A funny S.O.B.

In « Indochine », Jean Yanne was a cynical, bad-tempered French police officer. Hard to think of a more pleonastic sentence : can a French police officer be anything but cynical and bad-tempered ? could Jean Yanne be anything but cynical and bad-tempered ?

But, even French police officers and Jean Yanne are not immune to falling in love with Catherine Deneuve. Fortunately, the actor and his character did so without any display of romantic foolishness and their sentimental restraint was a welcome relief from the soapiness of the film main plot.

In many ways, Jean Yanne embodied French heaviness. A heavy-set silhouette, a heavy-eyed face with a disgusted look, a gruff voice with a working class accent : the superlative foul-mouthed growling Frenchman.

He looked like Maigret -yes, a French police officer can be neither cynical, nor needlessly bad-tempered-, but with an undisguised contempt for mankind, or W.C. Fields’s Gallic natural son.

That was trademark Yanne : a catharsis for all the petty aggressions of daily life ; the more he grumbled, the more you laughed.

Fifteen years before « Indochine », he was hilarious in Godard’s « Weekend » (1967). The director had married him to blonde doll Mireille Darc and their couple was arguing its way one of the highlights of French middle class existence : driving away for the weekend.

The first two reels of the film are a surreal mix of very dark humour, stand up comedy lines and Godard’s touch, as the weekend turns to mayhem on the road.

Casting Yanne was vintage Godard ; rising to the bait was vintage Yanne.

The actor’s public image could not have been more alien to the director’s universe. Materialistic, selfish, anti-intellectual, he stood for all that Godard was about to massacre on screen and did not seem to give a damn about it.

Misanthropy and a common taste for destruction were probably the missing links between the right wing anarchist -faked or real- and the then Maoist filmmaker.

Better still from Godard’s deadpan perspective, Jean Yanne, a stand up comedian and familiar radio voice, had become famous for two acts set on the road.

In number one, he plays his heavy-self : a candidate for a driver’s licence who will not be bothered by administrative formalities or the examiner and bullies his way to the coveted piece of paper.

In number two, he is a truck driver on a night trip, who listens to high-brow radio channel France Culture and discusses Peguy and Bach with his gay companion.

The echo of both dialogues make Jean Yanne doubly hilarious in « Weekend », before the film takes a hairpin bend toward Maoist humour.

Not advisable for all audiences, but very close to Jean Yanne’s wit in its bad taste and possibly unconscious nonsensical vein, the Maoist idea of a good joke has Darc and Yanne hijacked by the Seine-et-Oise -a « département » near Paris- Liberation Front ; Yanne is killed, Darc and the long-haired freedom fighters feast on his barbecued remains.

No doubt an ending which the actor would have relished in real life, certain to have the last laugh as the reckless cannibals would have a hard, and maybe fatal, time trying to stomach him.

Jean Yanne died in 2003 of a banal heart attack. He was seventy years old. Obituary writers were shocked to discover that, despite his constant show of laziness, he had appeared in over seventy films.

Many of his roles were only vignettes, in which he played or caricatured himself ; they cost him a few days’ work against a welcome cheque : Yanne never got along well with French tax authorities -another reason for his popularity-, and spent most of his later years in Los Angeles, where he likely rooted for the « Dodgers ».

In addition to his « Indochine » and « Weekend » parts, he had some more memorable roles, like the murderous « Boucher »(1969) -butcher- he played for Chabrol or the unfaithful husband Pialat, whose temper and figure closely matched his, asked him to be in « Nous ne vieillirons pas ensemble »(1972).

The latter film earned him a Best Actor Prize in Cannes, which he squarely refused.

Yanne’s talent was rediscovered in time by a younger generation of filmmakers and the actor was widely lauded for « Je règle mon pas sur le pas de mon père » (1998), in which he faced French cinema new boy wonder and baby shark, Guillaume Canet.

As Jean Yanne died, some vague and sobbing associates tried to pin on his corpse the weary « cliché » of the tender, affectionate man, hiding coyly behind a rough facade.

Whether they were motivated by pious reasons, the wish to tarnish his reputation, or excused by failing memory, remains unknown. Fortunately, nobody believed them : everybody knew that Jean Yanne was, at heart, a true son of a bitch.

Power "Souper" : main course and "mignardises".

Instead of being a mere exercise in style, an aesthetic triumph to be greeted by appreciative yawns, « Le souper » is truly fascinating.

This is not Molinaro’s, or even Brisville’s fault. All films are not born equal. Nobody will leave a mediocre crime movie before the murderer is unmasked. Here, History in the making sticks the viewer to his chair. What he watches is ten times as thrilling as reality TV, docudrama or lavish documentary re-enactments.

He has no doubt that what he sees on screen is real. He knows the story end -at least if he is French and not fully illiterate-, but is enthralled and panting to know the answer, enfolding before him, to the « how » question.

Said « Supper » probably never was, but talks between Talleyrand and Fouché are documented. As often, reality returns more compelling after a small detour through fiction.

« Le souper » does not look like a filmed play, because the play itself was never handicapped by a lack of outdoors or movement.

Why would you go out ? You are where things happen, with the people who matter ; what goes on outside is a different movie, set in a different world which does not interest you at the moment.

You hear shouts, you imagine riots, you want to stay, if not side, with Talleyrand and Fouché : nearly for free and ninety minutes, you are allowed into the intimacy of History figures and discover how much more fascinating they are than the mob locked outside the gates, to which you likely belong in real life.

Film is an intricate many-layered work : a brilliant conversation and a political negotiation between an aristocrat and a nobody from « Ancien Régime », made prince and duke by Napoléon’s whim ; language as an art-form and a weapon ; the past and future faces of absolute power ; the epilogue, written by two survivors, to thirty-five years of French turmoil ; the bottom line of all the French Revolution did and did not change : the people is once more in the street, but does not really matter ; Fouché has managed to extricate himself from their ranks and rise to power, Talleyrand has saved for himself the privileges given up by his class.

Added to the mix, are another art-form : gastronomy, and an expression of remaining social borders : table manners, by which, to this very day, an aristocrat can tell a working man or a « bourgeois » from his own.

As an afterthought, the film is also a subtle exploration of French power culture, the unwritten rules and hidden codes of its underground class struggle.

Its supper setting provides the negotiation with more than a pretext : it offers the two men the common and neutral ground they need for a chance to resolve their differences and infuses their meeting with a sense of playfulness rather than solemnity.

This superlative « power supper » allows for a very French, and beautifully rendered, mix of cold blooded « Realpolitik » and sensuality : as the trivial act of feeding oneself is elevated to the seriousness of a sacred ritual, language is celebrated with similar respect and words are pronounced with voluptuous gluttony, it ensues that, in a system of communicating vessels, the country’s and the two gourmets’ own fates can be taken more lightly.

The film also draws a parallel with an earlier episode of French Revolution, when the Parisians forced the king and his family back from Versailles to Paris and Marie-Antoinette supposedly exclaimed : « Let them eat cake ». Because they never expressed such candour, Fouché and Talleyrand did not share Marie-Antoinette’s unfortunate fate ; as they once more decide the compatriots’ future, neither would dream to invite them to their supper.

This is another reason why the film is so pleasant : it has no political agenda. It does not take pains to portray Fouché and Talleyrand as repulsive, infamous characters whose immorality shall be condemned with righteous indignation; it does not either look up to them as pre-Nietzchean « Ubermenschen » beyond good and evil. Molinaro films both at eye level, neither from above or below.

Chateaubriand, whose own political career was a long and winding road, describes Talleyrand and Fouché, waiting to meet Louis XVIII, as « le vice appuyé sur le bras du crime » : « vice resting on crime’s arm » (Talleyrand was clubfooted).

This is a great metaphor for literary effect, but « Le souper » is successful because it refuses to pass judgement.

For those who ignore the end of the story and are curious to know it :

Louis XVIII was reinstated on his throne ;

Talleyrand headed the government for a few months ; then, the king’s ultra-conservative intimate circle forced him to step down ; he will manage a final come back in 1830, under Louis-Philippe ;

his services earned Fouché Louis XVIII’s short-lived gratitude : in 1816, he was forced in exile to Italy : he had voted the death of Louis XVI, Louis XVIII’s brother ; political memory is selective, but not that forgetful, even in France. He died in Trieste, in 1820.

"Souper" power : "canapés" and "hors-d'oeuvre".

Comparing the upset victory of Molinaro’s « L’emmerdeur » over Wilder’s « Buddy, buddy » to Canada beating Brazil at soccer is unfair : to Molinaro, not to Canada’s soccer team.

