Darwin was wrong. (2/2)

Change « La marche de l’empereur » soundtrack -voice over, music and songs-, you get a brand new film.

The movie various language versions may share penguins and ice on screen, and preciously little else.

Even the titles have different sub-texts.

In the original French title, « La marche de l’empereur », « empereur » is short for « manchot empereur », a particular type of penguin -for detailed information on penguins, watch the National Geographic rather than the film.

But, in France, an « empereur » is also a short Corsican with foul temper and stomach problems, who still looms large in the collective psyche. « La marche de l’empereur » therefore hints at battles, fortitude in the face of adversity and, considering the weather on screen, perhaps specifically at the retreat from Russia by Napoleon troops in the dead of winter : a military disaster of epic dimension as well as a showcase of courage and resilience.

Like the voice over comparing the penguins’ mating ritual to a « dance », the title also probably refers to Johan Strauss son’s « La marche de l’empereur » (1889), one of his more famous waltzes. If the filmmakers hoped to match the penguins’ footwork to Viennese dance music, they had the good sense to give up when faced with an obvious conflict of tempos.

In contrast to the French original, the film English international title, « The emperor’s journey » sounds trite and potentially misleading, were it not for the movie poster : in how many countries and languages is it clear than an « emperor » is a penguin ?

In the US, though a « manchot empereur » is indeed an « emperor penguin », the « emperor » was dropped altogether -because the name and related constitutional concept are less welcome than in France ?- and the film was released as « The march of the penguins », where « march » keeps alive the French title allusions to music -though nobody in the Strauss family wrote a « March of the penguins »- and the military.

But the film US distributor, Warner Independent Pictures, did much more than just delete an emperor from its title to « localise » the picture to North American taste.

Though the lyrics of the original songs were already in English -a clear sign that the producers consciously aimed their project at the global market- or because they were, as it made them painfully understandable to US audiences, an entirely new musical score was produced.

In addition, as it was translated to English, the film voice over seems to have undergone a substantial rewrite : its US version is trusted to Morgan Freeman alone rather than to a nuclear family trio.

It would be interesting, but even more tedious, to sit through all the foreign versions of the film and see how they differ from one another.

« Farce of the penguins » may soon offer a less time-consuming and hopefully more entertaining alternative. Film is said to be presently in production and described as a « mockumentary » and a « remake » of the original movie -using the same edited footage ?

The « farce » main narrator will be Samuel L. Jackson -Morgan Freeman’s mock alter ego ?-, as if only black actors can make justice to penguin stories ; « characters »’ voices will include Jason Alexander’s, James Belushi’s and Whoopi Goldberg’s.

Maybe this is « La marche de l’empreur » fate : to be endlessly remade and give birth to a new genre : the penguin film.

An admirer of Soviet-style filmmaking will thus create a lyrical ode to the supremacy of collective values and upbringing over bourgeois individualism and nuclear family selfishness and will do so without reediting any of the filmed sequences : nearly all shots show a herd of penguins, where even the more powerful zoom struggles to isolate one individual ; whenever a penguin loner is shown, he is on his way to death ; the penguin family is more a voice over fantasy than an on screen reality.

A sarcastic director, Chabrol ?- will see the penguins as they are actually filmed : rather than champion long distance walkers -Mao-Ze-Dong or Stakhanov style-, a flock of passive animals, sticking to the group heat and safety, scared into perpetual wait as any move could tip the precarious balance of their life toward the unknown.

Could it be that the filmed penguins were actually acting ? The length of the film credits confirms what its visual polish already pointed out : « La marche de l’empereur » was not shot by a couple of penguin enthusiasts stranded on the ice field with one camera and thousands of « manchots empereurs » ; it was a major production, a budget of « Titanic » proportion -and risk- by documentary standards.

The film voice over does not say if penguins are short-sighted, but it is unlikely that the movie substantial crew went unnoticed by them throughout the whole shoot.

How much did the filmmakers’ presence change the penguins’ behaviour ? Is the movie in fact a documentary soap where the characters on screen are constantly followed by cameras but pretend not to see them and self-consciously perform the act of acting as they would without them ?

In quanta physics, whether it is observed or not impacts a phenomenon outcome ; is it also true of penguins behaviourism ? Specialists in the field are welcome to answer.

Of the many men on the ice field, none appears in the film. Man’s absence on screen is as conspicuous as deceptive : the film has very little to do with penguins and plenty with him.
Penguins are nothing but serviceable body doubles.

We do not give a damn about them or their story. They are just a handy and endearing pretext to tell ours once more.

Penguin boy meets penguin girl, they have penguin kid ? No, the actual story line is even more stale : boy meets girl, they have kid.

Penguins interest us only to the extent that we can cut and paste our emotions, values, dreams and clichés on to them.

Animals are great, they cannot speak up and contradict the words we plant into their mouths or the thoughts we drill into their brains.

Cinema used to be able to stereotype minorities, but these good old days are gone : typecast an Italian as a New York mafioso and Little Italy will hire a real one who will prevent you from living long enough to regret your casting misstep.

« La marche de l’empereur » is to penguins what Flaherty’s « Nanook of the North » (1922) was to Eskimos : their official induction into mankind.

Penguins do not protest stereotyping yet, but animal activists will eventually take up their cause. Still, it will be a while before « la marche de l’empereur » is labelled « penguinophobic » and « the emperor’s journey » takes him to the first Penguin Pride Parade.

Until then, Darwin will remain wrong : man does not share one common ancestor with monkeys, but with penguins.

The emperor's walk to fame. (1/2)

Is it a documentary film or fiction ? Comedy drama, drama, « documentary-soap », romantic comedy, melodrama, edutainment ?

Movie identity papers and awards -including an Oscar- answer : documentary film. Why ? Because it is a live action movie without actors ? But, the actors are there, though not on screen : they are supposed to narrate the film, their voice over actually creates it.

Turn the sound off, « La marche de l’empereur » is a documentary film ; turn it on, your ears tell you you are watching fiction.

The film pictures are more stunningly beautiful than meaningful ; left to their own wits, they are unable to tell a story. However compelling, they remain mostly static and repetitive, symbolic rather than narrative, as when a maverick penguin is shot, dwarfed in the desolate white landscape.

They would make -and certainly did- for a beautiful pictorial book, but even editing adds them little narrative value : in the following shot, the maverick penguin is nowhere in sight, it has disappeared, drowned and digested by the ice field ; its fate is clear, but its story remains untold.
If the film were silent, each viewer would be inspired to invent his own stories or content himself with the pleasure of just watching.

« La marche de l’empereur » does not take the risk of such individual freedom. Voice over, music and lyrics join their forces and persuasion -if not coercion- power to tell us what to see on screen : penguin boy meets penguin girl, they have penguin kid.

The film is an outstanding, state of the art technical achievement that plays second string to storytelling of the lowest order.

« La marche de l’empereur » illustrates how much, in « documentary » films too, narrative skills today lag far behind technological prowess : as, in live action movies, breathtaking special effects are wasted to no end by laughable plots, footage which would have proved impossible to shoot a few years ago is misused to replay the most hackneyed story-line in the history of cinema and possibly mankind.

This is a full reversal from the first silent films, and later talkies, when technical limitations hindered narration. As if the history of cinema were technique playing catch up with storytelling, then overtaking it, and cinema were truly the art of the industrial age : technology provides all the innovations, while narration stays stuck in old grooves.

(Large format films remain the exception, as cumbersome, high-cost equipment and resulting shooting budgets still constrain their plots and scope.)

But who could blame the film producers -they would not give a damn, and rightly so- for choosing the most mainstream and profitable story among all those that could have been told ?

« La marche de l’empereur » French voice over alternatively shoots for epic grandeur -the awesome struggle for life of the penguin people- and intimacy -penguin family life-, and always for lofty poetry -Antartica sightseeing beauties-.

It ordinarily achieves second rate emotion and a scientific content close to nil.

As Mrs. Penguin, Romane Bohringer’s slightly plaintive tone follows the stream of the text pathos.

As Mr. Penguin and the main narrator, Charles Berling reins in his lines soapiness. His voice gives them a musical ring and plays them like a melody in free verse. His soft, gentle tone has a true storyteller’s quality and his words sound like a beautiful bed time story or a legendary tale disclosed around a camp fire -and sticks of grilled marshmallow- on a starry summer night.

Listening to him, the Antartica landscape and its ice walls sometimes look like not so distant cousins of Monument Valley cliffs.

His powers are nevertheless not limitless : when male and female penguins perform their awkward mating ritual and he tells us they are dancing, we remain sceptical ; if this is dancing, I am Fred Astaire.

When baby penguin is born and child actor Jules Sitruk -of Richard Berry’s « Moi, César 10 ans ½, 1m39 » fame and already, at 1m39, penguin good size- shares his character’s vision of the world, thoughts, fears and hopes with us, silliness takes over.

However, if film sounds as bad as it looks great, music is the number one culprit : a new age, pseudo symphonic mishmash, with English lyrics sung in a peevish voice, which would convince us it is spirituality-filled.

Constantly invading and redundant, struggling to force emotions on to the audience, it successfully caricatures film music at its worst.

