Le Deuxième Souffle

Le Deuxième Souffle (The Criterion Collection DVD, 2008)
Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville
France, 1966
In French with English subtitles

Although I haven't posted about a movie here in months, I guess this is as good a place as any to announce that I'll be coming out of retirement for a half-dozen or so DVD reviews to fulfill my contractual obligations for this year's Orbis Terrarum Film Mini-Challenge.  First up is Jean-Pierre Melville's 1966 Le Deuxième Souffle (Second Wind), a bleak French gangster flick that follows aging fugitive Gu Minda (Lino Ventura) from Paris to Marseille as he tries to escape the arrogant Inspector Blot (Diabolique's Paul Meurisse) as the clock of his life winds down.  While all the usual Melville themes (destiny, friendship, honor, violence) and trademark flourishes (a highly-orchestrated robbery, existential gunplay) make their morally ambiguous appearances here, something about the film feels a little flat despite a standout cast and some edgy scenes involving abusive police interrogation techniques that were supposedly altered for being too similar to what the French army was doing in Algeria at the time.  Is it worth seeing?  Sure.  But if you're new to Melville, you have got to check out 1967's Le Samouraï, 1969's L'Armée des ombres (Army of Shadows) or 1970's Le Cercle rouge first to understand why this uncompromising cinéaste was once known as "the father of the New Wave" and "the poet of the underworld."  In the meantime, I'll now go back to enjoying that handsome Criterion cover art that has made this blog look positively Positif throughout the duration of this post!  (http://www.criterion.com/)

Jean-Pierre Melville

More on Melville:

Le Doulos (1962)

Army of Shadows (1969)

The Taking of Power by Louis XIV

La prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV (Criterion DVD, 2008)
Directed by Roberto Rossellini
France, 1966
In French with English subtitles

For an altogether different take on the accumulation of power and wealth from an Italian filmmaker, you could do a whole lot worse than to sit down with this Roberto Rossellini-directed period piece originally produced for French TV in 1966. While Louis XIV has all the bad hair and gaudy finery of a generic costume drama, Rossellini's approach is anything but pedestrian. Drawing a Machiavelli-like bead on the 17th-century king's gradual transformation from a fun-loving mama's boy into the monarch who really stuck it to the French aristocracy, the director craftily constructs a meditation on both the nature and the trappings of power that's way more interesting than the silly looking photo below might lead you to believe. Since pudgy, non-professional actor Jean-Marie Patte is something of a revelation as the Sun King, an unexpected bonus from the extra features on this disc is learning how Rossellini channeled Patte's on-camera jitters and inability to remember his lines into a performance that's something special--how funny to think that what looks like supremely regal indifference on Louis XIV's part might be largely due to stage fright from the actor playing him! A minor gem. (http://www.criterion.com/)

Clothes make the man: Louis XIV at Versailles

Coup de torchon

Coup de torchon (Criterion DVD, 2001)
Directed by Bertrand Tavernier
France, 1981
In French with English subtitles

If I didn't already have another French movie in mind for the job, this unconventional black comedy/film noir would have made a pretty swanky entry for Bethany's Orbis Terrarum Film Mini-Challenge. A free adaptation of Jim Thompson's 1964 American pulp novel, Pop. 1280, Tavernier's Coup de torchon (Clean Slate) moves the tale of madness and murder out of the American south and into the blinding sunlight of 1938 French West Africa. Phillipe Noiret is outstanding as Lucien Cordier, a bumbling, corrupt police officer in the remote provincial town of Bourkassa, who's a likable enough guy despite all his flaws and married prostitute mistress (a superb Isabelle Huppert) until he decides to confront all the evil surrounding him at the point of a gun. As his malaria-like illness progresses, Tavernier and co-screenwriter Jean Aurenche take the opportunity to skewer colonial era morals and racism by permitting Cordier's exterminating angel tendencies to justify themselves in what Jean Genet has referred to as a sort of "redemption through crime." While the film is particularly tough on French colonials ("White folks aren't meant for vultures," a white character tells a black character in a work in which African corpses are routinely dumped into the river and then shot at for sport), its caustic, misanthropic vision doesn't take it any easier on the rest of us; as Cordier notes at one point, "If it's true [people] were made in God's image, I wouldn't like to get Him in a dark alley." Probably the best of the three movies I've seen made out of Jim Thompson books--although I'd love to check out After Dark, My Sweet (1990) and especially The Grifters (1991) again one of these days just to make sure. (http://www.criterion.com/)