A French win over Brazil provides a more appropriate comparison : Brazil is the better team, but often loses to France.

Edouard Molinaro is the kind of filmmakers critics hate : unpredictable, never showing up where you expect. He is easier to dismiss than -some of- his films.

They are a weird bunch : « La mort de Belle » (1960)... « Hibernatus » (1969)... « L’emmerdeur » (1973)... « Dracula père et fils » (1976)... « La cage aux folles » (1978)... « La cage aux folles II » (1980)... « Pour cent briques, t’as plus rien ! » (1982)... « Le Souper » (1992)...

The director is a hard fit for the « auteur »’s mould. A recurring theme in his films ? The odd couple ? It would apply to all filmmakers, from Hal Roach to Hitchcock and Bergman.

In French « jargon », Molinaro is a « faiseur », literally a « maker » ; the word is usually pronounced with a deprecating pout : a director for hire, a man ready to compromise, no Manoel de Oliveira or Theo Angelopoulos.

A team player or a coach rather than a full-fledged demiurge, an open-minded craftsman ready to put his skills to the service of material initiated by others.

Analysing his list of movies, a film investment manager would advice careful « stockpicking » : « L’emmerdeur » for sure, « Le souper » too.

Paris. July 6, 1815. Three weeks earlier, Napoleon’s tentative come back from Elba island hit the wall in Waterloo. Allied English, Prussian, Russian armies are in Paris. In the city streets, the mob’s temper is as stormy as the weather.

Louis XVIII, who fled upon notice of the deposed emperor’s approach, is hiding in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis. He is as eager to return to his capital city, throne and beloved people as fearful of the Parisians’ welcome.

In this vacancy of power, this is the night of living dangerously : France next regime and the political shape of Europe are at stake. Talleyrand invites Fouché for supper at his palatial home.
A little historical background.

Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord was born in 1854, an aristocrat among the aristocrats and a schemer among the schemers by world-wide History standards.

Bishop of Autun, a clergy representative during Etats Généraux, he rides the first French Revolution wave, until Robespierre’s Terreur forces him into exile.

His departure saves his neck and, when Robespierre’s head falls, he returns.

He serves Bonaparte, then Napoléon from 1797 through 1807 as Minister of foreign affairs ; his services are valued : he is made Prince de Bénévent and « Grand chambellan d’Empire ».

In 1807, he disapproves the Emperor’s decision to break with Austria ; in 1809, he falls into disgrace.

In 1814, he is back in charge of French foreign affairs : for Louis XVIII. When Napoleon escapes from Elba island, he does not desert the king’s ranks : he is shrewd, if not by loyal.

Joseph Fouché was born in 1759, near Nantes. A plebeian among plebeians, he was heir to no bishop’s palace, or scruples either. Revolution is his chance, he grabs it with both hands.

He is a natural for police work. During Terreur, he hones his skills in Lyons, repressing Christians and all supposed Revolution enemies.

When Robespierre’s head rolls, his remains cool : his talent is unique, no regime can do without him ; during the Directoire, Consulat and Empire periods, until 1810, he is Police Minister, his networkd control the country, Napoléon makes him duc d’Otrante.

When the former emperor returns, he sides with him ; during « les Cent-Jours », the one hundred day period between Napoléon’s landing in France and Waterloo, the Police Ministry is his again.

Wrong bet, but nobody but he can guarantee Louis XVIII’s safety in Paris.

Talleyrand and Fouché hate, and need, each other. They eat, talk and drink, with mesmerising on screen effect.

How much thanks to Molinaro ? Hard to say, but does it matter ?

Film adapts a successful stage play by Jean-Claude Brisville. Script is written by Brisville in collaboration with Molinaro and producer Yves Rousset-Rouard, of « Emmanuelle »’s fame. As Talleyrand and Fouché, Claude Rich and Claude Brasseur resume their stage roles.

Molinaro deserves at least credit for not wasting the original material and the talent trusted to his hands.

Never lazy, his direction uses the whole technical arsenal of cinema to take the audience where staged theatre cannot let them in, even in the first row, even with binoculars : the very heart of the matter.

Close ups, inserts, the constant tracking of expressions, glances, the close exploration of settings, costumes, dishes, cutlery, furniture, hangings, shadows and opulence of the room give the film an intimacy hard to match on stage.

The devil and Molinaro’s direction are in the details : nothing showy or expressionistic in them.
Confident that the director is not out to steal the show from them, the actors are, in turn, restrained ; their verbal duel only goes overboard when required by their characters.

Film effects are never underlined, Molinaro’s work is self effacing and a perfect fit for its subject matter : these mindgames of wit, double thoughts and second guesses, this subtle play of chess required an equally Cartesian, articulate direction.

As much as Fouché and Talleyrand, Molinaro gives a lesson of French moderation in revolutionary times and delivers the cool-headed work that was needed.

Film is classical, but never academic : ninety minutes long, it is as fat free as an emaciated cyclist at the end of tour de France : not an ounce of academic self-indulgence and -satisfaction in the direction, the script, the acting.

Despite the richness of the food on screen, film is as sharp as his characters’ brains, tongues and knives. In typical French fashion, gourmet cooking and wine do not dull but quicken the mind.

(Re)Make (Non)Sense.

A US remake of a French film makes great economic sense. For the US film industry.

The box office of foreign or, more accurately, foreign language films is marginal in the US. This stronghold on its home market funds the US film industry world-wide supremacy.

US films domestic box office finances the Studios international distribution arms : self-distributing their films around the global village, the Major Companies control their destinies and dominate the world market.

US companies have no interest in breeding competition on their own soil. Foreign and particularly French cinema is restricted to the chic ghetto of art-house fare.

Due to their wider commercial appeal, mainstream foreign language films are kept off limits : US audiences supposedly do not stand dubbed versions ; this is the US « cultural exception », trumpeted by the local film industry like a truism : never challenged, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

By remaking a foreign film, the US film industry appropriates its success, exploits it on its domestic market, then exports it to the world as its own product : a high profit business of clever repackaging, thriving on thinly veiled protectionism.

For foreign filmmakers, licensing remake rights to their films is seen as a lesser evil : they earn an indirect entry into the US market and fees fatter than through a hypothetical distribution deal where expenses and distributor’s share of income customarily eat up all revenues ; their ego is satisfied that Hollywood turn to them for inspiration.

As remake rights are acquired, so are the North American distribution rights to the original film. They shall never be exploited, but the producer of the remake may sit reassured that no US audience shall view the original film and that his own production shall not risk an unfavourable comparison.

Reassurance is no guarantee against the occasional, « Buddy, buddy » style, misstep : a film so bad the domestic audience need no comparison with the original movie to stay away.

The remake industry nevertheless remains a great long term business model for the US film sector, a wonderfully myopic one for its foreign providers

Creatively, remakes are weird animals : they come in various shapes, sizes and colours.

Some look like costly dubbed versions of the original movie : « My father, the hero » (1993) is the no surprise remake of ... « Mon père, le héros » (1991) ; Gérard Depardieu stars in both versions ; sense of Gallic « déjà vu » speaking English could have been stronger : Francis Veber, « L’emmerdeur »’s screenwriter, was to direct.

The job eventually went to Steve Miner. A sensible choice : the recipe is the same, the main ingredient -Depardieu- too, it is up to the US cook to concoct a dressing palatable for the global audience. Nothing too spicy, something sweet and aseptic, like for any product aiming at world-wide appeal.

Such remakes fall somewhere between the translation of a novel and local versions of video games ; the original French film is not unlike raw milk cheese : refused entry in the US for sanitary reasons, it is remade and marketed in pasteurised version by local producers.

A « R-Restricted : under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian » rated original film thus becomes a « PG-Parental guidance suggested » or « G-General audiences » movie with highly increased box office expectations. « L’emmerdeur »’s very French title -pain in the ass, shit stirrer- is elegantly watered down to « Buddy, buddy ».

The feeling that a successful remake is only a matter of dressing can mislead the original filmmakers into producing their own remake without outside help.

Smash French hit « Les visiteurs » (1992) about time travelling medieval knight and his servant prompted Gaumont to go ahead with its own English language remake : « Just visiting » (Les visiteurs en Amérique - 2001).

Jean Reno and Christian Clavier are back in their leading roles ; Jean-Marie Poiré bows out, but is replaced in the director’s chair by another French Jean-Marie : Gaubert. Film is shot in Chicago with a US supporting cast : Christina Applegate, Malcolm McDowell...