The movie could nevertheless not do without it : several songs play like video clips within the film and extend its paper-thin story line to feature film length : « La marche de l’empereur » is officially 85 minute long, closer to 75 without titles and credits.

Chabrol's land : beware of black holes. (3/3)

As the end credits roll, questions rise to mind...

Have we not been tricked ? masterly misled to watch only the film lighter side ? Have we candidly fallen for the charming smiles of Tante Line and Michèle ? François’s aloof good looks ?

What have we truly seen on screen ? An ordinary upper-middle class French family, plagued with recurring bad luck and gossip, to which we have readily identified ? Or something much more sinister : an amiable, modern-day bourgeois version of the Greek Atrides ?

Two families, the Charpins and the Vasseurs, whose irrepressible lust for each other has created an incestuous and murderous clan ?

In its typical understated way, as if by accident, the film has unlocked many doors which we are free to push or not. In good « bourgeois » tradition, much is left unsaid : « you know full well everything here is a secret ».

One has been -supposedly ?- unveiled to us, how many more is it up to us to discover? The film ends ; a new, critical screening starts, in our heads.

When Anne’s husband and Gérard’s wife died in the same accident, how « intimate » was their relationship ? If it were « intimate », for how long had it been ?

Vice versa : at the time of the accident, what was the true relationship of their widow and widower, and future husband and wife ?

Film provides no birth details for François and Michèle, but the timing of their mother’s and father’s deaths as well as their apparent age suggest dark suspicions : whose son and daughter are they really ? Could they be half-brother and -sister, born of the same father ?

Have the Charpin-Vasseurs an uncanny talent to hide their family scandals under the rugs of their beautiful house ? Did their charming manners blind us with the director’s and screenwriters’ active help ?

After Gérard sexually harasses his stepdaughter -if she is nothing more to him-, is his death really one more unfortunate accident ? Is what we think we have witnessed on screen the truth ?

Gérard’s death is too timely and propitious not to be fully investigated : in the course of the film, he has progressively alienated himself from the rest of the family, which seemed ready to reject him by unanimous -if possibly untold- agreement.

Anne had good reason to resent her husband : he opposed her political ambitions and cheated her -though she did not know or pretended not to know.

François confessed to Michèle he had left for Chicago in good part to be rid of his father. He calls him a « salaud » -son of a bitch-, but no rational cause is given for his dislike -hatred ?-.

Long before the harassment scene, Michèle too has admitted to not liking Gérard. Again, no explanation is offered for her feeling : has Gérard harassed her before or is her mistrust purely instinctive and through no fault of his ?

Michèle and François suspect that Gérard has written the unsigned political tract ; again, no hard fact fuels such speculation.

As to Tante Line, she listens and observes in apparent neutrality : she does not badmouth Gérard but never utters a word in his defence.

Back to the original question : is Gérard’s welcome and final removal really accidental ? Here too, no hard fact, but a suspicion : Gérard’s death was less an accident than the performance of one more ritual, in a film replete with them.

Possibly the oldest ritual of all, neither French nor « bourgeois ». According to René Girard, all civilisations were based on it until the advent of Christianity : a human sacrifice, the killing of the scapegoat, whose individual « sins » were believed to be the cause of the community’s misfortunes and whose death would restore the clan, tribe, city, state... to its original order.

Is it ultimately what « La fleur du mal » is about and shows us ? that we cannot see only because we refuse to, as René Girard claims mankind has for ages ?

What is in a title ?

Is « La fleur du mal » a reminiscence of Baudelaire’s nearly eponymous book of poetry : « Les fleurs du mal » ? Of Orson Welles’s « Touch of evil » ?

Is it rather nothing but an abstract reference to the seductive powers of evil and its ability to create poisonous beauty ?

Or shall we look towards the very real and pretty flower-beds which surround the family house and to which lovely Tante Line tends with so much care ?

And, beyond the flower-beds, shall we take a very close look at Tante Line herself, as she confesses to killing her father and hints at an incestuous relationship -acted out or not ?- with her brother ?

Is she the actual « flower of evil », the original black hole from which stemmed all family misfortunes ?

If so, her tender relationship with the younger generation is nothing but evil lovingly and successfully grooming its next incarnation : as Michèle kills Gérard, Tante Line transfers her own « sins », i.e. family « doom », onto her shoulders, with François’s active support.

In such revisionist light, Gérard is only the fall guy ; a petty womaniser and social hypocrite, a self-indulgent picture of bourgeois moral shortcomings, he never has his chance : his small time, small town misdemeanours are not match for true evil.

Sandwiched between the elder and younger ones, the adult generation of Gérard and Anne, fully focused on her political campaign, like us, sees nothing coming, as « the flower of evil » is passed over from Tante Line’s parchment-like face to Michèle’s radiant youth, with the guarantee to bloom again : human sacrifices offer only temporary respite, they need to be endlessly re-enacted ; one day, the family shall expel a new scapegoat.

The film surrealist ending then makes perfect sense as the collective celebration of the immediate short term positive effects of the scapegoat’s killing : Anne is successfully elected and family harmony restored.

What is it, if not a happy end ?

Chabrol's land of honey and social hypocrisy. (2/3)

« La fleur du mal » is a wonderfully entertaining viewer’s guide to « us et coutumes » -way of life- of French bourgeoisie in the Bordeaux region : strongly suggested screening material for any potential visitor to Gironde.

Film is detail perfect, from Tante Line’s gardening straw hat to her battered, decades old « 2-CV », from the beautiful ivy -or is it vine ?- covered family mansion, its gravel path and flower beds, the Pilat -home, for trivia amateurs, to France highest sand dune- beach house down to the ugliness and cheapness of the new chemist’s store and pathology laboratory, the bareness of Anne’s campaign headquarters...

This is a film of rituals, many of them related to food, all the more evocative for reminding French viewers of similar occasions in their own life : the coming home lunch, Sundays formal dress and traditional « gigot » -leg of lamb-, the casual dinner of oysters and sole at a friendly Pilat inn, morning coffee and croissants in the veranda overlooking the sandy beach, Tante Line rushing to make the dishes as soon as she arrives at the beach house.

Chabrol’s characters show a sensual appreciation of all the earthly pleasures to which their material well-being entitles them : for one hundred minutes, the Charpin-Vasseur invite us to share a « bourgeois art de vivre » honed for generations, which they practise without a hint of self-consciousness, like they would carry a second skin.

Despite the dirty family laundry exposed in the heinous -and no doubt libellous- tract, they seem so nice and unaffected, particularly Tante Line and the young ones, that we cannot resent their privileged position and gladly accept both that they deserve it and their invitation.

To add to our viewing pleasure, this idyllic background is matched by a constant streak of irony, if not cynicism. Ann‘s and her campaign organiser’s visit to a social housing unit is an anthology piece : as Matthieu Lartigue wryly comments, « to be late for the visit of a low rent estate is the mortal sin of political campaigning » ; Chabrol portrays his working class characters with the same sharpness and accuracy as his « bourgeois », without a trace of caricature or patronising.

Each scene in the film elicits the same small smile usually displayed by Chabrol in life and Bernard Le Coq on screen : a womaniser -another ritual, perhaps less harmless-, Gérard is above all a master of « social hypocrisy », who welcomes Lartigue with open arms seconds after saying how much he loathes him.

In that instance, the director surely approves of his character : Chabrol is a confessed admirer of all the petty lies that make social -and family- life endurable and daily keep us from going at each other’s throats.

He may feel differently about what lurks far below the lying smiles, the beautiful house, the elegance and perfect taste of its inhabitants, among the deeply buried family secrets and taboos : true evil, waiting patiently to bloom again...

« La fleur du mal » is not a masterpiece, or of the intimate kind, like a small Dutch canvas painting the interior of a bourgeois home : deceptively low key and flawless. Chabrol’s film achieves all that it sets out to do and even exceeds its promises. Amazing by contemporary cinema standards, it is Chabrol’s fiftieth film.

After fifty films, Chabrol is a master craftsman : self confident enough to underplay his hand. His is bourgeois filmmaking of the highest order : understated, like his characters ; nothing obvious or showy, a constant light touch.

Fully committed to his story, he nevertheless takes a step backward so that his sharp eye and critical mind can observe it and his characters at a slight distance and leaves enough space in the frame to allow -and suggest- us to act likewise.

A great director is also a great coach ; in fifty films, Chabrol has learnt to surround himself with a devoted and talented team. « La fleur du mal » moves forward with quiet fluidity : director, crew, actors share a common vision.

The picture is wonderfully cast : no character or actor stands out ; as its poster suggests, it is a film of equals. Same is true among technical departments : cinematography, sound, sets, music... All the facets of filmmaking are harmoniously balanced.

Chabrol is a fair master, but this is a family film, on and off screen. His two sons deserve special mention. Matthieu Chabrol’s musical score is as insinuating as his father’s camera work ; never redundant, it evokes Bernard Herrmann’s compositions for Hitchcock films. As to Thomas Chabrol’s Lartigue, he is close to cynical perfection.

After fifty movies, Chabrol’s lust for filmmaking is impressive : « La fleur du mal » is anything but a run-of-the-mill work.

