626 Les visiteurs du soir

[HistoryProf]

Did not know this film existed before its announcement, but everything i've seen and read has elevated it to a must buy for me. I was already excited to see Children of Paradise on blu, but this will be a fantastic compliment to that masterpiece. It's great to see more WWII era films added to the collection - every one i've seen holds surprises and i'm constantly amazed they even got made amid the chaos.

[knives]

Certainly Grem thrived in this, and although Grem, Carne and Prevert were very far from "collaborators" they were all able to take advantage ot the opportunities, and in the case of movies like Visiteurs, or obviously Clouzot's Le Corbeau, they could embed anti Vichy sentiment into allegory based text. As did Maurice Tourneur during the war in a series of outstanding "Fantasy" and Gothic films.

I adore this film, but whenever I read comments like this, and there are plenty, I have to admit to some confusion. What exactly in this film shows an anti-Vichy sentiment?

[knives]

I agree with what you've said regarding Le corbeau (of course) and the Gremillon which certainly doesn't seem political to me, but with the Carne I have the confusion. What little you've said already reveals a lot for me and certainly makes me anticipate rewatching even more to view it with this eye.

As an aside since you sort of brought this up, but in seeing a few of the films that Carne made without Prevert has lead me to believe that he's not the genius, very talented though he is. Without Prevert his films seem to be less powerful and complex.

[knives]

I didn't mean to suggest that he's nothing without Prevert, more along the line of the synergy pushing him up to the level of greatest rather than just very good. Though it may be telling that the only of his films I've seen from him without Prevert is the post war films which may suggest something entirely different than what I was saying.

[knives]

Thanks for all of that information. I'll try to check out the Blistine.

[HistoryProf]

That's not quite it, in fact it's the reverse of the situation:

Possibly (in fact certainly) the only good to come out of the Vichy Occupation era was the streamlining and the centralization of the formerly chaotic French film industry. By 1938 and the collapse of the Front Populaire and the Daladier Government, France generally and the Movie industry in particular were a total shambles. The only really successful and ongoing enterprises were Pathe (which former head Benard Natan had professionalized with vertical integration for instance) and Gaumont. THe dozens of niche interest production companies ("Osso" "Albatross" and so on) were broke and had bankrupted many more people. What remained is evidenced by the work of a number of emigres directing material (Siodmak, Ophuls, Ozep) in what were poverty row studio settings.) The Vichy regime cleaned up the studios, cleaned up the administrations of the business (while also banning reissues of prewar French cinema, and American/Allied films etc) and gave the industry some belated stability. Certainly Grem thrived in this, and although Grem, Carne and Prevert were very far from "collaborators" they were all able to take advantage ot the opportunities, and in the case of movies like Visiteurs, or obviously Clouzot's Le Corbeau, they could embed anti Vichy sentiment into allegory based text. As did Maurice Tourneur during the war in a series of outstanding "Fantasy" and Gothic films. Even Grem's Le Ciel est a vous which was and still is often read as supporting the Nazi/Vichy view of "Family values" was a triumph of Grem's great feminist tendency, a celebration of individual achievement and a hymn to conjugal happines, not unlike Beethoven's sublime Fidelio.

So the "Chaos" was in fact the prewar industry, the one from which Renoir comes up with la Regle, itself a product and expression of the chaos

I don't pretend to know much about the history of the industry or studios in France - or anywhere else in Europe for that matter - so I was only speaking to the chaos of WWII. Certainly France was surrounded by Chaos during the war years, which is all I was referring to. To know what was going on in the countrysides in those years while some amazing films were being made nearby fascinates me - just as learning about the everyday lives of others who endured the war as civilians does. But that's a very different topic than what you were speaking to.

[HistoryProf]

Sorry, I should have been clearer. Of course the chaos (and the horror) of those years is difficult to imagine, not least the internecine treachery, and the betrayals - not least poor Bernard Natan (from Pathe until 1935) whose former industry "friends" ratted on him after he got out of prison in virulent demonstrations of fag and jew hatred and got him despatched to Auschwitz where he was murdered shortly thereafter.

THis is what makes the Film Industry parallel so amazing. It literally IS the one positive achievment of a disgusting, evil, administration/occupying force.

And the bold is what I find so astounding when I see occupation era films. And it's why I'm so excited for the Grémillon set. Knowing how difficult it was for many to even get a loaf of bread and have to wonder if the vendor was going to snitch on them while doing it makes the production of these little masterpieces almost unfathomable to me. Please let me know if you get that book written, as i'll be first in line to order it!

[jouvet]

Thanks for your remarks, David. It's very exciting to hear that you're working on a Grémillon monograph. Do you have a publisher and/or a publication date? Very timely, what with the upcoming Eclipse set about to bring JG's work to a broader audience.

I completely agree with your remarks about the re-organisation of the French film industry during the war. One of the (many) ironies of the Occupation is that it essentially founded most of the hallmarks of what we now associate with the constitution of French cinema: a commercial industry yet with top-down state interventions to protect its market share and promote quality product (a term that dates from the 1930s as an internal trade criterion, hijacked by Truffaut years later); an artistic-business complex designed to win international as well as domestic audiences; a more craft-driven artisanal alternative to the American studio oligopoly.