Original film was at times remotely funny, remake is not. Its « language, crude humour and violence » netted the movie a « PG-13 » rating, when it truly deserved an ICAA warning : French prejudices about the US and US prejudices about France add up to make « Just visiting » Improper for Consumption by Any Audience.

By contrast, some remakes appear to share little, if anything, with their model : which uninformed viewer would recognise Chris Marker’s « La jetée » (1963 - 29 minutes) behind Terry Gilliam’s « Twelve Monkeys » (1995 - 130 minutes) ?

The original film seems a distant source of inspiration, the acquisition of the remake rights a bad case of legal paranoia and an expensive -or cheap, considering the film global budget- way to add cultural « cachet » to a high profile risky Hollywood production.

Somewhere between these extremes, a new stage production of a play or any new interpretation of a work of classical music look like the better creative analogies to most remakes.

They nevertheless underestimate the film director’s role : he is the movie’s legal author ; the director of a play or the conductor of the orchestra performing a composer’s work have no such status.

The recording of a new arrangement of a musical score may move us a bit closer to what a remake truly is, but these analogies are valid for their very shortcomings : the remake concept negates by itself the director’s position as the undisputed author of a film.

More than the film, its script is often the decisive factor behind a remake : Francis Veber’s was probably the driving force behind Billy Wilder’s decision to remake « L’emmerdeur ».

As to Molinaro’s direction, Brel’s and Ventura’s acting, Wilder more than likely thought that he, Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau would easily surpass them. He was badly wrong.

Molinaro 1 : 0 Wilder.

How shocking : Molinaro’s « L’emmerdeur » (1973) is far better than Wilder’s « Buddy, buddy » (1981), its remake. As if Brazil beat Canada in ice hockey, or Canada Brazil in soccer.

In « L’emmerdeur », a comedy-old recipe -the meeting of opposites- receives a fresh spin, as a grumpy hitman’s meticulously staged job is derailed by a down-on-his-luck loser’s poorly planned suicide attempt.

Sparkling comedy owes a lot to its odd couple, wrestler turned actor Lino Ventura and singer moonlighting as actor Jacques Brel. Claude Lelouch deserves procurer’s credit for arranging their initial on screen meeting one year before in « L’aventure, c’est l’aventure » : they belonged in an ensemble cast of third rate bad guys which also included Charles Denner, Charles Gérard and Aldo Maccione.

Their chemistry carries the day with effortless spontaneity. Francis Veber’s tight script and Molinaro’s fast pace successfully wrap up the movie : eighty minutes long, « L’emmerdeur » makes sure that, despite its title, it does not overstay its welcome.

« Buddy, buddy » is sixteen minutes, i.e. twenty per cent, longer and feels like a never ending agony. Film is stale, the fight too many of a cinema « dream team » : Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond at the typewriter, Wilder behind the camera, Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon before.

Great teams never die, but do not always age well : in 1981, Wilder is 75 years old, Diamond 61, Matthau too, Lemmon 56, for a grand total of 253 years versus 179 for « L’emmerdeur »’s Molinaro (45), Veber (36), Ventura (54) and Brel(44) in 1973.

An old men’s film versus a middle aged movie, one crawling along on a near empty tank of energy and creativity, the other spending them more freely than a Saudi Sheik his trunks of petrodollars.

« Buddy, buddy » is never funny : a sad « Sunset Boulevard » for Billy Wilder who shall never direct again. Film was so unsuccessful that it was never released in France : probably a « première » for Wilder’s « dernière » ; an act of mercy, too.

Reel after reel, round after round, « L’emmerdeur » beats « Buddy, buddy » hands down. But is it really an upset ? Can a remake best its model ?

« Buddy, buddy » may be watched, rather than as a bad film, as a professional suicide attempt by Wilder : the director did not as much remake « L’emmerdeur » as emulate Jacques Brel’s character, and succeed. The film failure becomes the director’s win : Wilder purposely raced to a catastrophe that put a final end to a career, which he was unable to quit of his own free will.

To remake a movie is to challenge the original’s director on his own turf, play by his rules and pay for the privilege. It is a duel set in your opponent’s back yard, in which you grant him the choice of arms and the first shot : if his film is good, you are dead before yours starts principal photography.

The odds are so much against you that the match seems rigged.

To remake a film, you must pay. To manage a return on your investment, you shall use what you pay for : your model original material. But how to claim credit to what you do not create but only imitate ? To prove your worth, you shall depart from the original film, and find yourself in a Catch 22 : the better the original, the smaller your chances to improve on it.

If you remake a great film, at best you can hope for a draw ; if you picked up a mediocre one, you are guilty of poor judgement.

Your only chance, and the rationale behind all remakes, is that your audience shall know nothing of your model movie and therefore see your film as an original one. Then, remaking « L’emmerdeur » is like hiring a ghost writer.

If your audience knows of the original film, but never watched it, you are still safe, but your model is not. This is how « Buddy, buddy » betrays « L’emmerdeur » : anybody who endures Wilder’s movie shall be hard to convince that « L’emmerdeur » is not beyond dreadful.

A true ladies' man.

When it comes to women and cinema, there is Vadim’s way and Philippe de Broca’s touch : the latter is softer.

1961, « Cartouche » : Philippe de Broca directs Claudia Cardinale.
1963, « L’homme de Rio » : he directs Françoise Dorléac.
1965, « Les tribulations d’un Chinois en Chine » : he directs Ursula Andress.
1966, « Le roi de coeur » : he directs Geneviève Bujold.
1969, « Les caprices de Marie » : he directs Marthe Keller ; discovered in French TV hit series « La demoiselle d’Avignon » with Louis Velle, she was on her way to Pollack’s « Bobby Deerfield » and Al Pacino, then Wilder’s « Fedora » and William Holden.
1973, « L’incorrigible » : he directs Jacqueline Bisset.
1982, « L’africain » : nearly twenty years after her sister Françoise, he directs Catherine Deneuve.
1986, « La gitane » : he jumps to a newer generation and directs Valérie Kaprisky ; despite her Polish surname, she is a likely Gipsy and near the end of her barely started career.

In all these years, de Broca married none of his female stars.

Jean-Paul Belmondo was the main beneficiary of his liberality.

A French 18th century Robin Hood in « Cartouche », he has no Marianne, but a Venus : she is called Claudia Cardinale and, unfortunately, killed before the end titles roll out.

To ease his sorrow, de Broca sends Jean-Paul packing to Rio after Françoise Dorléac, then to Hong-Kong after Ursula Andress.

In « Le magnifique », he need not leave Paris : Jacqueline Bisset moves into the next floor apartment and, guess what ?, Bob Saint-Clare, whose forty third spy novel he is struggling to complete, is her personal hero.

In « L’incorrigible », he walks out of jail into Geneviève Bujold.

Was Philippe Jean-Paul’s retriever or was Jean-Paul Philippe’s provider of leading actresses ?

Like Vadim, de Broca lost some of his magic with age.

In « Les Chouans » (1988), he has to settle for Sophie Marceau. In 2000, desperately seeking a screen companion for his old Jean-Paul friend, he can lure nobody to « Amazone », but Arielle Dombasle.

Actress, singer and significant other -if his ego can tolerate one, but this is gossip territory- of French philosopher, essayist, film maker and media darling Bernard-Henri Lévy, Arielle Dombasle is to some that rarity : a delightful, witty, funny blonde ; to most, she is only a vain, squealing pain in the neck, on and off screen.

In between « Les Chouans » and « Amazone », de Broca nevertheless hit gold. Though probably not a film for the ages, his « One thousand and one nights » (1990) has one serious claim to posterity : Sheherazade is an unknown twenty-one year old, mostly nude, Welsh beauty called Catherine Zeta-Jones.

She would need eight years to seduce a forgettable Zorro and a few more to become the wife of growing proportions, if not talent, of the old son of a Hollywood legend.

February 2, 2000, Roger Vadim dies, he is still married to Marie-Christine Barrault ; in his final years, he has directed a couple of French TV movies about his one undisputed area of expertise : recombined families.

November 26, 2004, Philippe de Broca passes away.

The female casts of their respective funerals would be worth comparing.

The director and the womaniser.

Roger Vadim was a greater womaniser than film director. The major dates in his career are his weddings’.

December 19, 1952 : he marries Brigitte Bardot. Four years later, he plays God and creates Woman/Bardot : « Et Dieu créa la femme » launches her career to international fame.

Woman bites into sweet apple of success, Woman and God split, God is expelled from Garden of Eden.

June 17, 1958 : Vadim marries Annette Stroyberg. A misstep for both, maybe because their talents were evenly matched. « Et mourir de plaisir » (1960), though Vadim’s best film for many, does not helps their careers or their couple : Annette stars under her husband’s name, but casting one’s wife as a vampire is tactless and calling for trouble.