It is also lust, displayed by tipsy Gérard for his stepdaughter Michèle, which causes history to stutter and « La fleur du mal » to bloom again.

For one moment, it looks like the film may end with an unbecoming bang but, when drama strikes, Chabrol keeps his cool self : rather than stirring up a fire, he smothers the flames with Tante Line’s expert support and soothing voice.

The film ends less than it fades away into unresolved ambiguity : the Charpin-Vasseurs have just entered a new cycle in their troubled history.

In a surrealist and mute closing sequence, social hypocrisy and pure evil converge to celebrate a murder.

This is also an opening which brings the viewers face to face with the film black holes. As the end credits roll, questions rise to mind...

"La fleur du mal" : excursion to Chabrol's land. (1/3)

Some films are slices of life, Hitchcock’s were slices of cake.

Chabrol’s « La fleur du mal » -The flower of evil ; (2002)- is a full meal : oysters, « filets de lamproie » -lamprey- or sole, « gigot », « tarte » ; whisky, white wine and brandy.

Film opens on a long, masterly tracking shot : we enter a large manor house, pass by a dining room where the table is being set, walk upstairs ; a young woman is crying in a room, a man’s corpse is lying next door ; a sentimental standard of the 1930’s or 1940’s plays in the background.

Cut to an Air France plane.

François (Benoit Magimel), early twenties, is coming home from Chicago where he was studying. He is welcomed by his father, Gérard (Bernard Le Coq), who drives him back to the family home in a small town near Bordeaux.

The car parks in front of a manor house, which we recognise from the opening shot. A remake of the opening shot takes us inside, but goes no further than the dining room.

The table is set for the return of the family son and for Chabrol to spin his web.

We are introduced to lovely elderly Tante Line (Suzanne Flon), equally lovely but much younger Michèle (Mélanie Doutey), finally to smart and elegant Anne (Nathalie Baye).

We are delighted : all these people seem endearing and charming : the ideal upper-middle class French family. Except that François calls Anne « Belle Maman » - Stepmum- rather than « Maman » -Mum- and his relationship with Michèle seems more intimate than would become brother-sister love.

The recomposed - but how ?- family sits for lunch. François’s return is cause for celebration : white cloth, silverware, crystal glasses. Tante Line has arranged it all with the help of Marthe, the housekeeper ; she has also cooked François’s favourite dish, « lamproie », plus a « tarte » ; his father contributes a bottle of excellent white wine to the occasion.

Like in the car between François and his father, there is a good deal of idle talk ; Gérard proffers « clichés » about the US and their food habits, but his son warns him : « Les Américains sont moins cons qu’ils veulent le paraître » -Americans are less dumb than they wish to seem.

Viewers beware : when clichés are uttered in a Chabrol film, they do not inform us about the director’s own thoughts, but about the character who states them.

Likewise, idle talk, harmless comments, private jokes and obscure remarks need to be closely monitored : we do not want to fall too easily for the characters’ winning charm.

As he waited for his son at the airport, Gérard parked on a « disabled only » space : he had tricked his way to an official badge for the right to do so.

Despite Gérard’s constant smile, some tension seemed to build up between father and son in the car.

A chemist -like Chabrol’s own father-, Gérard hinted, when pointing to his new store and adjacent pathology laboratory to his son, that he had cut a few administrative corners to build them.

A lot of additional information is effortlessly and playfully passed to us around the table.

As she jokingly scolds Gérard for telling François there will be « lamproie » for lunch, Tante Line says with her sweetest smile : « Tu sais bien qu’ici, tout est un secret » - You know full well everything here is a secret.

Anne is running for the local elections against her husband’s better advice. The more they smile at each other, the more they seem tense.

The family moves to the winter garden for coffee. Anne’s campaign organiser, Lartigue -first name Matthieu, like Chabrol’s son who composed the film musical score, but the part is played by his brother, Thomas- pays a visit. He is upset by an unsigned political tract ; Anne reads it aloud : the tract stirs the mud in the troubled and troubling past of the Charpin-Vasseur family.
Pierre Charpin, a collaborationist, was murdered at the end of WW2 ; rumour accused his daughter, Tante Line, who was cleared in court.

The Charpin-Vasseur family faced other unfortunate dramas. The latest occurred a little over twenty years ago : Anne‘s husband and Gérard‘s wife died together in an accident ; then, as the tract puts it, « the widow married the widower ».

For Gérard, the tract is additional evidence that Anne should stay away from politics ; for his wife, mere gossip and more reason to fight.

Introduction is over. The film can now unfold the plot and sub-plots of a, very likely, excellent script -to know for sure, one need read it- by Caroline Eliacheff, Louise Lambrichs and Chabrol, with an appealing mix of understated elegance and ruthless efficiency.

Each scene is both a pleasure to watch and a narrative step forward ; the film pulls the impossible trick to wander around in a straight line.

Melville over Roger Duchesne.

« Le cercle rouge » (1970) opens on a quote from no less than Krishna : « When men, even who do not know each other, are meant to meet some day, no matter what may happen to each of them and how diverging their paths may seem, on the set date, they will all stand within the red circle. »
All is said. The quote reads like the film programme. From the first frame, Melville apparently gives up any idea of surprise : he tells us where the characters will end, though not how.
Throughout the movie, Montand and Delon look positively dazed, as if they, too, have read Krishna’s quote : hares again, frozen in car lights, foreseeing fateful turtles.

They seem to flash forward to their tragic end and be so hypnotised by their vision that they lose any wish to try and alter the course of events.

Melville’s cinema illustrates the physical laws of gravity : all characters fall together, at the same slow but irresistible speed. There are no winners, barely survivors : Bourvil’s commissaire Mattei comes out alive, but even more impotent, from « Le cercle rouge » : as he presumes to challenge Fate, his very actions turn against him and move all protagonists closer to Krishna’s circle.

There is no trace of humour or irony in a Melville film. Contrary to a Chabrol’s movie, a Melville picture is to be taken at face value ; there is no double reading, no retreat option, no tongue in cheek. Everything is dead serious.

Melville's films are first line soldiers : they march to the enemy at even pace under canon fire, their step never falters in the face of apparently certain critical and box office deaths ; they quietly defy all odds.

The director’s austere panache and total solidarity with his films win our respect, while their hieratic and solemn style proves contagious and makes their watch compelling.

While Melville uses his characters as clay which he models to his fateful ends, they lose their flesh and blood reality and become abstract figures of human condition, in the hands of Krishna, Melville and other cruel gods.

In « Le cercle rouge », laconic dialogues, under-acting verging on non-acting, colour film used to black and white effect, the bare geometry of the plot and visual treatment of natural and studio locations transform the movie as a whole into an abstraction : a minimalist picture where Melville draws his characters’ itineraries to the red circle.

Of all Meville’s U.F.O., « Bob le flambeur » is possibly the most disconcerting ; the first of his crime movies, his disparate elements have not seamlessly merged into the director’s unique formula yet.

But something else is amiss. We fail to grasp what, until we trace a similar sensation back to such films as Renoir’s « The river » or several Michael Powell works : no familiar faces.

« Bob le Flambeur » demonstrates by default what « carrying a film » means. « Le doulos »’s cast includes Jean-Paul Belmondo and Serge Reggiani, « Le samourai » (1967)’s Alain Delon, « Le cercle rouge »’s Delon, Bourvil, Montand.

Names and faces we can hold on to while we get our bearings in Melville’s uncharted universe.

In « Bob le flambeur », we are wrecked men in the middle of an unknown ocean, without a lifebuoy or a compass. Instead we have Roger Duchesne, Daniel Cauchy, Isabelle Corey, Guy Decomble.

Who are they ? Should we trust them ? Is there any chance they can see us safely to shore and a good movie, when they seem unable to elevate their on screen characters above third rate stereotypes ?

Some list « Wagon Master » (1950) among John Ford’s great western films. But John Wayne is missing, Henry Fonda and James Stewart too, even Victor Mature is not there. Ben Johnson, Harry Carey Jr and Ward Bond stand in their boots : substitutes from the bench, supporting actors promoted leading men, they are unable to fill them ; by failing to « carry the film », they demonstrate how invaluable a true star is.

In « Bob le flambeur », the entire bearing wall of acting is crumbling, yet the movie does not collapse. Who but Jean-Pierre Melville can claim to have made a good film starring Roger Duchesne ?

Jean-Pierre Melville' s U.F.O.

Like Hitchcock, Jean-Pierre Melville hated film shoots. Both were control freaks. Principal photography was when things could go wrong.

Until shooting started, the ideal film existed in their head, its nearly perfect clone, scripted and storyboarded, on paper.
In Jean-Pierre Melville’s universe, the director casts himself as Fate.

With principal photography, his universe meets the physical world. They must collide or there will be no film.

If they do not collide as per the director’s calculation, Melville’s minutely plotted tale will be derailed : the collision will bear another movie than the one the director envisioned.
As camera starts rolling, Fate turns vulnerable to the accidents and hazards of human life. Worse, the demiurge has to share and partially trust his perfect film to mortals : actors, crew, even producers.

