself...
What happens when all your friends are out of town?
Red-12515 December 2020
The French film Le signe du lion (1962) was shown in the U.S. with the translated title The Sign of Leo. The movie was co-written and directed by
Éric Rohmer.
Jess Hahn portrays Pierre Wesselrin, who is a decent enough guy, and a talented violinist and composer. Pierre's weakness is that he doesn't really have a source of income. He drifts along by accepting gifts from his friends.
One day, he receives a message that he's become rich. Armed with that expectation of money, he borrows from his friends and throws a magnificent party. The only problem is that he didn't actually become rich, and now he's down and out.
Usually, he would just turn to his friends for help, but they are all out of town. It never occurs to him to get a job, or even play the violin as a busker. What he does instead is walk.
My next sentence about a Rohmer film should be "they talk, and then they talk some more, and then they keep talking." Not this time! What Pierre does is walk. Then he walks some more, then he keeps walking.
Jess Hahn is a fine actor, and the film works because we can believe what we see on screen. Quite a bit of this film takes place outside as Pierre walks. It would probably work better on the large screen, but it worked well enough on DVD. The movie has a good IMDb rating of 7.3. I thought it was better than that and rated it 8. P.S. Watch for the incomparable Stéphane Audran in a small role as the hotel owner who turns Pierre out into the street when he can't pay his bill.
Jess Hahn portrays Pierre Wesselrin, who is a decent enough guy, and a talented violinist and composer. Pierre's weakness is that he doesn't really have a source of income. He drifts along by accepting gifts from his friends.
One day, he receives a message that he's become rich. Armed with that expectation of money, he borrows from his friends and throws a magnificent party. The only problem is that he didn't actually become rich, and now he's down and out.
Usually, he would just turn to his friends for help, but they are all out of town. It never occurs to him to get a job, or even play the violin as a busker. What he does instead is walk.
My next sentence about a Rohmer film should be "they talk, and then they talk some more, and then they keep talking." Not this time! What Pierre does is walk. Then he walks some more, then he keeps walking.
Jess Hahn is a fine actor, and the film works because we can believe what we see on screen. Quite a bit of this film takes place outside as Pierre walks. It would probably work better on the large screen, but it worked well enough on DVD. The movie has a good IMDb rating of 7.3. I thought it was better than that and rated it 8. P.S. Watch for the incomparable Stéphane Audran in a small role as the hotel owner who turns Pierre out into the street when he can't pay his bill.
A "street movie"
jandesimpson24 September 2004
It is generally easy to detect stylistic or thematic indicators of what is to come in the first features of directors of originality. There are however notable exceptions such as Kazan's "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn", a worthy but wholly commercial venture, that give little of their creators away. Erich Rohmer's "Le Signe du Lion" however is in an altogether different category. You would expect something of the director's unique way of looking at the world to be present in what is in every sense a significant example of early French New Wave cinema and yet there is nothing I can detect that links it with, for example, "Ma Nuit Chez Maud" or the "Four Seasons" tetralogy. Rohmer went on to become the master of the conversation piece where characters chat endlessly about their philosophy of life, the interchange with others being all-important. How is it that in "Le Signe du Lion" there is so little in the way of dialogue and that in the lengthy central part of the film we simply observe the main character wandering the streets of Paris bereft of friends and money? Pierre is a forty-something American musician who does not appear to have achieved much apart from a violin sonata that often punctuates the film in a way that is again untypical of a director who tends to use very little and more often no background music. Equally untypical is this character who shows little interest in interreacting with others unless it be to touch them for money, the lack of which is the root of his downfall. "Le Signe du Lion" is therefore unique in Rohmer's output in being a solo piece. Other characters are around but they scarcely matter. This is his "Carrie" but unlike the Wyler masterpiece there is no Carrie, only a Hurstwood who slides down the slippery slope into degradation when an expected legacy fails to materialise and friends he might borrow from are all away on holiday. Like Hurstwood, Pierre suffers early on from the tragedy of his only suit being ruined. Later this is followed by his only pair of shoes falling apart. From then on it is but a short step to his acceptance of the lifestyle of a tramp and beggar. The term "road movie" like "film noir" has become a matter of common parlance. May I be allowed to coin a term, that I am not aware of having been used, for a particular genre - "street movie" - one that depicts characters wandering in a city, often round and round in circles in search of something that eludes them, the city becoming progressively more alien. Such a genre would include "Odd Man Out", "Bicycle Thieves", "The Third Man" and certainly this early work by Rohmer. Perhaps because it is so untypical of its director it has become undeservedly overshadowed by works such as "Le Beau Serge", "Les Quatre Cent Coups" and "A Bout de Soufflé" and yet, particularly in the extended sequence of Pierre shuffling aimlessly around the streets of Paris, it can hold its own in this august company. A rather glib ending apart, it remains of of Rohmer's finest achievements.