Roger Vadim shall never marry Catherine Deneuve, but knows her well enough : together, they create a son, Christian. In « Le vice et la vertu » (1962), he offers her her first major role : the film is based on Sade and set in Nazi Germany ; Deneuve is « vertu », maybe this is why she will not marry him.

Vadim knows the marketing power of scandal : the film stirs one, it serves his actress better him ; in 1963, Deneuve stars in « Les parapluies de Cherbourg ». Since, she has not looked back.

August 14, 1965 : another stroke of genius or irresistible Gallic-Ukrainian charm -Vadim was from a line of Ukrainian aristocrats- : he marries Jane Fonda and directs her in two major fiascos and one cult item.

Not one to doubt himself or hiding it with talent, Vadim walks into Max Ophüls’s footsteps : after the dead director’s masterpiece, he films a new adaptation of Schnitzler’s « La ronde » (1964) to embarrassing result ; despite his inflated ego and ankles, Ophüls’s shoes were too big for him.

Unfazed, Vadim moves on and confronts Zola in « La curée » (1966) ; Zola’s loss is not his win, or his wife’s.

Done with classics, Vadim returns to pop culture : set in year 40000, « Barbarella » adapts a comic book by Jean-Claude Forrest, who writes the script and designs the production. Jane Fonda is twice as stunning as any subsequent Lara Croft ; if she was a feminist before meeting Vadim, she may have become a radical during her married life.

Bardot, Deneuve, Fonda : a hat trick made in heaven. Three wasted opportunities for Vadim to pick his Marlene and be a new Sternberg. He probably missed the patience and dedication. If he grew tired of each of his bed companions, how fast building « une oeuvre » would have bored him ; if they did of him, maybe his attention span and personal charm were equally short-lived.

Did he also lack talent ? Rather interest in his films, as compared to his life. The director always displayed a strong taste for superficiality as the only cultured way of being.

Vadim set his three actresses to sea and they sailed on to stardom, while he watched from the shore. Three tiny remakes of « A star is born », but no melodrama : Vadim was never bitter ; a gambler, he liked a roller coaster better than the dull climb of success and the vulgarity of awards.

December 21, 1990 : twenty eight years and two days after he wedded Brigitte Bardot, Roger Vadim settles for less glamour and more stability ; he marries Marie-Christine Barrault, an actress, but never a star, unlikely at 46, despite contemporary technological and medical prowess, to start afresh as a sex goddess.

Three years earlier, Vadim’s film career had rock-bottomed. He had tried and played God again, but, in thirty years, God had lost his magic touch : Woman was Rebecca de Mornay ; « And God created woman », a modern version, not a remake, of the earlier movie, cost God his licence to direct more feature films.

When in Hanoi...

When in Hanoi, I watched Jean-Jacques Annaud’s « L’Amant » : film was made in 1991, like « Indochine », Vietnam was certainly in vogue in France.

The film was shown in French version, but dubbed live in Vietnamese by one single actor : each time Jeanne Moreau’s psalmodizing voice over started, his oriental accents promptly drowned it.

I did not mind him so much as I had read the eponymous novel by Marguerite Duras, on which the film was based : the story of a French schoolgirl entering a relationship with a rich Chinese gentleman in 1927 Saigon.

In my memory, the novel took place in a bedroom, while the film unfolded in a Rolls Royce waiting to be ferried across the Mekong river.

Jean-Jacques Annaud’s work looked like the misunderstanding of a misunderstanding.

First, a Duras novel turned best-seller and 1984 Prix Goncourt, as scores of incredulous Harlequin readers discovered themselves fans of the stern, peremptory master of French literature.

Then, a couple’s intimate story turned into a spectacular big budget movie which, though short by Annaud’s standards at 112 minutes, probably took more time to watch than the very brief novel to read.

When all seemed set for a thrifty and profitable production -two actors, one room-, millions were poured into a lavish recreation of Indochina -and a Discovery Channel special about Indochinese river crossing- with dubious added value : the audience peeped at it briefly through the car and bedroom windows, as if allowed to be distracted for a few seconds of obscene entertainment from the exquisite sex sequences of the main feature.

Commercial bet was nevertheless safe : a best seller with cultural cachet, exoticism and nostalgia, a Lolita-style heroin -Jane March-, an attractive Chinese gentleman -Tony Leung-, sex with an intellectual pedigree. Plus plenty of river crossing and more than a fair chance that Duras would disown the movie.

The writer did oblige and contributed a small controversy to the box office of the film and her share of its profit.

On screen result is Duras and Annaud light, but offers an easy watch to the discerning viewer who shall be able to say he has seen a Duras adaptation without taking undue risks.

The Indochina syndrome.

In the US, « Vietnam film » means « war drama », in France, « piece of nostalgia ».

In 1991, Régis Wargnier’s « Indochine » set its goal on being both nostalgic and epic : Hollywood top-tier entertainment with French style.

Size mattered creatively and financially : a huge money gamble by Gallic standards, one hundred and sixty minutes of old-fashioned movie-making, a must see producer’s rather than director’s film, a heavy duty vehicle powered by France’s only undisputed international star : Catherine Deneuve.

On a background of political turmoil for independence, rubber plantation owner’s Deneuve falls for the same dashing young officer, Vincent Perez, as her Vietnamese adopted daughter, Dan Pham Linh.

Movie is neither good, nor bad enough for its own sake : the average effort of a dedicated but nervy student with too many eyes on the jury and too few in the camera lens.

Film never gathers enough speed to take off : epic remains pedestrian, melodrama a model of French moderation.

Deneuve is too old for her part. Her couple with Vincent Perez is contrived. If she were older and her daughter younger, Perez might be suspect of both gerontophilia and pedophilia, but the film does not aim for bad taste and controversy.

It also does not move into kitsch territory with the hope to reach cult status : aging Deneuve remains too beautiful to match the pathetic silliness of Michael Douglas in « Basic instinct ».

As an incentive for her to graduate to more mature roles or by sheer bitchiness, her French cinema colleagues awarded her a Best Actress César.

In the acting department, film’s pleasures come from supporting parts : Jean Yanne, as a police officer, and healthily vulgar Dominique Blanc.

The whole film appears as constrained as the set programme of an ice skating championship. In its try to emulate Hollywood style film making, it seems to have bitten more than it could chew : an initial foray in the major leagues, ending in a failed but profitable experience, due to lack of know how and much money, but not enough.

An enormous machine, so complex that the crew was too busy monitoring its technical challenges to be bothered with creative issues.

A financial risk so high that the story was scared to depart, even fleetingly, from the middle of the road and lose a couple of potential viewers.

A producer’s film handled with so much care by director Régis Wargnier that his touch is barely visible : the uneasy work of a coach under the scrutiny of a team owner quick to second guess him ; in 1997, the film producer, Eric Heumann would appoint himself director for « Port Djema ».

So much a producer’s film as to become nobody’s film, and certainly not the screenwriters’.

The writing process was advertised as totally American, a significant departure from traditional French project development, and hyped as a major selling point in the marketing of the film : like a certification standard, Hollywood rules guaranteed the quality of the end product.

The film was therefore great because the script was great. The script was great because it had cost a lot of money. It had cost a lot of money because no less than four writers had been hired ; among them, Erik Orsenna, a former Président Mitterrand’s cultural aide and winner of the 1988 Prix Goncourt for « L’exposition coloniale », and Louis Gardel, whose « Fort Saganne », the 1980 recipient of Prix de l’Académie Française, was filmed by Alain Corneau in 1984.

Above all, the script was great, because the writers had worked so hard : there had been no less than six ? seven ? eight ? more ? rewrites.

Rather than a measure of story problems, the number of rewrites came to symbolise the project relentless quest for perfection. Simenon would have laughed. Maybe Flaubert would not have, but his novels were never rewritten by committee.

Short of reading all script versions, it is impossible to decide whether it got better or worse over time. Nevertheless, if the film is faithful to the shooting script, it looks like the four co-writers successfully kept in check each other’s creativity or practised self-censorship for fear of their colleagues’ criticisms.

The final movie achieves the level of formulaic impersonality probably associated in the writers’ and producer’s minds with the « made in Hollywood » quality stamp. If the early drafts contained anything of interest, it was buried with professional expertise under the many layers of writing and rewriting and gave way to a tasteless polish.

Ten years after « Le dernier métro », « qualité française » struck again after an ill-inspired detour by Hollywood cheaper backlots.

Being imitated poorly is doubly flattering : « Indochine » won the 1992 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

Maigret : cinema against the law.

