MICHEL DEVILLE IN THE 70S
I’m up through the 70s in my chronological viewings of Deville’s filmography and unbelievably, more than once during viewings covered by this writeup, I had the same giddy, unmatchable and often unpredictable high of watching a masterpiece… which started with
L'Ours et la poupée (1970), a Bardot vehicle I had next to no faith in at the outset. But Deville gives us the purest distillation and mastery of the American screwball comedy (and
not French farce) I can think of in this perfect comedy of mismatched couple Bardot and Jean-Pierre Cassel. Cassel is especially hilarious here as the mild-mannered musician widower who is completely uninterested in Bardot’s advances, which makes her pursue him even harder. My favorite moments in the film, which unfolds over one 24-hour period, are those featuring Cassel’s children, who live in a house right out of Wes Anderson— indeed, the set design carries over here the inclination Deville already showed in his previous film,
Bye Bye Barbara, to spend an unusual amount of time constructing elaborately (and deliberately) designed set dressings. And the adults are so silly while the kids are so muted and clever in these passages that I’d say this is the perfect film for kids if only it didn’t have full frontal nudity from Bardot! Though, depending on your kid, it still may be a good choice! I can’t believe there’s no English friendly release of this (other than the OOP Koch Vision DVD that presented the color film in a black and white print— good lord), you might as well just give up on home media releasing if you can’t sell a movie this cleverly-made and starring two well-known French cinema icons. This would have topped my modern Screwball Comedies list had I seen it in time...
Nina Companeez, Deville’s collaborator on all his films up through and including
Raphaël (1971), obviously deserves a lot of credit for shaping the form and feel of their films as co-screenwriter and, in later works, even doing the editing (and she wrote and performed the title song in
Bye Bye Barbara!). So letting her take on sole writing duties for their last film together seems fitting, but unfortunately this is one of Deville’s most disappointing movies, a rather rote period piece about Maurice Ronet’s rogue falling for a good girl who demeans herself so he won’t feel guilty for bedding her, only to not realize her attraction for him was completely due to her virginal airs. Deville has a long throughline across his ouevre (so far, at least) of being drawn to ladies’ men and, frankly, bastards, so this is right in his wheelhouse, but Deville’s counterpart voice is solely missing here. I had no idea what a Companeez-free Deville film would look like, but
La femme en bleu (1973) is in many ways a better direct variation on his previous film! Michel Piccoli, a man who can get any woman he wants, spots a woman dressed all in blue and obsesses over finding her again, even bringing his former lover Lea Massari into the search. It’s obvious even before it’s obvious that this woman is a representation of his own inadequacies, fears, and insecurities, and the search for her is in many ways a pursuit of his own death. But the film (to its credit) is too cheeky to take this seriously, and the final shot, recontextualizing a set design prop displayed throughout the film, is so stupidly perfect that I had to applaud, even though there was no audience but me to hear!
Le mouton enragé (1974) is the only other film from this decade to not feature Deville’s writing, and it shows, but this still exhibits a startlingly brutal and dark worldview not far removed from Deville’s usual outlook, even if the gags are a lot more tasteless than usual. I can see the appeal, especially since Jean-Louis Trintignant’s ascension from lowly bank clerk to key player in the affairs of the rich and powerful is fully in concordance with Deville’s own interests. How funny you find the film will depend on what you think of “jokes” so dark there’s barely a punchline, like how Trintignant tells his buddy Jean-Pierre Cassel about how he raped Jane Birkin, to which Cassel responds with irritation at his “false” claim by barking “It’s nearly impossible to rape a conscious and full-grown woman— you SEDUCED her!” But it works for me because the film has no aims at good taste, and its cynicism is pervasive and consistent throughout— to traverse the world of the rich and powerful, one must leave all morals behind, the film argues, and in the process it deglamorizes the chi-chi set without ever feeling moralistic.
I was sure after discovering Deville several years ago that I’d never see a better film from him than
Ce soir ou jamais. Then a few weeks ago I was sure I’d never see a better film from him than
L'Ours et la poupée. And now, unbelievably, I’m sure yet again, because
L'Apprenti salaud (1977) [P] has to be his masterpiece, as it is one of the funniest, most brilliantly-directed comedies I’ve ever seen, ever, the end, period, full stop. Deville’s always best served by quick pacing, and he already showed his mastery of it in
Adorable menteuse and
L’Ours et la poupée, but here he taps into something else. By the end of this fairly short comedy I was exhausted like one gets tired after a day spent having fun at the amusement park. Robert Lamoureux is a mild-mannered fishing store employee who inherits a small amount of money and uses it to enact increasingly larger con schemes, initially solely to connect with comely young provincial worker Christine Dejoux. The film becomes a variation on
Paper Moon, with the duo outsmarting dopes with wild abandon in order to exploit the greedy. Given that the film’s joys are primarily tied to its mise-en-scene and tone, there’s a limit to how much I can say versus what can be shown by watching how Deville times so much of the film to works of classical music, or how the film exhibits such flawless comic editing that it serves as an exemplar of the concept, or how Deville’s instincts on camera movement and blocking, already so good even in his early films, are without peer in the more manic moments of the film. Very rarely do I watch a film and think, “Wow, this is one of the best films I’ve
ever seen,” but the thought came to mind here, and constantly.
I suspect even if we get the Deville reappreciation we desperately need in the English-speaking world,
L'Apprenti salaud’s lack of marketable stars (here, at least) will cause it to be one of the last to be rescued, but ironically that same problem won’t be an issue for
Le dossier 51 (1978), which has no stars but instead provides a very 70s conspiracy film in an unexpected and rather puckish fashion and was one of Deville’s biggest and most visible hits. The film purports to be a collection of secret intel briefings, hidden footage, and surveillance documents surrounding a potential political target, the subject 51 of the file name. This is a film all about form and style, though in a different fashion than Deville’s usual modes, and you can see the appeal of Deville getting to show off in a different fashion. Ultimately the film settles into a couple long set pieces filmed in POV ala
Lady in the Lake and we get some more conventional character beats (of a sort) in the last act as it all comes together. An interesting experiment, and one sure to find an audience WOULD SOMEONE JUST FUCKING RELEASE HIS BEST FILMS COMMERCIALLY WITH ENGLISH SUBS FOR CHRIST’S SAKE