« L’enfer, c’est les autres » - Hell, that’s the others - : in few places is Sartre’s statement more true than on a film set. Day after day, take after take, the director has to communicate, sell or force his vision to others, he must explain, cajole, convince, negotiate, lie, bully, threaten to get his way, make with his actors’ limited talent, technical failures, budget restrictions.

If this is not enough to humble his artistic integrity to a compromise, then « force majeure » and an act of God himself will strike down his own omnipotence.

It is impossible to know how much Melville’s completed films differ from his original vision. How a perfect clone of it would have been received is equally impossible to tell.

As they are and we watch them, Melville’s films are U.F.O. : unidentified film objects.

Sometimes for too obvious reasons : in « Léon Morin Prêtre » (1961), Jean-Paul Belmondo stars as a priest.

But Melville’s acclaimed crime movies, too, are an unlikely cocktail, never tasted before or since : American B series and « film noir », French « nanar » -B series, or below, French film, corny but able to vie for cult status-, pulp fiction, Zen and Japanese minimalism, ancient Greek tragedy...

In front of a Melville movie, one no longer knows where he is, ignores if he has travelled backward or forward in time, is only aware never to have met a similar experience on screen.

In « Bob le flambeur » (1955), the bad boys folklore, slang and « clichés » seem so tired that the film might be a parody, but the characters’ « gravitas » and seriousness win us over and we stay glued to our chair : it should be grotesque, but we have lost any desire to laugh ; Melville’s world has engulfed us into its black hole.

The actors utter their tough boys’ corny dialogues with the solemnity of Holy Scriptures, they recite them in a priestly voice so flat and out of tune that the film transcends the usual standards of artistic achievement to turn itself into a vanguard experience.

An odd on screen mix of absurdity play and atonal music, the movie also blends naturalism and utter artificiality, as it moves back and forth between shots of Pigalle and Montmartre at night and Bob’s apartment, an overstatement, like his wardrobe, in bad taste.

« Le doulos » (1962) opening sequence similarly disrupts any sense of time and place : Paris suburbs look like a post-nuclear landscape straight from an Enki Bilal comic book.

Melville’s crime movies advance to their fateful end with deliberate slowness. They play like an accident in slow motion : there is plenty of time to see it coming, but no way to prevent it ; the resulting effect of overwhelming impotence is mesmerising.

While thrillers traditionally speed through their convoluted plots to deceive their viewers’ attention and stay one narrative twist ahead, Melville quietly arranges « Le doulos » intricate story pattern in front of his public and nevertheless manages to fool it.

Melville is a « faux lent » director : apparently slow walking, but keeping his pace and never stopping ; like Lafontaine’s fabled turtle, he easily beats his overconfident watching hares to his films finish line.

Lacombe Lucien, a.k.a. Blaise Pierre.

« Lacombe, Lucien » and Lucien Lacombe both owe a lot to Blaise, Pierre.

Pierre Blaise is an accidental actor like Lucien is an accidental collaborationist. Like Lucien too, he is a farm boy, from Moissac in Tarn-et-Garonne, where Louis Malle found him.

Pierre Blaise bears the same relationship to cinema as Lucien to « Collaboration » : a glamorous, possibly treacherous, universe to which he is unprepared.

Blaise’s thick South Western accent is Malle’s touch of genius. The character’s very voice vouches for his authenticity : bad or good, generous or cruel, as long as he remains faithful to his accent, Lucien is genuine, anything but a fake or a hypocrite.

It is an effective strategy to film world history at grass root level. Even more so with WW2 : after being submitted, willy-nilly, to so much fiction and facts about the period, any fresh perspective is welcome.

With « Lacombe Lucien », Louis Malle follows the same path, in the field of fiction, as historians who immerse themselves into local data to see WW2 through they eyes of a small community or unheralded participants.

Film was shot in the French region of Quercy, where Malle had a home, mostly in the town of Figeac (Lot), with additional filming in Arcambal (Lot) and Montauban (Tarn-et-Garonne).

The film locations offer a striking counterpoint to the global conflict. WW2 belongs in, « stricto sensu », another, possibly fantasy, world : invisible and accessible only through creaky radio programmes, it sometimes sounds less real than Orson Welles’s broadcast version of H.G. Wells’s « War of the Worlds ».

While it is now nearly impossible to shed oneself from real time world news, the dearth of information then available is nothing short of fascinating : the collaborationists switch from French Vichy radio to the BBC to figure out the outside world events, which will seal their local fate.

A French assistant to the German Police in Figeac, Lucien is a private working for the local subcontractor of a multinational company : he has declared war on Great Britain, the US, the Soviet Union and is fighting as far as in Asia, with the Japanese armies. And does not know it.

Lucien has mortgaged his life to forces beyond his control and possibly his capacity for abstraction ; WW2, as it plays out in the Figeac microcosm, appears particularly absurd : like the survival of a foreign-owned factory today, its actors’ future is decided on other, global battlefronts.

Malle’s direction does not take sides until Lucien and France escape from the city and war to a few happy days in the forest. The camera then becomes partial to the two young lovers ; possibly because it knows their couple is doomed, it embellishes their happiness to fairy tale level.

A naive and over-lyrical belief in the redemptive and cleaning power of nature briefly takes over, soon obliterated by the brutality of Lucien’s arrest and death.

As the end credits roll, the film has proved nothing : Lucien is neither naturally good nor bad ; was France collaborationist or resistant ? It is not for the movie to answer, it only tells a story.

Controversy lovers nevertheless refused to surrender. At all force, they drew general lessons from « Lacombe Lucien » : Malle was too lenient on collaborationists, Malle underplayed the Underground role, Malle’s characters misrepresented the true motivations of the time ; whatever...

According to a critic, the film demonstrated that you cannot « compromise with social order and refuse the rules of your social class... »

The scandal raisers closed their eyes so stubbornly on the film that they could not read its title : « Lacombe Lucien ».

An administrative file, an ordinary name, shared by many, sentenced by History to long lasting shame : the film endeavoured to give them a face and a chance, to restore Lacombe Lucien, a data base record, to the complexities and inconsistencies of flesh and blood Lucien Lacombe.

Pierre Blaise did not survive his character long. He died driving the car the film pay-check had bought him.

Amateurs of moral tales and social theorists may have thought his death tragic but appropriate : a kid killed by his toy, nature murdered by technology. It somehow matched his character’s demise : no one should try and escape their natural destiny to create their own life...

Meanwhile :

Gunter Grass reveals that, at the age of fifteen, he volunteered to become a submariner : anything rather than the boredom of life at his parents’ home. The French Underground rejected Lucien, the German Navy Two did not take him in. Two years later, Gunter Grass was enrolled into the Waffen SS.

Terrorism pundits labour to explain how young men born and bred in Western countries join the ranks of Al-Qa’ida & Associates : some personal itineraries make as little sense as Lucien’s to anyone who did not watch Louis Malle’s movie.

Louis Malle : sorry, no controversy.

Louis Malle had the knack for getting scandal lovers excited, then cruelly disappointed : they came into the theatre salivating and hungry for controversy, came out with empty hands and stomach, hungry, angry and fuming.

Whether they touched upon an incestuous mother-son relationship (« Le souffle au coeur »- 1971) or depicted a young girl’s life in a New Orleans brothel (« Pretty baby » - 1978) , Louis Malle’s films did so with utmost tact.

In 1974, controversy spin masters thought they had the director at their mercy : he had cornered himself in making a film about WW2 France.

Was he going to portray a country of collaborationists, underground fighters or cynical opportunists ? Whatever his choice, he was dead meat.

They bought seats for historical pornography and exited as frustrated as four years later from « Pretty baby »’s whorehouse. Like a magician locking himself into his box, Louis Malle had once more escaped, while the advertising bastards were selling tickets on their backs.

The film title was nevertheless without ambiguity : « Lacombe Lucien » tells an individual story, not a collective one.

Lacombe, Lucien : last name, first name ; the way French « Etat civil » and all official documents record a citizen’s identity, the way Lucien Lacombe’s name appeared in French police registers, would later feed statistics about WW2 France.

Lucien Lacombe is a country boy from South Western France ; he works as an orderly in the local hospital, lives on a farm with his mother and her lover -his father is a war prisoner- ; they want him out.

In 1944, Lucien becomes a French assistant to the German Police. He does so nearly by accident. He wants to join « Résistance », but is rejected by the school teacher. A flat tire on his bike partly decides his fate for him.

Lucien discovers power and easy living and likes it. He can be ruthless and cruel, treat men as the rabbits he used to skin. He informs against the underground school teacher.

Lucien splits his days between the local mansion where the collaborationists gather and an apartment where a Jewish tailor has fled Paris and is hiding with his family. Lucien courts his daughter, France, but denounces the tailor to the Gestapo.

When a German soldier comes to arrest France and her mother, he shoots him and escapes with the women.

Lucien’s behaviour is erratic, this is why he makes sense. Though the film is said to be based on a true story, maybe no Lucien Lacombe existed, maybe no collaborationist followed a similar path ; the film nevertheless convinces it could -must- have happened.