Between 1932 and 1959, « La nuit du carrefour » et « Maigret et l’affaire Saint-Fiacre », Pierre Renoir and Jean Gabin, Maigret has shed a few years and pounds ; a felt hat has replaced his bowler hat.

Maigret returns to the Saint-Fiacre castle, near Moulins, in central France, where he spent his childhood : his father was comte de Saint Fiacre’s bailiff. He is back at the old countess’s request, whom he used to worship, but cannot prevent her murder. He will overcome his initial failure to discover her killer, but to what avail ?

« Maigret et l’affaire Saint-Fiacre » could be a great film. At times, it is excellent : Gabin’s stature, the dull winter light, the old castle, the flat empty countryside, petrified leafless trees, Maigret’s unspoken memories, a sleepy provincial town, a tapestry of greys -a Maigret movie in Technicolor would look like a silent musical would sounf-, a world dying of muted hate and meanness.

Then, suddenly, a few lines of dialogue and everything collapses. The film dialogues were written by Michel Audiard, an expert at Parisian slang and the undisputed master of French one-liners from the nineteen fifties to the nineteen seventies.

« Mots d’auteur », one-liners, wit make no sense in a Maigret film. Simenon always boasted that there was not one ounce of literature in his novels. There shall therefore be no cinema in their adaptation to the screen.

To manage the perfect Maigret movie, nothing shall stand out : the film shall be remarkable for its total lack of effects, in framing, cinematography, editing, music, sets, costumes, above all, in acting and dialogues.

Gabin was quick to show off in his later years ; when he is Maigret, he never does, as if in natural synch with a character whose humble origins and country roots he shared.

During the first half-hour of the movie, Audiard shows restraint, then his self-control gives way and the film falls apart : the gratuitous flashiness of the dialogues wakes us up from Simenon’s world and it vanishes before our eyes.

Audiard’s irresistible urge to exhibit his tricks robs us of a great film and brings to waste Jean Delannoy’s and his crew’s efforts to use their skills only to hide them and sacrifice their expertise for the benefit of the movie.

A successful Maigret adaptation must be the opposite of a calling card ; it shall never be considered for an award in any category, but best film.

Gabin is a great Maigret, because he does not act : he is, standing like a deeply rooted tree, the embodiment of existence. As he moves from case to case, his work is tragically hopeless : like Sisyphe’s, it will see no end.

Maigret faces the don quixotic dimension of his task with eyes wide open : he forbids himself to judge a man and would have been a doctor rather than a commissaire, but is, first of all, a professional set, like a Howard Hawks character, on fulfilling his duties as best he can.

As a Maigret film requires as little cinema as possible, it is that strange object : a movie best appreciated at home. The liquid, soft-edged world of Simenon’s novels would not be better served by outstanding film projection standards than by Audiard’s one liners. Its intimate quality will be best served by the small screen.

Enjoying Maigret movies at home will allow the viewer to match the atmosphere on screen and the commissaire’s frame of mind. A slight numbness will be welcome, provoked either by the digestion of one of the commissaire’s heavy meals or a slightly fever.

True, a certain level of numbness is also the only way to make TV fare bearable, but in the case of TV fare, it is not meant to enhance one’s viewing pleasure : it is just the ordinary by-product of mediocre programming.

Best enjoyed at home, Maigret was bound to become a TV character. Television is better adapted than cinema to the ritualised return of familiar characters and situations, while its economy greets the frugality of the commissaire’s investigations.

Simenon’s commissaire has popped up on TV sets around the world. Sometimes, he was shamelessly cloned : for years, the Germans have been crazy for a middle aged inspector, named Derrick, reputed for doing nothing.

Rather cloned than betrayed : a dreadful TV series with circus owner Jean Richard was a staple of French small screens from 1967 through 1990.

The latest French TV Maigret was Bruno Cremer, the disappearing husband of Charlotte Rampling in « Sous le sable ».

Despite this demotion from film to TV, Maigret remains in a class of his own and does not mix with the likes of « Navarro », « Julie Lescaut » and other French TV audience favourites : he achieves lower ratings.

The Maigret variations.

In 1932, Jean Renoir directed « La nuit du carrefour », a film adaptation of the eponymous novel by Georges Simenon. His brother, Pierre Renoir, was a likely Maigret : middle-aged, overweight, a massive, often silent, presence ; too bad he wore a bowler hat.

Misty and foggy black and white photography made justice to the writer’s celebrated « atmosphere », but Simenon did not like the film : how could he have ? However true to the novel, the film was Renoir’s.

Commissaire Maigret was born the year before, as « Pietr le Letton » was published. Never shy of self-promotion, Simenon had launched his character’s career by hosting a « bal anthropométrique » which was one of the high-water marks of the Parisian season.

There have been twenty-five, if not more, Maigrets since Pierre Renoir. Among them, Abel Tarride, probably the most forgotten, Harry Baur the most intriguing, Albert Préjean, a former flying ace, who starred in René Clair’s « Sous les toits de Paris », by unanimous agreement the worst.

There were also British, Italian, German, Russian, Japanese Maigrets (Charles Laughton, Maurice Manson, Gino Cervi, Heinz Rühmann, Vladimir Samoilov, Kinya Aikawa), though a non-French Maigret seems as bizarre as a French Philip Marlowe.

In the 1950’s, Jean Gabin plays Simenon’s commissaire in three movies, including Jean Delannoy’s « Maigret et l’affaire Saint-Fiacre », a 1959 adaptation of a 1932 Maigret book, one of the better in the series, if there is such a thing as a better or lesser Maigret novel.

Many things have changed since « La nuit du carrefour » : Maigret is now a brand name. In 1932, Maigret was neither in the book, nor the film title ; in the 1950’s, the commissaire’s name is the selling argument for both novels and film adaptations. « La nuit du carrefour » was a Renoir film, « Maigret et l’affaire Saint-Fiacre » is a Maigret film : Jean Delannoy, the director, is an employee at the commissaire’s service.

Enjoying a Maigret novel is an acquired taste. Reading one does not sweep you off your feet, but teases your curiosity enough, though you cannot pinpoint why, that, after a while, you try a second one : the novels are short, an easy read, they require very little investment in money, time and attention ; like their paperback format a pocket, they fit a busy schedule which would not accommodate a more substantial book.

Little by little, Maigret grows on you, the commissaire stories do not become an addiction, but a habit, a need. After believing they are in endless supply, you ration yourself and put aside some of the 75 Maigret novels Simenon wrote from 1931 and « Pietr le Letton » to 1972 and « Maigret et monsieur Charles », for future consumption.

You want your Maigret novels to be as reliable as their title character : you want no surprises, but endless variations on a handful of plots, locations, stereotypes and do not mind, from time to time, a feeling of « déjà vu » or « déjà lu ».

Their ordinary plots bathe in a world of their own : a world without years and dates, which seems to be floating back and forth between the nineteen thirties and the nineteen fifties, but never ventures beyond the very early nineteen sixties. It is a seamless world untouched by History, bypassed by WW2, immune to political and economic crises ; a slightly unfocused, blurred universe, with no sharp edge, very often watery : the commissaire’s office oversees the Seine river, his investigations often take him to canal shores and sea harbours ; a world of shiny cobblestones under a street lamp, of ominous fog horn in the dead of the night, of persistent rain over Paris, of misty windows in overheated offices, bars and restaurants, where the commissaire spends an inordinate amount of time, drinking white wine, beer, « fine à l’eau », eating stodgy « plats du jour ».

After drinking and eating, Maigret digests, ruminates, smokes his pipe, heats his back in front of his office stove, waits. And, in his standstill world, things eventually happen, cases get resolved, through minimal action of his, as a natural process triggered by his sole presence.

A Maigret film adaptation is a strange challenge. While films are prototypes, the charm of the Maigret novels is cumulative : you need the perspective of many years and many books to appreciate them fully ; the individual stories stand alone but are also pieces of a larger puzzle which reveals their true scope.

A film project now takes years from start to completion. In the 1930’s and 1950’s, it would take no less than one year. Simenon took one week to write a Maigret novel.

Goose or duck lever pâté ?

Goose or duck lever pâté ? « Grand illusion » or « The rules of the game » ?

« La grande illusion » (1937) and its tale of prisoners of war in Germany during WW1 ? Or « La règle du jeu » (1939) and its affairs of masters and servants during a hunting party at a manor house.

Arguably the two best French films ever, both by Jean Renoir.

« La règle du jeu » may give more pleasure to watch, but I shall always pick « La grande illusion ».