Paris is in the foreground
melinetto11 February 2022
Warning: Spoilers
It's the first movie i ever saw from Éric Rohmer. This is one tragicomical narrative and i think it's a good plot here and it has a great plot-twist at the end. The story is turned over to the audience really well in my opinion. Pierre Wesselrin the main character had some long walks in the streets of Paris like most of the movie and particularly, i like that and those scenes are shot well in a directorial way when you think about it.
Jess Hahn is good for the entire film and he fits his role both by an appearance and acting way as Pierre who is kinda a guy that is full of it, inconsiderate and self-obsessed but i really like the performance of Jean Le Poulain as Le clochard.
When you think about the film, the scenery is really important part of it, you know, the streets, the roads, the buildings, the bridges, cafes and restaurants etc. Honestly, it kinda makes me wanting to go to Paris. Particularly, it's satisfying visually to see Pierre walks along the River Seine.
It's Éric Rohmer's first feature film and as i said, it was his first film I've watched and i can say that i like his directing style. If you have a thing for Paris, you should watch it.
Jess Hahn is good for the entire film and he fits his role both by an appearance and acting way as Pierre who is kinda a guy that is full of it, inconsiderate and self-obsessed but i really like the performance of Jean Le Poulain as Le clochard.
When you think about the film, the scenery is really important part of it, you know, the streets, the roads, the buildings, the bridges, cafes and restaurants etc. Honestly, it kinda makes me wanting to go to Paris. Particularly, it's satisfying visually to see Pierre walks along the River Seine.
It's Éric Rohmer's first feature film and as i said, it was his first film I've watched and i can say that i like his directing style. If you have a thing for Paris, you should watch it.
Early, outspoken Rohmer
oOgiandujaOo_and_Eddy_Merckx8 July 2009
This film was made right at the birth of the New Wave, in the same year as Chabrol's second film, the seminal New Wave missile Les Cousins (incidentally Le Signe de Lion was produced by Chabrol), and Truffaut's first big knockout blow, the 400 blows. Godard was only to get his act together in the following year, 1960, with Breathless.
To me this is a masterpiece cut from the same cloth. There are glimpses of mysticism in Rohmer's film The Green Ray, but really this film takes that a lot further, it's a movie that really plays around with chance and fortune. Pierre Wesselrin, of Germano-American origin, is a small-time Parisian composer who has never made a cent out of his music. He talks a lot about having been lucky all his life, and he is, he's fallen in with a crowd of rich friends and he's always bathed in rive gauche society, even though he's not a great talent and is very lazy, he seems to be able to get people to give him money. There's a very Rivettian feel to the start of the movie, Wesselrin throws a party and you have, for example, this guy who is indoors at nighttime wearing dark glasses, he's listening to this febrile, screeching section of some classical music over and over again, repeatedly bringing back the needle of the record player. There's these little throwaway poetical typically French sophistries where they talk allegorically about Venus, and a woman says that no-one lives there because it's too close to the sun, it's good but I'm sure it sounds better in a marijuana haze.
So I don't want to give too much of the plot away, but there ends up being a lot of solitary wandering about Paris. I thought the ultimate poetic vision of Paris was Rivette's Paris Belongs To Us, but this is up there on that level. Rohmer somehow makes Paris feel like a giant coffin, or a kind of Byzantine, encrusted, cemetery.
