Classics time.
Watched the Passion of Joan of Arc by Dreyer (from the same master you'll find in the upcoming Criterion release). I'm not very big on mute films but this one holds up well. Striking cinematography and close ups eliciting some genuine emotion plus some audacious camera movements in the last act. The raw simplicity of it (it's basically just the judges trying to extort her confession to Joan in jail and her execution) makes it work better than any film on this historical figure since then as far as I can judge (including the Preminger, Rivette, Besson versions. Haven't seen the Bresson take on it), it's a better fit for what the reality of this peculiar figure was.
Also saw two films by Julien Duvivier, one of the many major French filmmakers of the mid 20th century. I did some posts here about Pépé le Moko, Panique, La Fin du Jour or Voici le temps des assassins. My expectations were flipped as the film I expected to be the most minor of the two was by far the better of the two. Still a bit bonkers how fast films were made back then, as it is not uncommon to have 2 or 3 major titles produced in the same year.
La Belle Equipe is one of his most famous film. 5 unemployed men in post 1929 financial crisis France win a hefty sum thanks to a shared ticket to the national lottery. Jeannot (Jean Gabin), the natural leader of the group, convinces everyone they're better off polling their gains in a shared project than squandering their gains each on their own and the group settles on building a guingette (A restaurant / dancing by the waterside, very popular at the time). But soon fate tears them apart through various dramas and tragedy as the grand opening gets nearer...
There's a perverse, dark streak in most of Duvivier's works (reminds me of Fritz Lang, though in a different manner and applied to different genres). It doesn't work as well here, especially the turn it takes in the grim finale : feels a bit forced and tonally inconsistent. It's still a very well crafted film, but the weakest out of all the 6 I've seen so far.
I was much more raptured by Carnet de Bal. The film is credited to have introduced the concept of a sketch comedy each fronted by a major star in the french market, and indeed it has a ridiculous cast (including Louis Jouvet, Raimu and Fernandel to name those whose fame endured down to today) served with prime material catering to their strengths (down to having their favorite screenwriter or dialogue writer on board). The premise centers around Christine, who married young into ridiculous riches (she lives a lazy, hassle free existence on the banks of the Lac de Côme in Northern Italy) and who was recently widowed with no family of children. As she burns some old documents, she finds her old dance card from her first ball and decides to track down all her then suitors as a way to combat the dreading sense of void in her existence.
It could have been the basis of a sappy romantic comedy but under the helm of Duvivier it becomes a melancholic, sour and bleak deconstruction of youth and its illusions. The first man on Christine list shot himself soon after she got engaged out of sadness and she is forced to pass some time with his mother, who is living in denial of his death. Louis Jouvet was an up and coming lawyer, now he's a cynical club owner, elaborate mobster (he carefully plans as much as possible around the law to minimize risk) and pimp. Pierre Blanchar was about to graduate medecine, he lost an eye in the colonies and now is a demented doctor performing illegal abortions in a hellish flat bordering harbor cranes grinding on rails all day long (the whole sketch is filmed with dutch angles, it's on the nose but very effective), etc...
Surprinsingly it works as a whole despite the film often going out of its way -It's over 120mn long- to give seemingly unrelated material to its stars (Raimu basically gets a whole very Pagnolesque subplot with a prodigal son), perhaps because they're all playing their greatest hits, perhaps because it also takes time to deconstruct Christine's own illusions. Anyway, everything is converging to a clear intent and purpose. It goes without saying that as usual the cinematography and camera work is excellent and there's a lot of striking visuals. The only weakness is probably the protagonist being a wee bit thinner than the rest : Duvivier was never very strong with positive female character, his films are very much a men's world with some devious women on the side.
Excellent (2k) restoration too. The French blu-ray has english subtitles and it's not region coded. I saw the film was available in an US or UK boxset with some of Duvivier early works but I'm unsure if it's recent enough to have this latest master.
I also just realized I never spoke of Au revoir la haut, the latest Dupontel movie, back when I saw it. A little bit of context first : Albert Dupontel started as a stand up comedian (a good one) then moved on to be a film actor and a director (a little over 20 years ago). He's good at both, doesn't want to degrade himself below a certain standard of artistic quality without being snobby or pretentious, is a pretty outspoken man who seem to be straight up and principled. He certainly have his own thing and an affection for weird, borderline mad characters (his first film, Bernie, has him playing a deluded orphan killing people with shovels) and he is the face of a slighty off-kilter french cinema. All his films have been quality though it is sometimes a bit uneven and he is prone to push things into being too loud and hysterical.
Anyway, Au Revoir La Haut is adapted from a book which encountered some success and the story kicks in in the very tail end of WWI, as Albert (Dupontel himself) and Edouard (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart) get framed by their sadistic captain in a pointless offensive in November 1918. Albert may have died if not for Edouard, but the latter get horribly disfigured (he loses his lower jaw) and out of spite and shame prefer to let his very wealthy family he died. Albert support him as best as he can through scams and tend to his morphine addiction. Edouard only get lifted out of depression when he starts putting his artistic skills to use in a scam to sell fake memorial statues (including to his unwitting and grieving father)...
Overall it's a good film and it's not hard to see why it's getting the brunt of nominations for the French awards this years (alongside 120 BPM in which Nahuel Pérez Biscayart also stars). As expected with Dupontel, his take on WW1 is unhinged, slighty iconoclast and heightened (Albert has to beat up morphine dealers -other disabled vets- to supply his friend) and the film doesn't shy away from some interesting nastiness (Edouard treats Albert like shit at times, and it's not clear if it's out of resentment or classism). There's his usual visual flair and interesting choices : Edouard refuses the prosthetics and manufacture extravagant masks for himself. He also has barely any dialogue -mostly inaudible- and uses a little girl as his translator. The visual treatment of his horrible wound is tasteful without beinbg sanitized.
Some of the director usual flows do show up, however. Dupontel loves himself some fancy, computer assisted, moving shots and they're not always pertinent or useful. I understand that the color grading is playing up the quasi-dreamlike / fairtytale atmosphere but there's a couple of points (notably the battle scene in the beginning) where it veered into digitally & artificial unpleasantness. However the biggest problem of the film to me was that as a whole I'm not sure it worked : all of the individual parts and sequences are very well done and satisfying... but there's a lot of moving parts to the plot & it feels like some of the side character background bits were lost in adaptation and as such some scenes involving them felt a bit mechanical or lacking flesh and some of the emotional punch. The actor playing the antagonist is doing it with much delight and it worked for me, but objectively he didn't have a lot to work with and it was slighty inconsistent (we're told he's war crazy at first, then he's an asshole wh'oll stop at nothing for his own gain, I'm not sure I can reconcile both). Still you could probably do a lot worse than see this if you have the chance.