Lucien (Noiret) et Rose (Huppert): both married, just not to each other

Le Doulos

Le Doulos (Criterion DVD, 2008)
Réalisé par Jean-Pierre Melville
France, 1962
En français avec subtitres en anglais

Sorti en 1962, Le Doulos c'est un très bon film du genre gangster. Comme les autres films de Melville, il s'agit de la frontière entre la fidelité et la trahison, et des liens entre l'amitié et l'honneur. Au tout début de l'histoire, on apprend que le mot "doulos" a un double sens dans le contexte du scénario: "En argot, 'DOULOS' veut dire 'CHAPEAU'. Mais, dans le langage secret des policiers et des hors-la-loi, 'DOULOS' est le nom que l'on donne a celui qui 'en porte un'...l'indicateur de police". Un moment plus tard, autre intertitre aparaît avec une citation de Louis-Ferdinand Céline: "Il faut choisir. Mourir...ou mentir?" Cette oeuvre pessimiste, donc, c'est une moralité avec revolvers. Quand leur cambriolage à Neuilly s'interrupte par les policiers, Maurice (Serge Reggiani) est blessé et son accomplice Rémy (Phillipe Nahon) est mort. Maurice décide ensuite tuer à l'indicateur responsable, mais il ne sait pas qui est le doulos. Quant à ce mystère, le metteur en scène nous offre une panoplie de choix entre les criminels. Sera Silien (Jean-Paul Belmondo, voir ci-dessou), Jean (Phillipe March), le truand rival qu'il s'appelle Nuttecchio (Michel Piccoli), ou peut-être une ex petite amie? Melville, toujours le styliste, réussit à nous donner un film qu'il est séduisant et très beau à la fois. Superbe. (http://www.criterion.com/)

Belmondo

Fantômas

Fantômas (1998 Artificial Eye DVD)
Directed by Louis Feuillade
France, 1913-14
Silent with French intertitles and an English translation

I got a kick out of Allain and Souvestre's first Fantômas novel from 1911, and I absolutely loved Feuillade's Fantômas-inspired serial Les Vampires released later that same decade. But while I'm glad I finally got to see this 1913-14 nitrate about "the genius of crime," I'm sorry to confess that it's almost criminally slow at times. The five serials included here--Fantômas (A l'ombre de la guillotine), Juve contre Fantômas, Le Mort qui tue, Fantômas contre Fantômas, and Le Faux Magistrat--seem to follow the novels fairly faithfully, so part of the problem may be that the only elements of surprise come from the visual rather than the narrative end of things. It also doesn't help that there are no Musidoras slinking around in black bodysuits here, but I won't criticize Feuillade for that psychosexual lapse since he would redeem himself casting-wise in Les Vampires just a few years later. What we do get instead is a cornucopia of costume changes for M. René Navarre in the title role (looking particularly sinister below but often committing his crimes "disguised as a proper bourgeois" as "Fantômas expert" Kim Newman giddily points out in his commentary), a representation of Montmartre as the center of the Parisian underworld (take that, Amélie!), and murder scenes involving "gloves" made out of human skin and a boa constrictor slithering in and out of a bedroom window. Other than that, I don't have much else to add except that l'accent circonflexe is a cruel, cruel invention that should be abolished immediately if not sooner. (http://www.artificial-eye.com/)

Fantômas: not just your average criminal

P.S. I keep forgetting to mention that my on-again/off-again movie blog, Gambling with Countess Dusy Told, is on again at the moment. For those not offended by a little shameless self-promotion, here are the links to four recent reviews.

• Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, 2008)
• The Scarlet Empress (Josef von Sternberg, 1934)
• Eastern Promises (David Cronenberg, 2007)
• Chandu the Magician (Marcel Varnel and William Cameron Menzies, 1932)

La Roue

La Roue (2008 DVD)

Directed by Abel Gance

France, 1922

Silent with English intertitles

(see my review at Gambling with Countess Dusy Told)

Touchez pas au grisbi

Touchez pas au grisbi (2005 DVD)
Directed by Jacques Becker
France, 1954
In French with English subtitles

More French film excellence from the '50s. The prelude to a cellar torture scene and grenade-tossing finale notwithstanding, what we have here is sort of like a kinder, gentler version of an old school gangster movie. Jean Gabin and René Dary are outstanding as aging hoods Max le Menteur and Riton, two dapper criminals with a touching friendship more than 20 years in the making. Although much of the plot focuses on rival thug Angelo's attempt to make off with the loot (le grisbi) that Max and Riton had themselves only recently ripped off from Orly airport, director Becker does a masterful job of introducing ironic humor (one type of criminal to another: "You're all the same. To you, a fence is a crook.") and a non-cloying sentimentality (the scene where Max's considerable fondness for Riton is revealed in an interior monologue, one of the most unusual narrative devices I've ever seen in a gangster film) into the double-crossing mix. Lino Ventura as Angelo, Jeanne Moreau as the coke-snorting devil doll Josy, and Paul Frankeur as bespectacled club owner Fats all make mighty contributions to the success of the film as well, but the best testament to the unexpected brilliance of Becker's underworld aesthetic triumph might be the iconic scene where old friends Max and Riton wearily commiserate about a spilled secret and a bad break over a bottle from Nantes and a terrine of foie gras in a new hideout: sort of like Marcel Pagnol with machine guns. Five out of five stars but not for squares, Daddy-o! (http://www.criterion.com/)

René Dary and Jean Gabin

The Last Mistress

Une vieille maîtresse
Directed by Catherine Breillat
France and Italy, 2007
In French with English subtitles

Uneven but entertaining period piece set in 1835, "au siècle de Choderlos de Laclos" as we're told at the outset. I never figured out whether this film was trying to mimic that novelist or to mock him, but a small dose of gore and an even bigger serving of nudity appear meant to modernize Les Liaisons dangereuses for jaded 21st century sensibilities. Asia Argento is positively bewitching as the half-Spanish/half-Italian courtesan from Málaga who scandalizes Parisian society types with her unapologetically carnal behavior, but her fearless and feral performance (the best thing about this movie by far) is way more convincing than her character's long-term love affair with dissolute pretty boy Reyno de Marigny (Fuad Ait Aattou)--who isn't really all that interesting a figure when it comes right down to it. The script, brought to the screen with a certain emotional verve thanks to the exquisite cinematography and evocative background music that complement the narrative's gilt-edged tropes on love and desire, is based on an 1851 roman by Jules Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly which was criticized for its immorality.

• Viewed at the Somerville Theatre (Somerville, MA) on 8/21/08.

Asia Argento as La Vellini

Classe Tous Risques

Classe Tous Risques (2008 DVD)
Directed by Claude Sautet
France and Italy, 1960
In French and Italian with English subtitles

Yet another lovingly-constructed French gangster film. While the DNA of the plot--a career criminal trying to pull off one last score before settling down for good--will be familiar to anyone who's seen more than one crime movie in the last fifty years, Sautet and co-screenwriters José Giovanni and Pascal Jardin depart from form by cultivating a neorealist/noir hybrid that subverts expectations. An early scene's daytime robbery and escape through the streets of Milan would be a nice way to kickstart the action no matter who was behind the camera, for example, but here it takes on an even grittier tone than the norm since Ghislain Cloquet's documentary approach cloaks the city in a grainy black and white that just feels more real somehow. On the narrative front, the film's genre-friendly dissection of friendship and loyalty among criminals likewise takes an unexpected turn when fugitive Abel Davos (star Lino Ventura), who's been "sentenced to death in absentia," gets stuck dragging his two kids from Milan to Nice and on to Paris in the sort of existential "tourist class" hinted at by the title. Finally, while no cast member is disappointing in the least, Ventura and Jean-Paul Belmondo are particularly winning as the two gangsters thrown into an uneasy but believable friendship when things start to go sour. In other words, another keeper. (http://www.criterion.com/)

"She wanted to warn him to be careful. But what was the point?"