There's the traditional view of this film which concerns the perils of believing in one's good fortunes, but I think on the whole it's far more mystical, really pointing at Wesslrin's life being ruled by the stars. It's just gorgeous as well. They must have built the walkways along the Seine when people believed in Arcadia, which they don't anymore. The photography just blows me away, favourites being Wesselrin in a floppy hat singing by the Seine, and his violin sonata played at the start of the film as the camera glides over the Seine.
There's a critical idea with this movie about the perils of entrusting your fate to luck. I don't follow that one bit. My reading is that Wesselrin is lucky throughout the movie, in fact his experiences are what enable him to finally finish his violin sonata, and also to appreciate his lucky situation in life. He reminds me of Tartini, a composer who is famous for only one work, The Devil's Trill, a violin sonata which he heard in his dreams (supposedly he saw the Devil playing), and then transcribed upon awaking.
I really felt like screaming after I had finished watching this at quarter to one in the morning, I think I got a few strangled gurgles out, would not have been good to wake the house up. This is why I watch cinema, for the feeling of ecstasy (ec - stasy, literally out of stasis).
A friend pointed out to me that many of Rohmer's later trademarks are present in this film, "the seemingly artless but carefully constructed mise-en-scène". I like to refer to his mise-en-scène as situational, he often does scenes that remind me of the bit in Meshes of the afternoon when a mystical hand lowers a sunflower. It's almost like their are supernatural beings placing objects to be found by the participants in the film.
To me this is a masterpiece cut from the same cloth. There are glimpses of mysticism in Rohmer's film The Green Ray, but really this film takes that a lot further, it's a movie that really plays around with chance and fortune. Pierre Wesselrin, of Germano-American origin, is a small-time Parisian composer who has never made a cent out of his music. He talks a lot about having been lucky all his life, and he is, he's fallen in with a crowd of rich friends and he's always bathed in rive gauche society, even though he's not a great talent and is very lazy, he seems to be able to get people to give him money. There's a very Rivettian feel to the start of the movie, Wesselrin throws a party and you have, for example, this guy who is indoors at nighttime wearing dark glasses, he's listening to this febrile, screeching section of some classical music over and over again, repeatedly bringing back the needle of the record player. There's these little throwaway poetical typically French sophistries where they talk allegorically about Venus, and a woman says that no-one lives there because it's too close to the sun, it's good but I'm sure it sounds better in a marijuana haze.
So I don't want to give too much of the plot away, but there ends up being a lot of solitary wandering about Paris. I thought the ultimate poetic vision of Paris was Rivette's Paris Belongs To Us, but this is up there on that level. Rohmer somehow makes Paris feel like a giant coffin, or a kind of Byzantine, encrusted, cemetery.
There's the traditional view of this film which concerns the perils of believing in one's good fortunes, but I think on the whole it's far more mystical, really pointing at Wesslrin's life being ruled by the stars. It's just gorgeous as well. They must have built the walkways along the Seine when people believed in Arcadia, which they don't anymore. The photography just blows me away, favourites being Wesselrin in a floppy hat singing by the Seine, and his violin sonata played at the start of the film as the camera glides over the Seine.
There's a critical idea with this movie about the perils of entrusting your fate to luck. I don't follow that one bit. My reading is that Wesselrin is lucky throughout the movie, in fact his experiences are what enable him to finally finish his violin sonata, and also to appreciate his lucky situation in life. He reminds me of Tartini, a composer who is famous for only one work, The Devil's Trill, a violin sonata which he heard in his dreams (supposedly he saw the Devil playing), and then transcribed upon awaking.
I really felt like screaming after I had finished watching this at quarter to one in the morning, I think I got a few strangled gurgles out, would not have been good to wake the house up. This is why I watch cinema, for the feeling of ecstasy (ec - stasy, literally out of stasis).
A friend pointed out to me that many of Rohmer's later trademarks are present in this film, "the seemingly artless but carefully constructed mise-en-scène". I like to refer to his mise-en-scène as situational, he often does scenes that remind me of the bit in Meshes of the afternoon when a mystical hand lowers a sunflower. It's almost like their are supernatural beings placing objects to be found by the participants in the film.