Lucien is pure instinct, not dumb but rough. Ill-equipped for self-analysis, he is no intellectual, nor historian : it is not up to him to trace the sociological roots of French « Collaboration » to age-old Jew hatred or 3rd Republic scandals, he has no global perspective on WW2. As a thinker, Lucien is worse than Rodin’s muscular sitter.

Lucien is not a Nazi, he probably has no clue what this really means, but he may be worse : an acting or « de facto Nazi ». Without such ideology indifferent helpers, hard-core Nazis would have gone nowhere ; to hate Jews should be a prerequisite to betray them.

Lucien is also no skilful opportunist : he signs as a French assistant to German Police in June 1944 ; in the same instant as he gains power and a status, he becomes a sucker. Like in a suspense film, we know something he ignores : he has lost.

Lucien is guilty -vis-à-vis his victims, if not the onlookers who take no sides-, at times hateful ; overall though, he remains likeable. « Lacombe Lucien » succeeds as a film, because Lucien is a creative creation and not a sociological reconstruction.

Chabrol's easy living and filming.

Like François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol is a Hitchcock fan.

Unlike Truffaut, he need not write a book to show his appreciation of the suspense master : his darkish tales, twisted plots and wry brand of humour are enough of a tribute.

Unlike Hitchcock, Chabrol does not star in his films.

This is a pity : his face says plenty about them. A beak-like nose, a pointed chin gradually drowning into « bon vivant » epicurian fat, a sardonic smile, devilish eyes sparkling with malicious glee, usually behind thick glasses.

Though photographs do not show if Chabrol’s tongue rests in his cheek, they strongly suggest it : the director’s films are not to be taken at face value, but rather at his face value. Otherwise, we risk missing their constant undercurrent of discreet irony and may ultimately believe them flat because they disdain « in your face » filmmaking.

Chabrol’s father was a chemist. He is an entomologist embarked on a life-long research project : to explore the poisonous charms of French provincial bourgeoisie.

Chabrol knows his subject inside out, he was born, if not in it, adjacent to it : in a bourgeois family, but in Paris ; as a child, WW2 forced him to migrate to the heart of the matter and France : Creuse.

The director has since become a « bourgeois » in his own right, though again Parisian and with Marxist leanings ; he has raised a somewhat recomposed family and shows a strong sense of family values : his wife Aurore, his sons Matthieu and Thomas, his stepdaughter Cécile Maistre all worked with him on « La fleur du mal » (2002).

Chabrol enjoys a great love-hate relationship with his subject matter : he loathes his « bourgeois » as much as he laughs at them and, sometimes, may be with them ; they fascinate, irritate, disgust, entertain him and, through him, us.

For nearly half a century, Chabrol and « bourgeoisie » have been an odd couple of partners in success ; their conflict is among the great rivalries in French filmmaking : a Connors-McEnroe feud extended over the length of five tennis careers.

Chabrol’s French provincial « bourgeois » are both a sociological fact and a filmmaker’s fantasy, if not a personal obsession : nearly, but never, too good -i.e. bad, mean, evil, conniving, greedy, criminal...-, to be true.

Chabrol’s movies should be compulsory screening material for all sociology, home and fashion design students alike. Any admirer of French « art de vivre » should rush to watch them.

Chabrol’s characters epitomise their class in its conservative good taste, discreet « BCBG » -bon chic bon genre ; chic and tasteful- elegance, ability to turn a house into both a home and a display of its achievements, as much as in the criminal instincts required to reach, protect or improve their position in life and fund it.

Contrary to the unresolved chicken-egg controversy, Chabrol would probably say that crime came first.

Chabrol’s films are wallpaper, furniture, silver ware, menus and wine list, floral arrangements, good manners and dress perfect : their production values exhale the same subtle perfume of understated elegance as all aspects of his direction’s work.

Film credits should include detailed information about each prop, including houses, and a dedicated internet site should market them, unless Chabrol plans a donation for the creation of an ethnological museum of French provincial bourgeoisie at the turn of the third millennium.

Hitchcock did not like film shoots. Chabrol loves them. His shooting rhythm is impressive : one film a year. Some come out great, some not so good : the proof is in the pudding, i.e. on screen, not in the recipe or a script.

Chabrol’s affair with filmmaking is all but platonic. Cinema, like love, is something you make rather than discuss. A bad relationship and a bad film create a common urge to move forward to the next ones.

Somerset Maugham read the meaning of life in an Indian rug : what matters is the pattern. Chabrol’s catalogue of films draws an awesome one ; bad films contribute more positively to it than uncompleted projects would.

Though they do not always produce « grands crus », winemakers harvest their grapes year after year. A winemaker makes wine, a filmmaker makes films. Life is that simple. One is to fulfil the requirements of his profession or choose another one.

« It’s only a film », Hitchcock coolly reminded an emotionally confused Ingrid Bergman on a movie set. Chabrol would agree ; this is why both directors pay so much attention to « it ».

Chabrol’s marathon career is a tour de France. His films move from province to province in search of the perfect setting for the ultimate dysfunctional « bourgeois » family. More often than not, it proves to be a gorgeous house among beautiful surroundings in a region of strong culinary tradition.

Chabrol shoots his cinema murders where common people dream to live or vacation. He is the greatest on screen promoter of French tourism and « art de vivre ».

The motto for French cinema promotional event, « La fête du cinéma » used to be : « I love life, I love cinema ». Truffaut objected : if you loved life, you did not spend it in the dark watching flickering images.

Chabrol enjoys both, but takes neither too seriously.

15 ways to become a French film director : 9 to 15.

9.Be a stand up comic :

Comedy is king, in all formats and outlets.

Notables :
.Revered ancestors : S.O.B. Jean Yanne, holy man Coluche ( « Vous n’aurez pas l’Alsace et la Lorraine » - 1977).
.Followers : « Les Inconnus » : truly funny trio of Didier Bourdon, Bernard Campan, Pascal Legitimus honed their skills on TV cabaret programme ; they since boldly march into « Les Nuls »’s giant footsteps :
..Didier Bourdon and Bernard Campan direct the trio to box office triumph in « Les 3 frères » (1995) and « Le pari » (1997).
..lonely Didier Bourdon directs the trio in « L’extraterrestre » (2000) to disappointing figures.
..Pascal Legitmus, on a sabbatical from his colleagues, directs himself in « Antilles-sur-Seine » (2000).
..Pascal Legitimus returns to the fold, Bernard Campan too as actor and co-director, success is back : « Les rois mages » (2001).
..Didier Bourdon directs himself and Catherine Frot in « 7 ans de mariage » (2002)...

10.Write best-selling fiction, adapt it to the screen :

Bonus : blind fidelity to the book (if it is good).

Hazards : blind fidelity to the book (if it is bad) ; films to watch with your ears : no visual skills ; pairings with commercials and video clips directors strongly suggested (see 4.).

Notables :
.Michel Houellebecq : official French literature « enfant terrible » : « La possibilité d’une île » (2006 - to be released) ; may face competition of German film adaptation of his earlier eponymous novel, « Les particules élémentaires » : both films expected to hit French screens soon.
.Yann Moix : shoot-from-the hip self-marketer : « Podium » (2003).
.Vincent Ravalec : tireless repackager : adapts his novels and short stories to the screen, gathers his short films into feature film long anthology : « Le cantique de la racaille » (1998), « La merveilleuse histoire de l’idiot toboggan » (2002).
.Alexandre Jardin : teenage girls heartthrob ; critically panned ; « Fanfan » (1992), « Le prof » (2000).

Notable exception :.Frédéric Beigbeder : his generation’s leader, also media master and Flammarion « directeur littéraire » ; wrote the script for the screen adaptation of his « 99 francs » (2006) novel, but sublet directing duties to Jan Kounen (see 5.).

11.Write screenplays, direct them :

Rationale : most French film directors remain « auteurs », write their own scripts and do not give a damn about others’ ; if they do, they usually have no clue how to direct them.

Bottom line : you shall turn director, like it or not.

Notables :
.Jacques Audiard : Michel Audiard’s son ; did not want to direct, did not want to throw his scripts away ; chose the lesser of two evils : « Regarde les hommes tomber » (1994), « Un héros très discret » (1996), « Sur mes lèvres » (2001).
.Rémi Waterhouse : Patrice Leconte’s « Ridicule » screenwriter : « Je règle mon pas sur le pas de mon père » (1999), « Mille millièmes » (2002).
.Agnès Jaoui : Jean-Pierre Bacri’s female partner in acclaimed screenwriters’ -César winners for best screenplay in 1994, 1997, 1998 and 2001- and actors’ couple : directs on her own « Le goût des autres » (2000), « Comme une image » (2003), based on four-hands script.

12.Be your father’s child, but do not use his name :

Warning : do not shame your father.Hazard : not everybody inherit their father’s talent.Bonus : all directing fathers do not have talent.

Notables :
.Danièle Thompson : Gérard Oury' s daughter : « La bûche » (1992), « Décalage horaire » (2002).
.Alexandre Aja : Alexandre Arcady’s son ; a.k.a. Alexandre Jouan, his actor’s name in his father’s films ; targets the under-served French market for fantastic/horror films : « Furia » (2000), « Haute tension » (2003) ; boldly remakes Wes Craven’s « The hills have eyes » : « La colline a des yeux » (2005).
.Thomas Langmann : Claude Berri’s overachieving egomaniac son : actor (first screen appearance in Claude Berri’s 1980 « Je vous aime »), screenwriter, producer and self-appointed director : « Astérix aux Jeux Olympiques » (2006) ; a walk down Flop Lane is overdue.