La Voie lactée

La Voie lactée (2007 DVD)
Dirigida por Luis Buñuel
France, 1969
En francés con subtítulos en inglés

La Vía Láctea es una sumamente divertida road movie sobre dos mendigos franceses que van con rumbo a Santiago de Compostela en Galicia. Aunque el objeto de su viaje no es lo de ir en romería sino lo de estafar la plata a la gente, Luis Buñuel usa el camino como una plataforma para dirigir varias flechas al dogmatismo de los fanáticos, a la hipocresía de algunos creyentes, e incluso a la barba de Jesús. Entre la serie de imágenes y escenas provocadoras a lo largo del camino, se destacan un debate sobre la transubstanciación decidido por el hecho de que un conejo puede nacer y convertirse en el quintaesencial ingrediente de un pâté a la vez; un ensueño acerca del fusilamiento del Papa por parte de revolucionarios a Tours; un duelo de esgrima entre un jesuita e un jansenista cerca de Bayona; y la aparición de dos Virgenes (o sea, la Virgen y otra virgen menos conocida) en el País Vasco. No voy a decirles lo que pasa en Santiago de Compostela al final de la película, pero ¡cuidado! porque esta comedia pícara también incluye camafeos por el diablo, los albigenses, y el marqués de Sade. Genial.

*****

The Milky Way is a highly entertaining road movie about two French beggars who are on their way to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. Although the real object of their trip is hustling money out of people and not making a pilgrimage, Luis Buñuel uses the camino as a platform for launching various barbs aimed at religious fanatics' dogmatism, the hypocrisy of some believers, and even at Jesus' beard. Among the provocative scenes and images along the route, standouts include a debate about transubstantiation settled by the fact that a rabbit is capable of being born and of being transformed into the main ingredient of a pâté at one and the same time, one character's daydream about the Pope being executed by revolutionaries at Tours, a sword fight between a Jesuit and a Jansenist near Bayonne, and the appearance of two Virgins (or rather the Virgin Mary and another less famous virgin) in the Basque country in Spain. I won't tell you what happens in Santiago de Compostela at the end of the film, but be careful because this picaresque comedy also features cameos by the Devil, the Albigensians, and the Marquis de Sade! Genial. (http://www.criterion.com/)

Fue un día negro para el Papa/It was a bad day for the Pope

Ascenseur pour l'échafaud

Elevator to the Gallows (2006 DVD)
Directed by Louis Malle
France, 1957
In French with English subtitles

• Louis, a young French kid: "My generation has other things on its mind. Four years of occupation, Indochina, Algeria."
• Horst, an older German: "Bravo! Bravo! To Europe!"

A murder, a double murder, a staged "suicide" and an attempted double suicide are plenty noir enough for me, but Malle's groundbreaking policier also flaunts itself as a romantic love story in which the doomed amants tragiques never actually meet onscreen. In focusing on not one but two pairs of star-crossed lovers, Ascenseur pour l'échafaud additionally stands out as a gorgeous-looking, technically-perfect piece of filmmaking that uses its parallel narratives to satisfy genre expectations as much as it subverts them. Jeanne Moreau's forlorn but beautiful nighttime walk along the Champs Élysées, lit only by shop lights, street lamps and her own inner radiance, deserves all the props it's earned over the years, but Henri Decaë's wondrously atmospheric cinematography and Miles Davis' moody original jazz score definitely point the way to something equally new and exciting in terms of the storytelling devices in play. Interestingly, Malle apparently saw his two male leads (Maurice Ronet's charismatic but cold-blooded killer Julien Tavernier, a weary young veteran of action in Indochina and North Africa, and Georges Poujouly's equally amoral teenage thug Louis) as representatives of a specific time and place in late '50s France when arms dealers and an approaching consumer culture were byproducts of the country's modernization efforts--something that makes the characters' shared fate, deserved or not, even more bleak when it comes right down to it. Exceptional. (http://www.criterion.com/)