Sign Of The Times
writers_reign19 February 2007
Warning: Spoilers
Released in 1959 between Godard's Brainless and Truffaut's The Four Hundred Yawns this entry from Rohmer was right there as the first lappings of the New Wavelet dampened the feet of Real French Directors. Within three years the New Wave was washed up; eventually Truffaut joined the opposition and made Le Dernier Metro completely in a style he had affected to despise and upon which he had poured vitriolic scorn but Godard never did find out how the Big Boys do it. Le Signe du Lion holds up much better than either Brainless or The Four Hundred Yawns and seen today - as it was, literally hours ago - it is valuable as a chronicle of Paris as it was on the edge of the 60s. The location shooting was, of course, dictated by the budget or lack of one but unlike Godard who allowed his camera to follow a Belmondo walking aimlessly and rapidly up and down the same thoroughfare Rohmer opts for a much more leisurely pace as befits his central character, who began by living from hand to mouth and slowly degenerates to fully paid-up bum. American expatriate Jess Hahn is effective as an essentially foolish man who lives for the moment, a grasshopper in a world of ants, happy to splash out all his borrowed money on fair-weather friends on the strength of a misinterpreted telegram and then paying the price as the real friends who may well have come through for him leave Paris on vacation and/or business. People born under Leo do, of course, have a predilection for being the centre of attention which serves as both an explanation and/or justification for Rohmer's camera being fixated on Hahn for something like one and three quarter hours. Along the way the likes of Paul Crauchet and Stephane Audran offer glimpses of the fine actors they would become whilst Godard, significantly, plays an idiot. For a director with a reputation for making 'talky' movies Rohmer plays down his loquacity this time around and turns in an animated postcard of Paris.
The Failure To Understand
two-rivers7 February 2001
Warning: Spoilers
Pierre Wesselrin, a German American resident in Paris, was born under the sign of Leo and therefore thinks that luck is on his side. This attitude seems to be confirmed right at the beginning, when the message of his rich aunt's decease is delivered. Wesselrin celebrates a big party, for which his friends pay the expenses, expecting that they will soon get their money back. At the end of the party he joyfully fires a rifle bullet at the starlit sky, being convinced that he has conquered the world and that from now on it will always be his.
The setback strikes him unexpectedly and reveals his state of utter helplessness and subjection in this world. His half-brother, who lives in Germany, is named only heir, and his rich Parisian friends abandon the capital one after the other in order to embark upon their sum-mer vacations. Now the dependence of the parasite on his fellow creatures is clearly shown: he has to rely on their kindness even if he wants nothing else but a roof over his head.
But as the hotel manageress isn't among these kind and generous friends, she denies him the right to stay. And there is no other hotel in which he could live just on terms of confidence. The only thing that is left for him to do is to roam about in the open air, on tourist tracks. Just that he gets infinitely more lonely than a tourist, the more his state of neglect progresses. And he can't help it either, as he is struck by quite a number of odd misfortunes: the spilling of a tin of sardines on his only trousers, the loss of a metro ticket, the disintegration of his footwear.
At this point Wesselrin suddenly starts fighting: he gets himself some turpentine from his last money, he desperately looks for some string which might hold his decomposing shoe together. But all kind of revolt against the inevitable is pointless, just as his stubbly beard is now allowed to grow without hindrance his descent into the depths of disaster is unstoppable and can only be subdued a little by the charitable acts of a few benefactors: A baker sells him the baguette for 6 francs instead of 9, a tramp lets him participate in his tourist show and saves Wesselrin from starvation that way, for he himself is literally incapable of doing anything, he doesn't even succeed in stealing an apple and is too proud to beg.
Therefore the final turning point (the half-brother dies in a car crash, and Wesselrin, who is literally lying in the gutter, is discovered by two friends) has actually to be seen more tragic than positive: Wesselrin hasn't learned anything from his experience and when he hears about the regained heritage he talks big again, like at the beginning of the movie. It seems just logical to him: Fortune can't do anything else but smile upon someone who was born under the sign of Leo.
