This film has been voted the best film of all time by critics (and, apparently, Marlon Brando), and is regularly voted top ten, especially in France. While I suspect I'm more of a fan of it than Jami, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't put it up there just yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's one of those films that rewards repeat viewings. It's another whopper, over three hours like Andrei Rublev, but unlike that one we managed it in just two mouthfuls (and indeed it is divided into two parts, and has been occasionally released as two distinct films), because it tells a proper story that sucks you in. Apparently it was billed as France's answer to Gone With the Wind, and was at the time the most expensive French film of all time, and you can see the money up there on the screen in the amazing sets and the massive crowd
and theater scenes,
but at the same time, while epic in ambition it seems remarkably intimate in scope, and tells a story that, in retrospect seems too simple for the three hours it took to tell it. It's set in the theater district of Paris, in the 1830s (ish) and the four main characters - one woman and the four men who desire her - are loosely based on actual historical characters. The woman
is known by the single name Garance (she reveals her real name under police questioning towards the end of part I) and, appropriately, is played by a French star of the stage who went by the mononym Arletty (as you might gather by the release date, this film was shot in occupied France, which makes its scope and ambition all the more remarkable, and in the same year the film was released, Arletty was prosecuted for having an affair with a Nazi officer (she is reputed to have said that "my heart is French but my ass is international")). Her suitors are the mime Baptiste (based on the real mime Deburau - the whole film came about because the actor who plays Baptiste (who is not a good-looking fellow -
you can tell he was cast because of his actual talent at mimery)
bumped into the director, Marcel Carné, and his writing partner when they were taking a stroll in Nice and pitched them a story about this mime (who accidentally killed somebody who was pestering him by hitting him too hard with his cane, and had to talk in public in the subsequent trial, which naturally attracted vast crowds) - the writing partner hated mimes but thought that he could work something out that would involve his favorite topic, the criminal whom we will get to soon), the actor (who is just a ne'er-do-well at the beginning of the film) Frédérick Lemaitre, the foppish existentialist master criminal Lacenaire
and, arriving late in part I, the aristocrat Count de Montray. Adding to the confusion, Baptiste is adored by the daughter of his boss, Nathalie (who kept reminding me of Chloë Sevigny)
(who, for my money, is far prettier than the supposed drop-dead gorgeous Arletty (who was well into her 40s at the time of this movie, but had undeniable magnetism, and was constantly lit with a little puddle of light in her face),
for whom he only feels mild friendly affection. The story is very ably summarized by the Wikipedia entry, so I'm not going to do my usual plot summary but rather skip straight to observations that go beyond the series of events listed there.
Baptiste introduces Frédérick to his landlady (whom Frédérick immediately sets about successfully seducing)
when he finds Frédérick has nowhere to stay, but then goes out for a walk. He is accosted by a "blind" beggar who it is that invites him to the Red Breast restaurant
and who points out the table with Garance and Lacenaire at it and says it's them who are responsible for the garrotting of the previous owner. Nonetheless the smitten Baptiste invites Garance for a dance, which annoys Lacenaire (who honestly doesn't seem to lust after Garance as much as desire her for an audience for his simultaneously world-weary and self-congratulatory bon mots - he definitely has literary pretensions, and the actor is pretty magnetic, and manages to be effectively menacing when called to be, which is no mean feat given his ridiculous hairdo), who sets his large, but rather cowardly and ineffective henchman on him. He throws Baptiste out through a window (and when the owner protests, he is reminded what happened to the last owner) - only to see Baptiste stroll back in through the door dusting himself off nonchalantly, kick the henchman down and walk out with Garance. (Baptiste explains that he was bullied a lot and had to learn to fend for himself, and no doubt his tumbling experience helped.) Garance also has nowhere to go, and Baptiste takes her back to his lodgings, where he is surprised to find his landlady upstairs (we know why) needing to be called down. This landlady surely is the nicest in Paris, and her rooms are enviably large and available. As Wikipedia explains, Garance refuses to say that she loves Baptiste, but makes it perfectly clear that she's DTF,
but he leaves in some kind of nervous paroxysm, leaving the clearly inexhaustible Frédérick to move in when he hears her singing from the room next door.
Lacenaire's henchman's ineffectiveness is revealed later when he fails to knock off an elderly man who is holding something valuable and who happens to live in Garance's building. When she returns (passing through a crowd around the building who have humorously exaggerated stories about what has occurred, mostly concerning a murder that hasn't happened), the policeman who detained her for the theft of the watch sees her and connects her with Lacenaire, who is suspected of both crimes. It is then that we find out her real name under questioning. The police officer is about to drag her away for complicity (despite the old man's pointing out that he's not really that badly off and nothing was stolen) when she remembers the card the Count gave her earlier after she turned him down, and thus she is drawn into his orbit by owning him a favor - end of part I.
Our view of Frédérick is much improved in part II. Not only has he been revealed to have real talent, he is no longer exploiting people left and right, and indeed is generous with his money (despite having such debts that he is set upon by a crowd of his creditors and has to wear an eyepatch
in his play to hide a black eye), as well as fearless - showing up blind drunk to a duel and shrugging off a bullet wound. Furthermore he can recognize that Baptiste has become, if anything, more of a talent than himself, and that Garance loves Baptiste more than himself. It is a complete turnaround from the rather despicable figure of the first part. Lacenaire, too, gains in stature. Where in part I we saw him fencing spoons and other trifles, and failing to rob an old man, we see him magically entering Garance's room in the Count's swank mansion, and coolly face down the Count's snobbery
and, eventually, fatally stab him in some kind of prideful act of vengeance and sacrifice. (But the Count certainly had it coming - we find out that he has killed several people in duels merely because they looked at Garance.) And then we have the final scene where Nathalie is left in the room Baptiste has been hiding out in since Garance came back (the same room in his old lodgings that he gave Garance when he first brought her back from the Red Breast) howling "what about me?" and (heartbreakingly) Nathalie and Baptiste's son (for whom Garance seems to have greater feeling than Baptiste) standing outside waiting for her,
not noticing as his father races out to try to catch the woman he loves more than his own family, who has just (unbeknownst to her) lost her sugar daddy. It is a shockingly abrupt moment when the "curtains" that opened at the beginning of the film close on a scene of Baptiste swept away in a sea of white-clad clones of his own mime character, and we are left to guess at the fates of all our main characters. Is this how people felt about the "fade-to-black" ending of the Sopranos?
Now, I have focused on just the main four (plus Nathalie), but there are several entertaining side-characters, including the rag-and-bone man who trades spoons to Lacenaire and gossip to everyone else,
Baptiste's "father" (I'm not sure if it's his real one, or just the actor whom he was apprenticing with) who first berates him but then praises him when his true mime talent emerges; Nathalie's father and the boss of the Funambules, who is a real character out of Dickens, who fines everybody in his company for various infractions and is constantly fretting and catastrophising. Even such incidental characters as the three-headed playwriting team that grow incensed with Frédérick's (gallingly popular) mockery of their play are hilarious creations. And I have to say that the plays
and even (especially) the mime-shows
are beautifully recreated. A surprising (because it really doesn't drag as one might have feared that it would) chunk of the running time of the film is spent watching these shows, which is appropriate, given that the title is a punning reference to show-people.
Actually, the more I write about it, the more I see the scope of the film and the craft that went into it. Definitely worth a re-visit, and not out of a sense of duty, either.
No comments:
Post a Comment