Render unto Resnais : three singles...

Not all Resnais's films are Everests of boredom.

The director also made nearly mainstream films. Most of his admirers regard them as sub-par by the filmmaker's very high standards : though towering far above average movie entertainment, they are not unique, or boring, enough.

Critics and scholars agree that memory is the unifying theme of Resnais's work. What is more memorable than pain and boredom ? Certainly not pleasure and excitement.

Inflicting a boredom so painful that he can stop the clock and turn every frame into an eternity of nothingness is arguably the shortest cut to making a film memorable.

In this respect, " Stavisky " (1974), " Mon oncle d'Amérique " (1980) and « Mélo » (1988) are not truly memorable : they may even entertain a general audience.

" Stavisky " tells the true story of the eponymous and brilliant con man, so intimate with the French political circles that the final collapse of his financial exploits and his suicide/murder in 1933 threatened the very survival of Third Republic.

Film is a beautifully crafted, acted and directed period piece. Like a middle-of-the-road governement, it faced a two-sided opposition : Resnais fans thought the film academic ; docudrama lovers mourned the insipid masterpiece which a self-effaced director (Henri Verneuil ?) would no doubt have produced.

" Melo " too is set during French " Années folles ", the adaptation by Resnais of a long forgotten play by long forgotten Henri Bernstein. ( Resnais films are either based on original scripts by hired hands -Robbe-Grillet : " L'année dernière à Marienbad " ; Duras : " Hiroshima, mon amour " ; Jorge Semprun : " Stavisky "...- or adaptations of existing material ; a unique situation among French-style « auteurs ».)

As a play, " Mélo " belongs in " Théâtre de Boulevard ", commercial theater closer to sitcom fare than a Samuel Becket play : one more romantic triangle ; one suicide ; two lives go on ; selective memory blurs the pain.

Film confirms that Resnais is a talented director and that a talented director alone does not make a good movie. " Mélo " is as much a success for Resnais, the director, as a failure for Resnais, the author : a beautiful, but cold and unengaging, object which does not convey to the audience what the filmmaker saw in the original play that made it worth adapting.

A Resnais zealot, Claude Bouniq-Mercier, marvels at the film « très grande modernité » (« outstanding modernity »), but explains the praise no further. What is modern in the film except that it was shot in 1988 when the play was written in 1926 ?

In a different kind of adaptation, " Mon oncle d'Amérique " stems from Professeur Henri Laborit's scientific research about the behavorial impact of unconscious impulses ; Professor Laborit works with rats, but eyes at the human race.

Film moves back and forth between rats, scientific speech and the lives of several drab characters.

Final product is as heavy-handed as certain Zola chapters when in demonstrative mood. No doubt on purpose, a dreary naturalism permeates the locations, sets, costumes, every line of dialogue of the movie fictional elements. Professeur Laborit dos not come through as a great pedagogue and is no Garbo or John Wayne for screen presence. The concept of Depardieu as lab rat is physiologically intriguing.

But, for the director, if not the audience, the real point is elsewhere. Resnais was attracted to the project by its " dramatic construction ", how he could " shape " the movie. Hence, the film is no mere " adaptation " or illustration of Professor Laborit’s research, but rather its replica in, and tranfer to, the field of filmmaking.

More than traditional cinema, film becomes a formal experiment in conceptual art, with the viewer being the lab rat and paying for the privilege.