The setback strikes him unexpectedly and reveals his state of utter helplessness and subjection in this world. His half-brother, who lives in Germany, is named only heir, and his rich Parisian friends abandon the capital one after the other in order to embark upon their sum-mer vacations. Now the dependence of the parasite on his fellow creatures is clearly shown: he has to rely on their kindness even if he wants nothing else but a roof over his head.
But as the hotel manageress isn't among these kind and generous friends, she denies him the right to stay. And there is no other hotel in which he could live just on terms of confidence. The only thing that is left for him to do is to roam about in the open air, on tourist tracks. Just that he gets infinitely more lonely than a tourist, the more his state of neglect progresses. And he can't help it either, as he is struck by quite a number of odd misfortunes: the spilling of a tin of sardines on his only trousers, the loss of a metro ticket, the disintegration of his footwear.
At this point Wesselrin suddenly starts fighting: he gets himself some turpentine from his last money, he desperately looks for some string which might hold his decomposing shoe together. But all kind of revolt against the inevitable is pointless, just as his stubbly beard is now allowed to grow without hindrance his descent into the depths of disaster is unstoppable and can only be subdued a little by the charitable acts of a few benefactors: A baker sells him the baguette for 6 francs instead of 9, a tramp lets him participate in his tourist show and saves Wesselrin from starvation that way, for he himself is literally incapable of doing anything, he doesn't even succeed in stealing an apple and is too proud to beg.
Therefore the final turning point (the half-brother dies in a car crash, and Wesselrin, who is literally lying in the gutter, is discovered by two friends) has actually to be seen more tragic than positive: Wesselrin hasn't learned anything from his experience and when he hears about the regained heritage he talks big again, like at the beginning of the movie. It seems just logical to him: Fortune can't do anything else but smile upon someone who was born under the sign of Leo.
The Fault, Dear Pierre, Is Not In Your Stars ...
donaldplamont16 November 2021
Warning: Spoilers
A lame cop out ending aside (surely, plodding Pierre merits being in the gutter, albeit perhaps gazing at the stars), Rohmer's first full feature is as good an advert for the perils of trusting to astrology as any committed to celluloid. It could also be filed as an unofficial 'Moral Tale' advising against sloth.
Pierre is a feckless, reckless, soon-to-be penniless musician in Paris begging, borrowing and stealing on an anticipated inheritance that doesn't materialise. Yet.
Born (he thinks) under a lucky star, our superstitious, work-shy, anti-hero parties like it's 1959 with his Parisian posse of hangers-on, including a young Jean-Luc Godard putting a needle on the record. Again. And again.
When he's turfed out of his flat and proceeded to flip out several hoteliers for non payment, including a delectably irate Stephane Audran, our Pierre takes to tramping the streets. The heart of the film follows peripatetic Pierre wandering like a prospective damned soul in some kind of Parisian purgatory. As he wilts physically and metaphysically under the pounding August sun, Rohmer does some sterling work in depicting Paris as a sort of outdoor stone prison weighing in on Pierre. The irony of his name is not lost as he ends up cursing the very stones the tourists all around him flock to see. The relentless camera pursues Pierre with such voyeuristic, detailed precision one could be forgiven for thinking Bresson, not Rohmer, were directing.
Notwithstanding the perversely bathetic ending; we should be cheering but we don't as we, well, I for one, simply feel foolish Pierre simply doesn't merit the windfall. He's suffered, sure, but this wasn't any Greek tragedy with the gods pulling the strings. No, Pierre was simply a dolt with a notion for unfounded, unproved quack nostrums. And there's always that nagging question hanging over the whole film: why didn't he simply go out and earn a few coppers busking for his supper if he was that desperate? Well ...?
Pierre is a feckless, reckless, soon-to-be penniless musician in Paris begging, borrowing and stealing on an anticipated inheritance that doesn't materialise. Yet.
Born (he thinks) under a lucky star, our superstitious, work-shy, anti-hero parties like it's 1959 with his Parisian posse of hangers-on, including a young Jean-Luc Godard putting a needle on the record. Again. And again.