If you believed the odds, « La grande illusion » should not have been a masterpiece. The film should have been marred by the same cheap sentimentality as certain of Jean Renoir’s father, Pierre, paintings or the director’s later works.

One constantly fears that the movie turn ridiculous, but it never does ; this may best define a great film.

The film should also have delivered stodgy political statements. « Front Populaire » had come to power in France, Renoir was a communist sympathiser and had shot the year before a documentary film, « La vie est à nous », for Communist trade union CGT.

The film title supposedly exposed two illusions rather than one : the illusion of borders, as men were not divided in countries but social classes, the illusion of brotherhood, as men brought together by war and captivity returned, with freedom and peace, to their original classes and prejudices.

Film was to close on a table with two empty chairs at Paris Maxim’s restaurant : Gabin’s lieutenant Maréchal, the working man, and Dalio’s Rosenthal, the banker’s son, were to celebrate their escape together, but neither shows up.

Scene was never shot and film ends on Maréchal and Rosenthal crossing into Switzerland. « La grande illusion » is less clever but better for it. As the characters manage their escape, Renoir too lets them free, and the audience as well ; no lesson is forced upon us. All characters are given fair treatment, each has their reasons -even if « that’s what’s so awful in the world » added Renoir- and the film stops short of judging them.

« La grande illusion » is magnificently restrained, « La règle du jeu » is all brilliance, an outstanding calling card for a director, if Renoir had needed one.

The latter film may be more formally perfect, less miraculous and better controlled than « La grande illusion ».

« La grande illusion » structure is somewhat loose : its three parts -first prisoners camp, officers camp, escape- move from location from location, as the story focuses on increasingly few characters and eventually only on Maréchal and Rosenthal.

« La règle du jeu » is compact and tight, like a gymnast’s body, and beautifully respects the rules of classical unity : time, place and action, here a maze of plots and subplots which intercut between the worlds of masters and servants and build an intricate pattern of mirror effects.

Film succeeds only too well as it fulfils its « programme » to expose the shallowness of French upper classes.

In « La règle du jeu », Renoir’s « bourgeoisie » (the party’s host, Dalio’s marquis de La Chesnaye, is Jewish by his mother) wines, dines and cheats with less style, panache, and of course, nobleness, than his aristocrats die in « La grande illusion » : de La Chesnaye is no de Boëldieu or von Rauffenstein.

Film wonderful cruelty and cynicism entertain more than they move and its more positive characters lack the acting talent that would endear them to the audience.

As André Jurieu, the aviator, the hero, the lover, the no-class outsider and therefore the party sacrificial lamb, Roland Toutain is an absolute miscast : he looks so dull and weak that his death his nearly welcome.

His love interest, Nora Gregor, de La Chesnaye’s wife, is equally delicate and devoid of charm.

As their friend Octave, Jean Renoir the actor is no match for Jean Renoir the director.

This may be the film devilish streak that we eventually side with Dalio’s de La Chesnaye, for the honesty of his hypocrisy and cynicism : contrary to his wife, he dos not try and delude himself about what he is. He is also the one who crosses over most naturally to the servants (under)world and finds a kindred spirit in Marceau (Carette), the poacher.

You can watch Renoir’s 1939 dance of Death from the outside, as a great piece of filmmaking, while « La grande illusion », screening after screening, will always pull you in.

« La règle du jeu » is also the better candidate for scholarly discussion : one more hint that « La grande illusion » is the greater film.

As to goose or duck lever pâté, there is a tough call.

"Smoking" / "No smoking" ? : just quit.

Alain Resnais’s British connection is not limited to « Providence ». It also includes « Smoking » / « No smoking ».

Unfortunate Alan Aykburn material would have been better left untouched or trusted to British hands only.

Instead, it was hijacked across the English Channel to France, mishandled by unscrupulous screenwriters Agnès Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri and molested into the high concept of a double bill.

Celia Teasdale, a Yorshire housewife, is busy cleaning her house ; depending on whether she lights a cigarette (« Smoking ») or not (« No smoking »), the story and her life take different turns, while Resnais films not one movie, but two.

How clever. How tedious.

All aspects of production purposely emphasise the artificiality of the concept.

Films are shot in studio with artificial lighting and painted sets : in the times of Mélies, they were poetry born out of technical necessity ; in 1993, they are a display of affectation.

Visual treatment in comic book style, though superb, further alienates us from the story or stories.

All characters are played by the same two actors : Sabine Azema and Pierre Arditi. At her British best, she is as annoying as Emma Thompson. He is neither Michael Caine, nor Laurence Olivier and « Smoking » and « No smoking », even bundled together, are no « Sleuth » : their mindgames are to « Sleuth »’s what Chinese rice wine is to Gevrey Chambertin. « Smoking », « No smoking »...

How many people watched both ? It would be interesting to know. Conspiracy theorists will suspect this is only one film with two titles.

Both movies are supposedly funny, but Resnais’s humour is anything but spontaneous : it lies at the end of a long and tortuous intellectual process. Your brain does its best to convince you that the very idea of the film, its dialogues, the actors’ changes of costumes and accents, their talented imitation of bad acting are funny, but, however hard you try, you cannot force the smallest smile on your lips and, when, at last, you find a trace of humour, it has long been dead.

By the way, in both films, all paths lead to the cemetery. How profound and what a revelation. « Smoking » will take you there only marginally faster than « No smoking » : 144 instead of 140 minutes. So much for the dangers of tobacco, even if four minutes may seem a long time in front of a Resnais movie.

Conspiracy theorists will suspect that the project was sponsored by the cigarette industry. It would be a relief if « Smoking » at least could be blamed on greed.

Glum grin on the actors’ faces seems to tell us that the films are private jokes which we are not to share, or even that the jokes are on us.

Ultimately, the joke is on them and Resnais.

The films are so patronising that they become laughable. Rather than a story teller, Resnais is a class master, out to teach us lessons we already all know about : that the cinema must not be mistaken for real life ; that life ends in a cemetery ; that the tiniest detail may tip the scales of destiny.

While the basic pleasure of cinema stems from the balance between the audience awareness that the action on screen is not real and the filmmaker’s efforts to convince them it is, Resnais transforms the art of make believe into that of « un-make believe ».

The more the films show off their cleverness, the more they bare their silliness. Resnais is a pathetic demiurge : he delivers six wasted possible worlds in over two hours. The binary mode is the highest degree of complexity it can grasp.

Where less self-conscious works of art leave thousands of doors open to answer the elusive « what if » question, Resnais closes all but half a dozen and shapes his characters’ life with the petty mind of a civil servant filling an administrative form : yes or no.

Quite an achievement in two films which add up to less than one.

My life with Catherine.

Twice, I shared Catherine Deneuve’s life.

First time was in Sao Paulo, during the -local- winter of 1984. She was in town to launch a line of Brazilian jewelry to which she had licensed her name. I was... well, I was just in Sao Paulo.

Cocktail guests were cruising the hotel ballroom like courtiers anxious to pay their homage. I seized my chance with goal scorer opportunism.

She was small, with « petites » soft hands and an equally soft, quiet voice. Her teeth were slightly marred by cigarette tar, her smile was nearly shy. She took my breath away.

I promised never to divulge what we discussed and shall take my oath to the grave.

A few months later, during the -local- spring of 1984, I met Valérie Kaprisky in Rio de Janeiro. She was there for the film festival, me too.

The name may no longer ring a bell, but she was a sexy young actress coming out of her break-through film : « L’année des méduses » ( « Year of the jellyfish » ; she did not play the jellyfish). Her career would later cool off as suddenly as it had turned hot.

I never promised not to divulge what we discussed. I just do not remember. I nevertheless recall not losing my breath and that she mentioned the pope : the Jean-« Polish » connection ; we were probably debating the ontological argument of the existence of God.

There are set and shooting stars. It is sometimes easy to tell the difference. On and off screen.

My reunion with Catherine Deneuve occurred in Vietnam in December of 1992 : exotic locations and romance go together well.

She was in Hanoi for the local première of « Indochine », I was... well, I was just in Hanoi. She was escorted by the film’s director, Régis Wargnier, I was not at my best shaved. I decided not to embarrass her, we exchanged a glance of tender intimacy : not unlike the one shared by Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway in the final seconds of « Bonnie and Clyde ».

As her future biographers should take notice, our two encounters had considerable impact on Catherine Deneuve.

In 1984, to forget Brazil and the first one, she buried herself with Gérard Depardieu in the desert of Alain Corneau’s « Fort Saganne ».

In 1992, our meeting of the eyes gave her the strength to rebound from the disappointment of « Indochine » into Téchiné’s « Ma saison préférée ».