Miles et Mademoiselle Moreau

Vivre sa vie

My Life to Live (1999 DVD)
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard
France, 1962
In French with English subtitles

Prostitution--or better yet--Martyrdom Week continues here at Caravana with the second classic film in a row to explore the link between the world's oldest profession and an "innocent" character's tragic search for unconditional love and freedom. In this case, you know things are probably going to turn out pretty badly for the wide-eyed Nana (Anna Karina) from the exact moment in time when she tears up watching Falconetti's soundless suffering in Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc in a Parisian movie theater (below). However, Karina seduces you with such a stripped-down and soulful performance that you wind up hoping that her modern day Lulu will find some way out of the situation in defiance of all the odds against her. Godard, for his part, is both more restrained and yet no less provocative a metteur en scène than he'd be in 1966's Masculin féminin, interspersing lyrical references to film and literature with documentary-like vignettes on the prostitute's métier to the strands of Michel Legrand's haunting score. "Je est un autre," indeed. (Fox Lorber Films, out of print)

Quant aux personnes qui se cachent...

Musidora vous regarde!

Clara et Moi

Clara et Moi (2006 DVD)
Directed by Arnaud Viard
France, 2004
In French with English subtitles

Julie Gayet is riveting (acting-wise and ooh la la-wise) as half of Clara et Moi's photogenic but troubled title couple, but I don't even want to think about what this slightly better than average love story would have been like without her star-in-the-making performance. An early silent movie style dialogue-free pick-up scene on the Paris Metro was an unexpectedly nice treat, for example, but other directorial risks like the musical interlude during the couple's first date were more on the not-so-great side if you ask moi. And despite a few good supporting actor turns elsewhere in the work, lead Julien Boisselier's somewhat milquetoasty Antoine didn't do much for me as the other half of the romantic equation in question--too bad my treatment for a film called Clara et R-Lo was rejected sight unseen by both the movie people and my wife. Merde! (http://www.lifesizeentertainment.com/)

Rififi

Du rififi chez les hommes (2001 DVD)
Directed by Jules Dassin
France, 1955
In French with English subtitles

Based on an Auguste le Breton novel so laced with criminal slang that blacklisted American director Jules Dassin had to call in his French business agent to translate the work for him before deciding whether or not he wanted to adapt it for the screen, this 1955 Parisian noir is one of the canonical works in the failed heist and/or robbery-gone-horribly-wrong subgenres. The famous 33-minute safecracking scene, devoid of all dialogue or any musical accompaniment whatsoever, is a testament to Dassin's directorial audacity and cinematic craftsmanship; other aspects of the production, from the excellent ensemble acting to the criminals vs. criminals subplot to all those handsome City of Light location shots filmed almost entirely at night or on overcast days, are similarly virtuosic without being showy in the least. How much Rififi's closing moments surpass or succumb to genre expectations depends on whether you regard the ending as a redemption story or a morality tale, but there's no denying the aesthetic punch packed into all the frames that precede it. A knockout. (http://www.criterion.com/)

Les Vampires

Les Vampires (2000 DVD)
Directed by Louis Feuillade
France, 1915-1916
Silent with English intertitles