13.Choose your friends carefully, squeeze their talent to your directing debut :

Notable :
.Djamel Bensalah : close friend to Jamel Debbouze -Canal + boy comedy wonder, French TV and cinema answer to Zinédine Zidane-, and upcoming young actors Julien Courbey and Lorant Deutsch : all three play for him in « Le ciel, les oiseaux et... ta mère » (1998), Courbey and Deutsch in « Le raid » (2002), Courbey alone in « Il était une fois dans l’oued » (2005). Guess what comes next.

14.Become a media icon and the sky’s the limit :

Warning : highly crowded and competitive field ; unreasonable dedication a must.

Bonus : if successful, you will apply your absolute power to any field you choose.

Role model :
.Bernard-Henri Lévy : philosopher, essayist, novelist, art critic, -ageing- human rights poster boy, designer’s freedom fighter... film director : « Le jour et la nuit » (1997) starring Alain Delon, Lauren Bacall, Arielle Dombasle and... -appropriately ?- Karl Zero. In a well orchestrated show of sudden collective defiance, critics unanimously greeted the film as a disaster of still-to-come-Katrina order : a manner of praise.

15.Climb the filmmaking ladder, step by step, to its directing top :

The French film community is a meritocracy : start with an unpaid job on a shoot, work hard, get free meals on the next, keep moving, rise through the ranks ; one day, you shall direct your own feature film.

Warning : only if Voltaire’s « Candide » is your night table book.

Frequently asked questions :

.Does talent matter ? Filmmaking is a Calvinist undertaking : how do you tell a director’s talent before he directs a film ? Talent does not lead to directing success, success -critical or popular- proves pre-existing talent.

.Though a natural born French film director, you are not a French citizen ?
1.You are a European Union citizen or have resided in the European Union for five years at least : you are welcome.
2.You are not and have not : check on France more recent immigration law project.

French Revolution for dummies : part 2.

« Les années lumière » -the light years-, part 1 of the film, were trusted to French director Robert Enrico ; US TV veteran Richard T. Heffron was left to struggle with part 2 : « Les années terribles » -the terror years-.

While the Gargantuan defile staged by Jean-Paul Goude on Champs Elysées as the highlight of the 200th anniversary celebrations mixed weirdness, snobbery, superficiality and real creativity and somehow gelled into popular entertainment, « La Révolution Française » hardly revolutionised film aesthetics.

The two helmers deserve jury clemency : baking their oversized « europudding » was no piece of cake ; nothing in their track record suggested they would do it in style.

Their generally uninspired work was also faithful to French Revolution Art : the age was neo-classical, a return to ancient taste, in David’s stern style.

Last but not least, they could blame the script on the British.

David Ambrose’s best was not enough : his was a hopeless task.

He had to cater to the needs of both a French audience which, year after year, had been force-fed its Revolution at school -but might not have digested it- and foreign crowds which would spend the whole film waiting in vain for Napoléon.

Watching the film is like browsing through a check list : Bastille Day, Louis XVI’s failed escape to Varenne, his trial, Valmy... ; no part is missing, but the film exhibits substantial general design and/or assembly line problems : it is an Ikea bookcase of a movie, what you get bears little resemblance to your expectations, its rendition on the user’s instructions sheet or in the picture trailer.

In its better moments, the film rises to photo album charm : « images d’Epinal » -named after the Eastern France town where they were manufactured-, old-fashioned French History book clichés.

While the French would fast forward -they know most about them-, foreign crowds would slow down to read the captions and get a clue of what’s going on.

The film offers too little of too much : over-ambitious and underachieving. Its didactic value is close to nil, its entertainment assets barely worth more : it is neither a behind-the-scene drama, « Le Souper » style, nor a gun-and-powder epic of Abel Gance’s « Napoléon » disproportion.

Film was shot in English and French ; if each actor had spoken their original language, the movie would be more eloquent.

The Babel-like result would vividly convey the anarchic excitement of those troubled times, the flurry of contradictory views, the successive languages of the Revolution, its sheer noise, the progressive fall from articulate speech to vociferation : from « les années lumière » to « les années terreur ».

From its conception -a pity there is no project « making-of »- to how it plays on screen, the film may be an allegory : a metaphor for United Nations impotence, a well-meaning effort doomed to failure like so many UN missions.

« La Révolution Française » was a project so complex to manage, involving so many nationalities, struggling to conciliate so many diverging objectives that its participants had no time to try and make a more than acceptable movie.

Manned with troops from so many countries, UN peacekeeping missions face awesome inner challenges and conflicts before they can hope to export peace beyond their own ranks.

What if, in the name of « ingérence humanitaire » -humanitarian interference-, 18th century UN had meddled to put an end to French Reveolution « terror years ».

In fact, this is nearly what happened : Europe’s more powerful monarchs, rightly concerned by the fate of their Louis XVI « cousin » and his family, declared war on France ; their armies were crushed at Valmy.

They were back in 1815 : « Congrès de Vienne » had tried to return Europe to a semblance of order and Waterloo put a true end to a quarter century of French follies, but this is another story and a better film : « Le souper».

15 ways to become a French film director : 4 to 8.

4.Direct commercials :

Good, lucrative launching pad for a directing -and producing : Charles Gassot started in advertising- career.

Notables :.Veteran filmmakers : Jean-Jacques Annaud, Etienne Chatiliez..Newcomer : L.-P. Couvelaire : « Sueurs » (2002), « Michel Vaillant » (2003).

Hazards : great visual skills + non existent narrative talent + zero empathy with actors = lousy films ; who cares ?

Note : directing commercials will also keep you comfortably afloat while developing feature film projects ; Jean-Paul Rappeneau will concur.

Alternative : direct video clips.

Notable :.Jan Kounen : « Dobermann » (1996), « Blueberry » (2004).

Hazards : see above, plus mindless violence (« Dobermann ») and substance-induced New Age/Old Indian paper-thin spirituality (« Blueberry »).

5.Direct stage plays, possibly high-brow :

Bonus : trade the nightly perils of live theatre for the daily comfort of two takes and more.

Notables :
.Patrice Chéreau : « L’homme blessé » (1983), « La reine Margot » (1994) ; increasingly flirting with the guilty waters of mainstream filmmaking.
.Roger Planchon : « Louis enfant-roi » (1992), « Lautrec » (1998) ; flirting with old age.

6.Become a film journalist, surf New Wave legacy to the director’s chair :

Notables :
.« Cahiers du cinéma » sacred cows : Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Eric Rohmer...
.« Cahiers du cinéma » next wave : Olivier Assayas : « Irma Vep » (1996), « Les destinées sentimentales » (2000) ; his former colleagues like his films.
.« Studio magazine » editor-in-chief Marc Esposito : « Le coeur des hommes » (2003), « Toute la beauté du monde » (2005) ; he now ventures in sequel territory : « Le coeur des hommes 2 » : evidence of mainstream success or display of « hubris » ?

Hazards : would you trust your savings to a business journalist ? how many crime reporters are called Michael Connelly ? Reading my postings, are you looking forward to my first film ?

7.Build a public relations business, switch it to your talent service :

Luminary & Spin master :Bertrand Tavernier : former film PR man, critic and writer : « Trente ans de cinéma américain » ; « L’horloger de Saint-Paul » (1974), « Que la fête commence » (1975), « Le juge et l’assassin » (1976) ; outstanding self-promoter, great lobbyist, strident advocate of « exception culturelle », raging opponent of US cinema hegemony, unrepentant lover of American B movies ; increasingly obnoxious and self-satisfied, like his films.

8.Transmute small screen fame to big screen gold :

Strategy : become a TV talk or entertainment show regular and win a free coupon to film glory.

Background : French TV is the number 1 financier of French cinema ; free on-air promotion is paramount to box-office success (feature film advertising is prohibited on France major TV channels to protect local fare against the marketing muscle of US blockbusters) : French TV is French cinema’s Big Brother and king-maker.
Hazards : watch French TV...

« Notables » :
.Isabelle Mergault : struggling actress and screenwriter joins the cast of pubcaster France 2 hit entertainment magazine, « On a tout essayé » ; reversal of fortune : now successful director of well-received first film : « Je vous trouve très beau » (2005) ; movie title -I think you are very beautiful- aptly describes her own metamorphosis.
.Laurent Baffie : sporadically funny man ; fool-in-residence to Thierry Ardisson, king of French « faux chic » talkshow vulgarity ; author of hit stage play « Sex, magouilles et culture générale » -sex, stings and humanities- powered by free prime time promotion on Ardisson’s « Tout le monde en parle » ; stage success leads to first directing stint : « Les clés de ma bagnole » (2003) ; high concept film : Laurent Baffie looks for his misplaced car keys.
.Bernard Rapp : good-looking, pleasant news and cultural journalist with pubcasters France 2 then France 3 ; moonlights as film director : « Tiré à part » (1997), « Une affaire de goût » (2000), « Pas si grave » (2003) ; films co-produced by his employer : conflict of interest ? Synergies.