« Never two without three » goes the French saying : Paris, Texas, ? London, Ontario ? Trois-Pistoles, Quebec ? Tonight ? Next week ? « When hens have teeth », as goes another, less promising, French saying ?

Truffaut: rebel with a cause.

Truffaut took was a 22-year old critic when he took French cinema by storm, in January 1954, with a « Cahiers du cinéma » article : « Une certaine tendance du cinéma français ».

The magazine head editors had nixed an earlier version of the text for the violence of its personal attacks.

Article was a diatribe of rare intensity against post-WW2 French cinema. Truffaut reproached French directors with favouring literary adaptation over original scripts. According to him, this bias led to conventional, academic filmmaking : movies shot in studios, out of synch with their times and French society, corny product fashioned after 1930’s recipes ; what he called, in deprecating fashion : « qualité française ».

Truffaut’s blistering attack triggered the French New Wave and a war in which the older generation of French filmmakers was routed.

A twenty-two year old film critic can be dangerous when he has a personal agenda, particularly to become a filmmaker : for thirty years, the « qualité française » directors were culturally blacklisted, their films mocked and relegated to TV screens ; more than a few deserved their fate.

« Le Dernier Métro » is based on an « original » script : it was not adapted from existing material. But is there anything truly « original » in the script ? Is it not a melting pot of characters and situations already met in many films, books, plays ? Are not some of them, however brilliantly dressed by Truffaut, worn out « clichés ?

But, as in his 1954 article, the script issue is only a starting argument : Truffaut had adapted several books in the past (« La sirène du Mississipi », based on William Irish ; « Fahrenheit 451, based on Ray Bradbury, « Jules et Jim », based on Henri-Pierre Roché...) and the resulting films felt much less « qualité française » than « Le Dernier Métro ».

In « Le Dernier Métro », all that Truffaut exposed with Saint-Just-like violence twenty-five years earlier is back on screen : a period piece shot in studio ; a well-wishing, glamorous movie ; a cliché-ridden, simplistic view of WW2. Talented, academic, old-fashioned filmed entertainment, without a trace of the director’s rebel years.

There is nothing wrong in growing up, and changing one’s mind in the process : the 1968 generation contributed many remarkably successful men of power to the capitalist society.

With respect to Truffaut, the feeling is more disturbing. His past seems less outgrown than erased, like certain characters in Stalin-era photographs, as if his revolt, from the start, had been a fake : the promised revolution in filmmaking only a pretext to get rid of the directors in place and step into their shoes. As if his resentment of « qualité française » had only one true cause : its defenders stood in the way of his ambition.

If such was the case, New Wave was only a tactical weapon to reach power, the cinema equivalent for Truffaut of the Socialist Party for François Mitterrand, as the veteran politician rode the organisation to the presidency of France in May of 1981, a few months after « Le Dernier Métro » triumph on Césars night.

Having paid his dues to New Wave, Truffaut indulges into what he has always longed for : « qualité française » films. After years of struggling with small budgets and making movies on the fringe, he basks in the material comfort of « bourgeois » cinema : lavish budget, studio shoot, stars, assistants...

Maybe this is why he was attracted to Hitchcock and later Spielberg : both directors embody Hollywood, cinema as an industry, public and financial success.

« Le Dernier Métro » expresses a need to please that verges on demagogy, a desire of recognition and love that is nearly painful, also a cold-blooded quest for honours : in Truffaut’s agenda, the film was built as a war machine to sweep the Césars.

He succeeded so well that the film crowned him France’s official filmmaker and nearly gave state artist status as the international flag-bearer of French cinema : his New Wave past made his « bourgeois » present acceptable, as the underground engagement of their youth excused in some politicians’ eyes the embezzlements of their later years.

In 1984, Truffaut would make his most dramatic career move and die of cancer.

However regrettable, it may have been the perfect way out for his ambitions. After too many years of « qualité française » filmmaking, Truffaut’s dominance as the undisputed statesman of French cinema might have known the same sad ending as the Mitterrand era, the start of which had been as acclaimed in 1981 as « Le Dernier Métro ».

Truffaut : "qualité française".

At the 1981 Césars ceremony, « Le dernier métro » (« The last metro ») received ten Césars, including the top four : best film, director (François Truffaut), actress (Catherine Deneuve), actor (Gérard Depardieu).

Never a good sign.

One word sums up my memory of the film screening : comfort.

Film took you on an extremely pleasant ride. Tale of stage company in Nazi-occupied Paris unfolded like a first-class trip in time and space, organised by a great tour operator. No effort was required or expected from you.

A well-supplied on screen buffet offered you a large variety of film delicacies : beautiful locations, sets and photography ; excellent acting ; first rate direction ; romance, danger, fortitude, wit, History ; intelligent and high-minded dialogues ; catharsis, identification...

WW2 Paris looked nearly as gorgeous as Catherine Deneuve. You were given the choice to be her lover, Gérard Depardieu, or her husband, Heinz Bennent, or to alternate from one to the other and get the best of both worlds.

Everybody was likeable, everything was in perfect taste, thrills and conflicts stayed within well-behaved limits. Sharing the characters’ trials, you felt extremely well.

To add to your well-being, the movie theatre was as comfortable as the film : your seat was spacious and well upholstered, the air-conditioning and the sound nicely-tuned ; the screen was large, the print new, its colours sharp ; the audience was sparse -an afternoon session on a week day- and quiet, no NBA player was sitting in front of you, pop corn had not invaded France yet.

As the film ended, you were fully satisfied : what more could you have asked for ? Rarely did you receive so great value for your money. And, with the critics unanimously praising the film, there was no reason to feel ashamed for enjoying it so much.

Doubts came later : was it not too good to be true ? The very smoothness of the film started to bother you. Your sense of surfeit wavered : you had received much, but nothing unexpected. A surprise, even a couple of hitches would have spiced the experience.

You had been wonderfully pampered, but started to regret a more adventurous ride.

You had watched five-star fare, but was it not standard five-star fare : the amenities of one more Ritz Carlton hotel for the high end traveller ?

Customer is king. But did not Truffaut overdo it ?

And two words came to mind, from a distant past : « Qualité française ».

Why I like Jean-Luc.

A soccer team of reasons why I like Jean-Luc Godard :

-he speaks slowly,

-he looked fifty at thirty and looks fifty and a half at seventy five,
-his glasses are uglier than mine,

-when he talks about tennis, he is always interesting,

-when he talks about cinema, nobody has a clue, and nobody is supposed to : this is restful,

-though he refurbished his house many times, he never sold it to direct a « James Bond » movie,

-he likes John Wayne in « The Searchers »,

-he need not marry Katie Holmes and rave about Scientology to be weird,

-when ambushed with a cream pie, he does not run amok, but eats it,

-I have not seen one of his films in many years,

-I have never met him.

Classics beyond miscast : Pagnol's way.

César owns « Bar de la Marine » on Marseilles Vieux Port ; his son, Marius, has a girlfriend, Fanny ; Marius wants to see the world, he leaves Marseilles and Fanny pregnant ; Fanny marries unsuspecting older Panisse and deliivers a boy, Césariot ; Marius sees the world and does not like it, he returns ; Fanny remains faithful to Panisse ; Marius leaves again ; fast forward twenty years ; Panisse dies ; Marius tries a second return ; Césariot learns the truth about his real father ; he does not like it or him, but ultimately gets used to both ; Marseilles is one happy dysfunctional family richer.

« Marius », « Fanny », « César » : Marcel Pagnol’s Marseilles trilogy, originally written for the stage, then adapted to the screen.

First film, « Marius », is shot in 1931. Actors from Marseilles lead the cast. But when time comes to find a son for Raimu’s César, Pagnol does not play the local card. He chooses Pierre Fresnay, from « Comédie Française ».

Because Marseilles is short on young leading man talent ? Because a Southern accent is great for comedy but hopeless for romance ? To cater to Northern France and Paris ? To express the generational divide between father and son ? By mistake ? By challenge ? Because, to him, Pierre Fresnay is the perfect Marius ?

Fresnay’s real name was Laudenbach, still less a Marseilles housename than his pseudonym.

Result on screen was probably as ill-advised for hardcore Marseillais as the hiring of a Parisian soccer player by local OM team. To the modern viewer, strange casting goes nearly unnoticed : Pierre Fresnay is a great actor ; arguing with his father Raimu in « Bar de la marine », dressed in a black and white striped jersey, a scarf tied around his neck, he appears only marginally less at ease than, six years later -one after « César » brought the trilogy to its conclusion-, in the uniform of Captain de Boïeldieu, fluting himself to death in Renoir’s « Grand Illusion ».