In my opinion the 40s and 50s are ripe for rediscovery. My own pitch would be the 1947 Jean Delannoy film LES JEUX SONT FAITS/THE CHIPS ARE DOWN, which was written by Sartre. It features a bizarre fantasy France in which fascism holds sway (as if WWII had been lost) and a beleaguered Resistance desperately hangs on. One of its leaders (Marcello Pagliero) is shot by an informer, while at the same time a bourgeois woman (Micheline Presle) is murdered by her grasping husband. These two meet in a peculiarly bureaucratic afterlife, then get a stay of permanent execution if they can prove that they might have been ideally matched lovers if they hadn't both died. It's absolutely fascinating -- a weird mix of lyrical (even Cocteau-esque) whimsy, with bleak, pessimistic naturalism. It played at Cannes and was well liked at the time, but now has no reputation at all. And there are others like this awaiting rediscovery. Sometimes I wonder if all the 60s New Wave hype was worth the many casualties of its preceding classical period.

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

This is intereprative of course, but take le Corbeau: isn't the underlying psychology of the film as essay in mass paranoia inspired by a political system that is based on everyone being an informant?

One of the more intriguing themes of film making during the occupation is the relative autonomy in the set ups like Continental in the occupied zone as opposed to the more sclerotic moral values obsessed Vichy regime. Continental headed up by Greven, who it is alleged was a sort of role model for the francophile German officer in ' Le Silence de la mer', seemed more relaxed about ambiguous readings or flawed characters in comparison to their Vichy counterparts. I don't know about US releases but the double UK and french editions of Tavernier's study of the period 'Laissez Passer' has some instructive commentary and docos on this aspect. There is also an interesting theory,whose provenance I have forgotten, that Greven turned a blind eye to Corbeau's acidic portrait of french society because the german bureaucracy was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of denunciations and secretly sought to minimise the french public's propensity for grassing up their neighbours or anyone they held a grudge against.
(D'ailleurs David, it's Marcel Blistene not Maurice Blistine).

[John Edmond]

Prof, the "if" is where it's at for now. I have never done a doctoral thesis, or written anything other than a medium sized dissertation for a Bachelors at University, and that was over 40 years ago. So the Grem project is going to be - cough -interesting at least, and I have the daunting problem of trying to reasearch records, documentation and possibly organize a screening of (still unseen) Gardiens du Phare at the Archive Francaise in the short week I'm back in Paris this September.

Add me to the people interested in a Gremillion monograph by you.

Feel free to whack me down, but any thought of doing it as a thesis? I suspect academic frou-frou won't tempt you but a scholarship and institutional backing (particularly when trying to access certain archives) doesn't hurt.

[John Edmond]

David, will PM in the next day or two.

If I had to make a complaint about Fujiwara's Preminger book (however, overall I agree that this is a superb book) is that it feels like a mimetic critique of Preminger - it's too even-handed with each film receiving the same considered approach. Which is something I approve of, but also something I found numbing when read straight through. Not that I would want Fujiwara to change a chapter, just that I wish some overview chapters had been interspersed amongst the pre-existing chapters to break things up.

[Florinaldo]

I saw this again recently on Ontario French public TV. It's a tad clunky at times, in part because of the stylized acting style from some of the principals, probably a choice by the director to achieve a tone suited for a tale in the tradition of medieval legends. The script and directing don't quite manage to consistently maintain the necessary level of strangeness, as we are instead treated to the meanderings of the various pairs of would-be lovers endlessly criss-crossing each other. However, things pick up significantly as soon as Jules Berry shows up at the devil.

It is good that Criterion is bringing this lesser-known Carné-Prévert to a North-American public. It appears however that they blew all of their budget for extra features on their new edition of Les Enfants du Paradis, adding as much as possible to entice those who already have the DVD edition to update to Blu-Ray, leaving very little for Les Visiteurs du Soir. It is too bad because this film could have benefited from a commentary or a documentary that would have discussed its place in the tradition of French-language fantastique, both in literature and in film.

(Jules Berry standing beside the statue of Alain Cuny and Arletty.)

It's Marie Déa's character who is turned to stone.

[Florinaldo]

I can still see that screen grab. Right before the one featuring Arletty and Herrand. Unless you are referring to another one of Berry and the statues.

[Ashirg]

DVD Beaver review

[movielocke]

Overall, this was good but not great. The pace of the picture is uneven but the chief issue is the dialogue which is on-the-nose throughout the run. At times its almost Flash Gordon esque in the dialogue. Once the Devil shows up about midway through the picture, the film somewhat evens out, as his game performance elevates the approach by providing a cracking black humor counterpoint to the stolid melancholic humor of the first half. The story and characters are interesting, but the whole thing never seems to come together. You keep waiting for that magical moment when everything starts to click and the film never quite gets there, perhaps because the intensity of the melodramatic professions of pure/true/undying/blahblahblah/earnest love keep getting in the way. But then that's the whole point, that love, but it's interesting that as a viewer I never believed the lead male nor did I particularly care if he succeeded (though I did believe the hard working performance of the actress playing Anne, and considered her the best part of the picture and one of the most interesting characters in it). Arletty is of course superb, and she seems to revel in the androgynousness and flexibility of her character's seduction tactics.

The transfer is absolutely gorgeous, they did a fabulous job restoring the film, a shame that Children of Paradise can't look this good due to too much devilish meddling.

Now if only we could get the Devil and Daniel Webster on bluray. A surprisingly similar approach to the devil in both pictures.

[movielocke]

I found the documentary to be rather dull, overall, and I thought that David Hare did a better, more concise presentation of the production history in a handful of posts in this thread than the doc did in 37 minutes.

The highlight of the doc is the gigantic 50 years of janus film doorstopper found in every shot of one of the film nerd talking heads, who was interviewed sitting on his bed in his bedroom/studio apartment.

That thing is a behemoth! I was more captivated watching for it in the "set dressing" of the apartment interview than I was by the content.