Warning : Do not direct TV series or movies ; successful French TV directors do not graduate to feature film direction, unsuccessful French film directors retire to small screen duties ; ageing actors too : Alain Delon « stars » in Jose Pinheiro’s TV adaptation of Jean-Claude Izzo’s Marseilles-set crime novels.

8.bis. Join Canal + :

Sorry : you have missed the last call.

When Canal + was king, (nearly) all employees were awarded film directing options.

Canal + icons :
.Antoine de Caunes : long time, widely praised co-host of flagship unscrambled show, « Nulle part ailleurs » : « Les morsures de l’aube » (2000), « Monsieur N. » (2003).
.Karl Zero : Dan Rather, David Letterman and Orson Welles wannabe ; believed cured by « Le tronc » (1992) of his « Citizen Kane » delusions ; relapses in 2006 with « Dans la peau de Jacques Chirac » : documentary film, co-directed with Michel Royer, uses his trademark technique of digitally retooled newsreels ; fired by Canal + ; Socialist presidential hopeful Fabius and Chirac hater Sarkozy supposedly offer support.
. « Les Nuls » : possibly Canal + number 1 success story (like for Karl Zero, the « dud » concept in the comedy quartet’s name responds to the + in the channel ID) ; from humble beginnings in pastiche TV news to :
..Chantal Lauby : « Laisse tes mains sur mes hanches » (2003).
..Alain Chabat : « Didier (1997), « Asterix et Obelix : mission Cléopâtre » (2001), « RRRrrr ! ! ! » (2003).
..Dominique Farrugia : « Delphine : 1 Yvan : 0 » (1996), « Trafic d’influence » (1999).
..Bruno Carette : would have loved to direct, but drunk Nile river water and died.
..members of the quartet turned trio are also successful actors, writers, producers. Dominique Farrugia even briefly headed Canal + (after Pay TV giant received brutal financial wake-up call).
..Alain Berbérian : film editor for « Les Nuls » TV gags jumped first on the directing wagon : « La cité de la peur » (1993), with « Les Nuls », then, without them : « Paparazzi » (1998), « Six Pack » (1999), « Le boulet » (co-directed with Frédéric Forestier, 2002)...

French Revolution for dummies : part 1.

The French Revolution was a local event which rippled through the world : it premiered to Gallic audiences, revolutionary and imperial armies exported it to Europe with mixed reviews and support, it has since triggered countless remakes and sequels.

Its 200th anniversary called for -still unborn- global village celebration.

On July 14, 1989, President Mitterrand entertained world leaders in typical « Ancien Regime » fashion, regaling the G7 aristocracy at his table, while the rest of the world « Tiers-Etat » was relegated to the second class dining room.

All guests nevertheless convened after coffee and « digestifs » to share post-dinner festivities in a heart-warming display of brotherly equality.

On screen too, France was generous enough to celebrate its Revolution with the rest of the world, if only for budgetary reasons.

« La Révolution Française » (1989) is a two-part, six-hour long film, co-produced among Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK and France.

Foreign aid was not enough. French citizens were kindly asked to contribute : even by local standards, the movie was heavily subsidised.

Gallic audiences had thus two imperious reasons to attend : patriotic duty and good business sense ; for the additional price of two movie tickets, they had a chance to recoup their unwilling investment, provided the film proved pleasant to watch.

This was not enough to prompt box office success : 150 000 viewers in Paris for part 1, « Les Années Lumière » ; hardly a revolution, just a good-sized street demonstration.

A celebration of revolution, film was produced by an odd couple : Alexandre Mnouchkine was born in Saint-Petersbourg and fled post-October revolution Soviet Union ; Antoine de Clermont-Tonnerre was just what his name said : an aristocrat.

There is a nickname for European film co-productions : « europuddings » ; it is not meant as a compliment.
International co-productions sometimes mix awkward creative and political cocktails.

Marie-Antoinette was not French : a sensible casting decision ; she was not Austrian either, but British and played by Jane Seymour.

Nevertheless, the film was not without Austrian acting talent : Klaus Maria Brandauer was Danton.
In1982, Danton was French, like in most History books, and played by Depardieu in the eponymous film by Polish director Andrzej Wajda.

In « La Révolution Française », the Poles settled for Danton’s competing alter ego : Robespierre was played by Andrzej Seweryn ; Polish actors seemed to take a special liking to the part : in Wajda’s « Danton », Wojciech Pszoniak was Robespierre.

Something to do with the character’s nickname : « l’Incorruptible » -the Untouchable- ? his General Jaruzelski smiling demeanour ? political timing ? : on September 12, 1989, Poland celebrated the 200th anniversary of French Revolution with its first non-Communist government since the end of WW2.

Robespierre’s head rolls at the end of « La Révolution Française, part 2 :les années terribles » ; General Jaruzelski gives way to Lech Walesa in less dramatic style in December of 1990.

In the film, La Fayette might have been American : a tribute to his contribution to the US Independence War. He was Australian : Sam Neil.

Marat was Italian : Vittorio Mezzogiorno ; still, he was killed in his bath by Charlotte Corday, who surprisingly was charming and French Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu.

Sir Peter Ustinov’s Vicomte de Mirabeau proved that, even in « Europuddings », there are tasty bites.

Quebecer Gabrielle Lazure’s Princess de Lamballe suggested that, if Louis XV had not lost « la Nouvelle France » to England, French Canada would have sided with his grandson Louis XVI against the rebellion.

In Count Dracula’s absence, Christopher Lee played famed executioner Sanson : the film insistence on Historical veracity had him dispose of his many clients with « la guillotine » rather than with his teeth.

In addition to Charlotte Corday, there were a few French actors scattered in « La Révolution Française » ; the most noteworthy was Jean-François Balmer as Louis XVI : a wry political comment about what had not changed in France since 1789 ?

15 ways to become a French film director : 1 to 3.

All roads lead to Rome and a few to being a French film director : highways, country and mountain paths, dirt tracks... rich in detours or short cuts... some toll free, some barely affordable... jammed, empty, boring, scenic, mapped or not.

A dead end is rarely further than a wrong turn.

A French film director is a technician and an « auteur » ; under French cinema rules, his compensation combines a salary for his technical work, and « droits d’auteur » -author’s rights- for his creative contribution.

If you video recorded your own birth, go the technical route.

If you cannot tell a camera lens from its viewfinder, follow the « auteur »’s trail : technicalities shall not stand in the way of your « vision ».

Or, between these two roads, map out your own trip, choose your pace, select optional excursions and stopovers.

Here are a few suggested itineraries :

1.Go to film school :

1.a : « bright student » plan :

Graduate in film direction and follow the aspiring filmmaker’s « cursus honorum » : second assistant, first assistant, director.

Idhec -Institut des hautes études cinématographiques- was France’s more prestigious film school ; in 1986, it was replaced by Fémis -Ecole nationale supérieure des métiers de l’image et du son-.

Idhec alumni : Patrice Leconte, Louis Malle, Dominik Moll...Fémis alumni : Arnaud Despléchin, Laetitia Masson, François Ozon...

1.b : « average student » contingency plan :

Study editing or cinematography, demonstrate your skills, rise to film direction.

Hazards : not all finance and marketing executives become CEOs ; not all those that do make good CEOs.

Bonus : if your film directing career bombs, return to your editor’s or cinematographer’s roots.

Notables :
.Yves Angelo, cinematographer : he directed Depardieu in his first film, « Le Colonel Chabert » (1992), a Balzac adaptation ; a few mediocre films followed.
.Bruno Nuytten : acclaimed cinematographer directed Isabelle Adjani, upon her personal request, in « Camille Claudel » (1988) ; later directed Julien Rassam and Estelle Skornik in « Albert Souffre » (1992), not a step forward ; still a great cinematographer.
.Alain Berbérian : see 8.bis.

2.Become an actor :

2.a.Quickly discover your lack of talent and move to being a director :

Notable : Gérard Oury : playing Napoléon in Raoul Walsh’s « Sea devils » (1953) possibly awoke his ambition to direct ; career change was win-win decision for him and French audiences : he was no Gérard Philipe.

2.b.Become a star and direct your own vanity projects :

If you had the power to film yourself, would you resist the temptation ? Which hired hand would film you with more genuine love, care and understanding ?

Notable : Alain Delon answered « no » and « none » to both questions in 1981 and 1983 - « Pour la peau d’un flic », « Le battant »- then decided, surprisingly, the pleasure was not worth the trouble.

Notable exception : Gérard Depardieu ; lack of ego or time ? Overbooked actor preferred to branch out into wine making, his true calling and profession according to his passport.

Warning : opportunity may not knock twice. If you are the monthly box office wonder, hurry to cash in and direct ; your clout may be short-lived.

Notable : suddenly hot Patrick Timsit’s sense of timing -he was a former real estate agent- gave birth to « Quasimodo d’El Paris » (1998) ; film may convince him to stick to acting.

Plan B : stardom eludes you, but you manage a decent acting career : patiently accumulate favours in sensible « Godfather » manner and call them in when time is ripe.