Film soundtrack is so creaky that it resolves all concerns regarding the Fresnay’s high-pitched Northern voice and accents in general : all actors sound like a failed test of voice over the internet.

The actor’s age, thirty-four in « Marius », is potentially more disturbing, but eventually welcome, as his leading lady is thirty-seven and does not look one day younger.

Fanny is played by Orane Demazis, a much stranger casting choice than Fresnay, but easier to explain : she was Pagnol’s partner in life. To understate the case, her acting and beauty today appear dated ; to state it, she looks on screen like an ugly piece of terrible acting. Her career after she broke up with Pagnol showed general consensus about her limited abilities.

The son of Pierre « Marius » Laudenbach and Orane « Fanny » Demazis, Cesariot was born to grow up a casting hazard. In « César », Césariot is twenty and played by André Fouché. The actor’s talent did not inspire a second trilogy.

Marcel Pagnol directed « César », Marc Allégret took competent, uninspired, care of « Fanny », but « Marius » was the first and better film.

The choice of its director defied the odds : Alexander Korda. Compared to him, Pierre Fresnay looked and sounded like a a third-generation Marseillais.

Korda was born in Hungary ; he started his career there, moved to Austria, Germany, then the US. He filmed « Marius » during a brief stopover in France. He would soon invade Great Britain and become the country’s greatest producer.

Talk about adaptation skills. And the absolute need to be born in Marseilles to make justice to the city spirit...

Triumph by miscast : Depardieu's style.

In 1990, Jean-Paul Rappeneau switched from comedies with beautiful ladies to fat budgets with fatter men : « Cyrano de Bergerac » with Gérard Depardieu. Billy Wilder was right : « Nobody’s perfect ».

Gérard Depardieu’s nose is big, but not so big that he could play the part without a prosthesis. So why choose him ?

Despite his nose, Cyrano is all levity : a swashbuckling swordsman always leaping and bouncing. The original Cyrano was so light that he wrote about « his travel to the moon » : can you envision a Depardieu take off ?

In their own time, Errol Flynn or Tyrone Power would have fit the part -nose aside-. Imagine Depardieu as Robin Hood or Zorro, and pray it will not happen. Kevin Costner and his beer belly were bad enough.

A younger Belmondo would have been a decent choice, too. His nose is not huge, but badly broken ; he can claim to be a modern day Cyrano with a happy twist : his very un-leading-man looks became the face of the New Wave, he forced them down the throat of resisting producers, played them for thirty years to packed movie theaters and into the bed of his sexier screen partners.

To be moving, Rostand’s tale of unattractive lover who lends his soul to his dumb and beautiful rival must be acted as the comedy it is.

Alas. Depardieu mistakes « Sturm und Drang » for panache. He looks at his nose, then his navel, and pities himself ; the more he takes himself tragically, the less we feel for him.

His miscast was richly rewarded : Depardieu won the Cesar for best actor ; the movie received eight additional nods : best film, director, and a wagonload of technical awards.

Depardieu plays in so many films, how could he steer clear of miscasts ?

One year after « Cyrano de Bergerac », he is Marin Marais, a « viole de gambe » player and composer in Alain Corneau’s « Tous les matins du monde », as film interlaces the lives of Marais and older master, M. de Sainte Colombe.

Depardieu has a big nose and bigger hands. Fancy his fingers delicately tweaking his musical instrument.

Result would be fun, if the film shortcomings did not extend far beyond two miscast hands. Movie is Artfilm light, Miramax style : a bad director’s garden salad with Art dressing. Proof is not in the pudding, but in the recipe.

Film is about artists, so must be art. Script and dialogues are by exquisite writer Pascal Quignard, an aristocratic delight to the enlightened, hopelessly obscure to the masses : how could this not be art ? Film is a 17th century period piece with no car chase, its characters wear otherwordly costumes and wigs. Film boasts candle-lit indoor scenes and mist hovering above the countryside at dawn. Pace is slow. There is boring music directed by baroque guru Jordi Savall. The characters do not smile, much less laugh. Their solemn faces inform us that their speech is profound.

Depardieu’s presence adds weight to an already ponderous mix ; with him, weight matters : it means seriousness, which means « gravitas », which means you’d better pay attention and take notes when he speaks.

« Tous les matins du monde » is art, no doubt : like a McDonald’s « Happy Meal » is organic food.

Absolute failure was a huge success : France went « gaga » for « viole de gambe ». Film received seven Césars : best film and director, plus the usual suspects of costume and production design, music, sound and editing .

Plus, amazingly, a deserved one. In « Cyrano de Bergerac » and « Tous les matins du monde », a young actress with delicate, pale skin and mischievous eyes, provided welcome esthetic relief. Anne Brochet received the best supporting actress César for the latter film. Her film career has since gone nowhere. Good casting does not always pay off.

Funny Girl & Pretty Woman.

How many actresses make us laugh without losing their glamour ? How many are both attractive and funny ?

Few. In fewer movies.

Garbo was, not only in « Ninotchka » : a little, knowing smile was all she needed. Marilyn Monroe passed the test with flying and sexy colours though in black and white « Some like it hot ».

Audrey Hepburn brought an appealing mix of girlish fun and charm to « Sabrina » and « Breakfast at Tiffany’s » ; she matured beautifully in « Charade », with Cary Grant’s support.

Among the living, Meg Ryan was a pleasure to watch in « When Harry met Sally » and even « French Kiss ». Almodovar’s women ? Maybe. His men ? Maybe too.

These are exceptions : romantic comedy is tricky. Too many « ingénue » faces and dreamy looks, and Audrey Hepburn falls into irritating mannerism. Katherine Hepburn is great at the first screening of « Bringing up baby », annoying at the second. Two reels of « The Aviator » convince that Cate Blanchett, masquerading as Katherine Hepburn, gives one of the more grotesque performances in film history.

France likes its funny ladies « physically challenged » : actresses whose silhouette and looks depart from the sex goddess standards : Josiane Balasko, Dominique Lavanant, Valérie Lemercier -though, in her first film as a director « Le derrière », « The bum », her naked buttocks came as a pleasant surprise to many-, Marie-Anne Chazel.... many from the « café théâtre » generation.

Time partly vindicates them : they age better than their pretty competitors, or we just get used to them ; still, they face a daunting task : if it is highly disputable that you take a woman to bed by making her laugh, it is even more so that you can seduce a man in similar fashion.

Unless you are Catherine Deneuve : at least twice, the reigning lady of French cinema in the 1960’s and 1970’s won over her male audience by being beautifully funny.

In « La vie de château » (1965), she is a bored young wife looking for entertainment during the final days of German WW2 Occupation of France ; she shall get it.

Ten years later, in « Le sauvage » (« Lovers like us » : who would watch a film with such a silly title ? Apparently nobody), she storms into the confined life of Yves Montand, a refugee from the world on his own desert island.

In both films, she seems forgetful of her beauty : definitely great acting. Her on-screen spontaneity and lack of pretense trick us into believing that we, mere mortals, belong in the same world with her.We know this cannot be, but nevertheless surrender, more stunned than if Elizabeth II accepted our invitation to picnic, brought home-made cookies and grabbed at chicken wings with both hands.

We feel immensely grateful : she could play « femme fatale » and force all male characters into immediate submission, but contents herself with the roles of « spoiled child » and « lovable pain in the neck » and agrees to struggle through two films to get what she could obtain, Lauren Bacall way, anytime by simply whistling. Her generosity is so vast that it allows us not only to laugh with her, but also at her : a pleasurable blasphemy (is it a pleonasm ?).

Her male partners add to our happiness : identifying with them is so easy. They offer us the illusion that, through them, Catherine Deneuve is accessible to us. Philippe Noiret is a touching plump, hair-receding husband turned hero for the love of his wife, and who would not feel heroic to conquer her ? We sympathise with playfully overacting Yves Montand when she wrecks his life ; like him, we would gladly give her a spanking, but wonder why his eyes are so slow to open on his once-in-ten-lifetimes piece of amazing luck.

French cinema is, or was, a small family : both films were directed by Jean-Paul Rappeneau, a co-writer on « L’homme de Rio » where Catherine Deneuve’s sister, Françoise Dorléac, was also great charm and fun.

The French Kubrick of romantic comedy -he spends years working at his projects with painstaking precision-, Jean-Paul Rappeneau deserves his share of credit for Deneuve’s performances : in a later film, « Tout feu, tout flamme » (1982), he made Isabelle Adjani funny and likable : no small feat.