Terrifically-entertaining ten-episode serial from a French filmmaker who's said to have shot something like 700-800 films over the course of a thirty-year career. While essentially a good vs. evil melodrama pitting the Juve-like reporter Phillipe Guèrande against a secret society of Fantômas-like criminals known as Les Vampires, Feuillade's justly celebrated eye for visuals (a rooftop chase here, a hooded criminal's escape through a manhole there) and arch sense of humor (aristocratic soirées are routinely interrupted by things like cannon blasts and knockout gas) lend a provocative proto-surrealist ambiance to the proceedings. Musidora's archvillainness Irma Vep, the badass second-in-command to a series of male "Grand Vampires" with way less charisma and stage presence than her, essentially steals the show, but anyone interested in a well-told tale about black stocking-clad criminals or World War I Paris as seen from the point of view of Molotov cocktail-hurling anarchists should find something to enjoy here. In short, c'est vachement bien! (www.image-entertainment.com)

Prochainement sur cet écran

Musidora, la reine du cinéma muet, dans le serial Les Vampires (1915-1916) de Louis Feuillade. Ma copie de DVD est enfin arrivée!

Mouchette

Mouchette (2006 DVD)

Directed by Robert Bresson

France, 1967

In French with English subtitles

I liked this, but I wasn't blown away by it. While Nadine Nortier's Mouchette is one of the most fascinating teen characters I've seen in a while, her performance is so riveting that some of the other aspects of the film paled in comparison for me. I won't go into all the details in case there's anyone else out there who still hasn't seen the movie as yet, but Mouchette is a flat-out pobrecita of a 14-year old stuck in a provincial French backwater and surrounded by familial indifference, violence, and death at every turn. Bresson and Nortier do a masterful job at making you empathize with Mouchette's suffering as a poverty-stricken misfit, and there are individual scenes involving holy water in a church, bumper cars at a village fair, and adults pretending to console Mouchette only as a pretext to pass judgement on her that are visually and emotionally arresting. Yet for all its stylized "reality," the ending just didn't do it for me--feeling more like a narrative cop-out than the logical conclusion to what had come before. A nice intro to Bresson but at least one friend has already assured me that I'll probably end up liking Pickpocket more. (http://www.criterion.com/)

Lila Says

Lila dit ça (2005 DVD)

(Lila Says)

Directed by Ziad Doueiri

France, 2005

In French with English subtitles

Another solid flick from France. While the DVD cover made me worry that it might contain yet another cheesy teen love story, the movie itself is provocatively told and very well-acted by its two young leads (Vahina Giocante as the scandalous Lila, Mohammed Khouas as the shy Chimo). Set in a somewhat run down immigrant neighborhood in Marseille, the film uses this economically-depressed cultural backdrop to explore what happens when two worlds collide. Since what Lila says is almost always graphically sexual in nature, Chimo's character seems to take a long time trying to figure out whether Lila really likes him or is just putting him on or is a little off in the head--a state of confusion I found particularly believable. I also liked the subtle way in which the film touched on ethnic tensions, hinting both at Muslim suffering at the hands of the police and neighborhood intolerance of any outsiders who are different. The ending, with the brutal victimization of one character as the price of a ticket out for another, seemed a little too tidily wrapped up and telegraphed in advance for me, but feel free to let me know if you disagree. (http://www.sonypictures.com/)

Pre-Noir Noir

Pépé le Moko (2003 DVD)
Directed by Julien Duvivier
France, 1937
In French with English subtitles

While a little less philosophical than a few of the other Criterion films I've seen of late, 1937's Pépé le Moko more than makes up for that with a stripped-down story that's just wildly entertaining instead. Sort of a pre-noir film noir, this black-and-white classic follows its suave but criminal antihero (Jean Gabin in a deservedly-legendary performance) through the "lice-infested" alleyways and mazes of Algiers' Casbah as he dodges the police, woos wayward women, and exudes charisma at every turn. A chance meeting with a beautiful Parisian society woman (Mireille Balin) leads to a love triangle between the gangster, the woman in pearls, and Pépé's equally attractive but desperately jealous Gypsy girlfriend Inés (Line Noro) that will eventually put the underworld kingpin's freedom at risk, but the story is told with such narrative and visual force that you end up rooting for characters you know are probably doomed from the start. Great fun throughout--but a cautionary tale for anyone who believes in love at first sight! (http://www.criterion.com/)

An old French movie still for Pépé