When he's turfed out of his flat and proceeded to flip out several hoteliers for non payment, including a delectably irate Stephane Audran, our Pierre takes to tramping the streets. The heart of the film follows peripatetic Pierre wandering like a prospective damned soul in some kind of Parisian purgatory. As he wilts physically and metaphysically under the pounding August sun, Rohmer does some sterling work in depicting Paris as a sort of outdoor stone prison weighing in on Pierre. The irony of his name is not lost as he ends up cursing the very stones the tourists all around him flock to see. The relentless camera pursues Pierre with such voyeuristic, detailed precision one could be forgiven for thinking Bresson, not Rohmer, were directing.
Notwithstanding the perversely bathetic ending; we should be cheering but we don't as we, well, I for one, simply feel foolish Pierre simply doesn't merit the windfall. He's suffered, sure, but this wasn't any Greek tragedy with the gods pulling the strings. No, Pierre was simply a dolt with a notion for unfounded, unproved quack nostrums. And there's always that nagging question hanging over the whole film: why didn't he simply go out and earn a few coppers busking for his supper if he was that desperate? Well ...?
Solid debut, not the best but not the worst...
alansabljakovic-3904418 May 2020
I expected this to be more about horoscope sign but it ended up being about man walking for 100 minutes... Rohmer's debut is strong in the first half but then miserably fails to keep that pacing and ends up being quite boring. The ending just felt unjustified and undeserved, also it doesn't help the fact that our lead character is piece of trash.
Nouvelle vague with a difference
Miksa764 October 2004
I saw this very hilarious film a long time ago. It's about the twists of fate in the life of an American in Paris.
Jess Hahn plays a bohemian musician living in the margins of society. He gets information about a shortcoming heritage and believes he's in for big money. He spends all his savings. However, the money is given to his distant cousin.
This starts a downward spiral in the musician's life, as he loses his flat and turns into a clochard dragging along the hostile streets of Paris, trying to survive. These sharp shots are the best stuff in the film: in the first half it uses some of the typical clichés of the French New Wave. There's a nice cameo from Jean-Luc Godard as a weird party-guest.
This isn't like later Rohmer at all, but it's still an original, funny, and moving film. I remember reading somewhere, that this movie was a critical and economical failure for Rohmer... anyway, I think it was more than a good start!!
Jess Hahn plays a bohemian musician living in the margins of society. He gets information about a shortcoming heritage and believes he's in for big money. He spends all his savings. However, the money is given to his distant cousin.
This starts a downward spiral in the musician's life, as he loses his flat and turns into a clochard dragging along the hostile streets of Paris, trying to survive. These sharp shots are the best stuff in the film: in the first half it uses some of the typical clichés of the French New Wave. There's a nice cameo from Jean-Luc Godard as a weird party-guest.
This isn't like later Rohmer at all, but it's still an original, funny, and moving film. I remember reading somewhere, that this movie was a critical and economical failure for Rohmer... anyway, I think it was more than a good start!!
Froth and charcoal
sandover21 November 2010
Warning: Spoilers
This is an unmatched portrait of Paris, in the transition from the 50's to the 60's: along the one-man plot Rohmer with detailed even if seemingly improvised vignettes of lovers, friends, good-for-nothing and multi-racial Paris, gives a - did I say portrait? Make that miniature tableau, epic snow-ball. This is definitely not a time-capsule, or a period piece; it holds better than most existentialism imbibed artistic endeavors.
I really loved the sarcastic joke on Camus: remember when in the beginning, Wesselrin (what a name!),our musician protagonist, throwing that party for the alleged inheritance, calls one of the guests, a "dear friend" he calls him, Camus, only to find out that his name has a bare acoustical resemblance; so much for a musical ear, and Camus' existential themes.
It is astonishing how Rohmer manages to portray Wesselrin's downfall: with a sure hand and perfectly nuanced, he proves a master of simplicity. Of course he is aided in his vision by Jess Hahn's also exquisitely nuanced performance. This American-in-Paris who, as he ambiguously says at a certain point, could be "Swiss, anyone", has an allegorical allure that maybe surpasses Godard's takes on matters of Franco-American relations. This is what makes Rohmer's mystification of chance poignant rather than the elbow-in-your-face ending which is actually out at the elbows. I found the ending out of tone, plain bad: why since Rohmer has arguably the best musical ear (his fondu enchaine is so eloquent) in terms of fluid cinematic structure, and since he out-did Camus with that early joke and this man's downfall in Paris, in situ (not some exotic colonialist alibi, he seems to say - their temperaments are so opposite), why then this gratuitous ending? It downplays the earlier comedy of class and fortune. (Read how "Known" he is in "certain artistic circles" a newspaper reports in length after he is found out as a millionaire, this article thus mocking the cosmopolitan, investigative journalism of his friends. This is also fine. Early Rohmer seems more engaged and edgy in the frustrations of metropolitan modernity, but it is unfortunate he sometimes shies off into almost pre-modern mechanics; he is usually referred to as having a Mozartean quality. We should then have in mind that automatons played an important role in Mozart, being one of the first installments of modernity and exposing the mechanics of desire. In the film's case the automaton of chance somewhat mystifies, if it does not travesty, the specifics of the Capital. Rohmer does not engage in that kind of investigation, unless it is in the gag just before the ending, when the music played is "something modern, anyway" as one of the bourgeois, clueless couples attending the performance inanely reports to her friend.)
And then there is Jean de Poulain as the clochard with a bravura performance, perfectly in tune with getting us out of the stupor of following Wesselrin in his degradation, only to throw us in the high-pitched and bathetic boulevard of class; his appearance has something to do I bet with the Godot craze of the times, and one sees the parallel universes they inhabit.
Airy as Raoul Dufy, with one or two glib charcoal lines as in Bernard Buffet's portraits, "Le Signe du Lion" shines as one of the most lively portraits of Paris of any time.
I really loved the sarcastic joke on Camus: remember when in the beginning, Wesselrin (what a name!),our musician protagonist, throwing that party for the alleged inheritance, calls one of the guests, a "dear friend" he calls him, Camus, only to find out that his name has a bare acoustical resemblance; so much for a musical ear, and Camus' existential themes.
It is astonishing how Rohmer manages to portray Wesselrin's downfall: with a sure hand and perfectly nuanced, he proves a master of simplicity. Of course he is aided in his vision by Jess Hahn's also exquisitely nuanced performance. This American-in-Paris who, as he ambiguously says at a certain point, could be "Swiss, anyone", has an allegorical allure that maybe surpasses Godard's takes on matters of Franco-American relations. This is what makes Rohmer's mystification of chance poignant rather than the elbow-in-your-face ending which is actually out at the elbows. I found the ending out of tone, plain bad: why since Rohmer has arguably the best musical ear (his fondu enchaine is so eloquent) in terms of fluid cinematic structure, and since he out-did Camus with that early joke and this man's downfall in Paris, in situ (not some exotic colonialist alibi, he seems to say - their temperaments are so opposite), why then this gratuitous ending? It downplays the earlier comedy of class and fortune. (Read how "Known" he is in "certain artistic circles" a newspaper reports in length after he is found out as a millionaire, this article thus mocking the cosmopolitan, investigative journalism of his friends. This is also fine. Early Rohmer seems more engaged and edgy in the frustrations of metropolitan modernity, but it is unfortunate he sometimes shies off into almost pre-modern mechanics; he is usually referred to as having a Mozartean quality. We should then have in mind that automatons played an important role in Mozart, being one of the first installments of modernity and exposing the mechanics of desire. In the film's case the automaton of chance somewhat mystifies, if it does not travesty, the specifics of the Capital. Rohmer does not engage in that kind of investigation, unless it is in the gag just before the ending, when the music played is "something modern, anyway" as one of the bourgeois, clueless couples attending the performance inanely reports to her friend.)
And then there is Jean de Poulain as the clochard with a bravura performance, perfectly in tune with getting us out of the stupor of following Wesselrin in his degradation, only to throw us in the high-pitched and bathetic boulevard of class; his appearance has something to do I bet with the Godot craze of the times, and one sees the parallel universes they inhabit.
Airy as Raoul Dufy, with one or two glib charcoal lines as in Bernard Buffet's portraits, "Le Signe du Lion" shines as one of the most lively portraits of Paris of any time.
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