Notable :
Richard Berry. Veteran actor tried his hand at the helm with « L’art (délicat) de la séduction » (2000) ; against most odds, he struck again three years later with « Moi, César, 10 ans et demi, 1M39 » ; praiseworthy for not filming his ageing navel, but Patrick Timsit’s -marginally younger, but buried in fat- in film 1, then a child version of himself played by Guillaume Sitruk in film 2.

2.c.Become an excellent actor, then an excellent director :

Warning : no easy ride ; expect roadblocks ; full tank and extra jerry-cans of talent required.

Notable : Nicole Garcia : moved full time behind the camera with success : « Un weekend sur deux » (1990), « Le fils préféré » (1994), « Place Vendôme » (1998)...

3.Succeed as film producer, trust your directing talent, green-light your own projects.

Bonus : easier for you to negotiate with yourself than (a) as a film producer to handle Leo Carax style lunacy, (d) as a film director Louis B. Mayer size cunning.

Hazard : running overbudget on yourself.

Warning : as any business, film production is to be played with « L’argent des autres » -other people’s money ; a 1978 Christian de Chalonge film-, never yours.

Notables :
.« Claude Lelouch presents a Claude Lelouch production of a Claude Lelouch film » : the director pre-existed the producer, but the producer is better.
.Claude Berri : heavyweight producer regularly puts his directing cap back atop his bald scalp ; credits are a mixed bag, production- and directing-wise ; « Uranus » (1990) is a good and nasty film.
.Charles Gassot : head of production powerhouse Telema directed one film : « Le mauvais garçon » (1992) ; « errare humanum est » but « perseverare diabolicum. » He persisted, in film production.

Something light to start with.

Following the thread and drawing the genealogy tree of French cinema genres can be revealing.

Jean-Paul Rappeneau co-wrote Louis Malle’s « Zazie dans le métro » (1959) and De Broca’s « L’homme de Rio » (1963) before he graduated to directing with « La vie de château » (1965).

Danièle Thompson is Gérard Oury’s daughter. She worked on her father’s films, including « La grande vadrouille » (1966), then wrote screenplays for other directors ; some were comedies : « La boum » (1980) , some were not : « La reine Margot » (1994). In 1999, she directed her first film, a comedy : « La bûche » ; a success, though not of « La grande vadrouille »magnitude.
Francis Veber was a prolific screenwriter for Edouard Molinaro’s « L’emmerdeur » (1973), De Broca’s « Le magnifique » (id.) and many other French comedy films, then premiered as a film director in « Le jouet » (1976). He is the grandnephew of playwright Tristan Bernard.

As a film director, Francis Veber is less prolific than as a writer : ten films in thirty years ; all of them comedies, all of them variations on a limited number of premises, situations and characters, often explored with Pierre Richard and Gérard Depardieu : the odd couple, the sadist and the masochist, the bully and his victim...

The endless quest of a screenwriter, director and eventually producer toward the perfect comedy formula : the ideal balance of original storytelling, witty dialogues, actors’ direction, rhythm and box office success.

Like a Formula 1 team manager, Francis Veber endlessly works on new and improved versions of the same film, focuses on the tinier details, looks to maximise the power/weight ratio of his projects : to extract always more comedy from always more economical premises.

As his films get leaner and shorter, all bones and muscles and no fat, his sense of economy veers from Formula 1 racing and, past the minimalism of « Nouvelle cuisine », verges on anorexia.

« Le placard » (2000) is so lean and mean as to be hardly nourishing. Even a spectator with a moderate appetite for comedy will leave the cinema without his fill : a bite or two of very tasteful but small « canapés » of sleek and very light comedy, the film version of the stingy specials discounted for lunch by three stars restaurants.

This may be precisely what Veber was trying to achieve : a film that would be an appetiser rather than a full meal, a diet comedy with an appealing business model.

« Le placard » tells the story of Daniel Auteuil, the typical loser of Veber’s films, left by his wife and about to be fired by his company, whose professional and personal prospects suddenly brighten when he passes for gay : a « placard» is a French closet.

The film premises astutely combine the number one French concern : unemployment, with high profile society issues : gay rights and political correctness.

To add to its box office appeal, « Le placard » bets on star power : Daniel Auteuil, Gérard Depardieu, Thierry Lhermitte, Michèle Laroque...

A smart creative move, given their talent ; a profitable business decision despite their pay, as they have consistently proved their ability to draw enough spectators to the theatres to make their performances cost-effective -sexism aside, this is less true of Michèle Laroque-.

The heavy investment on creative talent, including writer-director Veber, is compensated by reasonable physical production costs : the film is shot in studio with a limited number of sets -mostly offices-, requires neither special effects, nor crowds of extras and is only, when edited, eighty-four minutes long.

Veber spins his minimalist tale around his quartet of main characters to funny but rarely hilarious effect. When the complex web of relationships he has created threatens to grow out of control, he abruptly ends the film on an elegant pirouette which feels a lot like a fishtail ending.

This is a gourmet comedy for an educated public which far prefers a few intelligent smiles to roaring laughter.

This is also a barely eighty minute long film if you do not sit through the end titles, which easily fits the busy schedule of its core target audience : the very company executives which it portrays on screen.

« Le placard » is ideally formatted to insert itself between the end of their working day and dinner, where it will provide food for light thought and easy conversation with their significant other or work colleagues.

Its star power and high profile issues, combined with its duration, similarly make the film the likely consensus choice for groups of friends planning an evening out : the film is short enough that you can sit through it without risking starvation -even on a day of pop corn shortage- and, if you do not like it, still have plenty of time to redeem your evening.

In an age of overlong and mediocre films, with the movie-going crowd made of a small bunch of film activists and an indifferent mass dragging their feet to a theatre for lack of better affordable entertainment alternatives, « Le placard » offers a promising business model : the perfect film to watch when you do not really wish to watch one.

Not lost in translation.

After all, it may be that Jean-Luc Godard is not Korean. Lucky Koreans : if he had been, they would enjoy and understand him less.

This is the doom of French-speaking viewers, as they listen to Godard dialogues : because the words sound familiar, they think they can make sense of the sentences ; they fail and the more they fail, the more frustrated they grow.

In Korea and the whole non-French-speaking world, spectators run no such risk : as they listen to Godard, they hear the foreign language it is.

They do not try to grasp the words ; to their ears, this is music and how Godard should be appreciated.

Godard’s dialogues are like saloon talk in a Western film : their literal meaning could not matter less.

Do you speak Godard ? Nobody truly does, but Jean-Luc himself. Even his favourite actors speak his prose with a hint of a foreign accent, as if it were French.

Only Jean-Luc does full justice to his words, the articulation of their sounds, the return of their alliterations, their rhythmic slowness.

Only he can intone them to hypnotic effect, like the oracle and zen master, if not God, he truly is, as his voice over comments his experimental films and his « Histoire du cinéma ».

If Godard is not Korean, maybe one need be, or Japanese, to enjoy his aphorisms fully, meditate them for years and be rewarded with sudden illumination.

Stravinsky said that music did not express anything beyond itself. Then, Godard is true music ; his language cannot be lost in translation, because it cannot be translated.

If he had been Japanese, Godard would have written haiku. A French native speaker, the Cartesian structure of his language forced him to become an analytical poet.

The only way to enjoy a work by Godard is not to strive to understand it. With him, absence of understanding is lived like a form of ataraxia, a peaceful and paradoxical state of plenitude, similar to the instants in « Sauve qui peut (la vie) » (1980), when the world suddenly stands still.
According to Bunuel, the need to understand was a typical « bourgeois » failing. This is debatable, particularly in a movie theatre : the need to understand, bourgeois or otherwise, follows on the heels of boredom.

Who would feel the need to understand Godard films if they were more entertaining ?

And Marius met Jeannette.

Robert Guédiguian was a marginal filmmaker. In 1997, he suddenly turned mainstream : his movie, « Marius et Jeannette » was a success.

Marius lives in a deserted cement factory and watches over its open-air emptiness. He has long, greasy hair and a wardrobe of red and blue overalls.

Jeannette has two kids and no man. She works as a cashier, her pay is « maigre » -meagre-, she is bony.

Marius and Jeannette are both forty something, they live in L’Estaque, a Marseilles working class neighbourhood. Life is hard.

Marius meets Jeannette. Life is still hard, but beautiful too, the film is not. Our heart should bleed, only gets bored by sitcom material.

As Marius, Gérard Meylan is not bad. As Jeannette, Ariane Ascaride, Guédiguian’s life companion, is quickly annoying. She screams and overacts like a bad Anna Magnani’s body double. Her Southern accent is genuine, though.

In the supporting cast, Jean-Pierre Darroussin is great. He cannot help it, he has talent ; thanks to his support, his screen partners look worse.

Film is so « clichés »-ridden that, had it been directed by a Parisian filmmaker, the whole of Marseilles would have rioted and called a « fatwa » to lynch him.

Only one cliché is missing ; too bad, it would have been welcome : the film is not bathed in gorgeous, soothing Mediterranean light, but displays ugly, washed out colours ; a constant smog hangs over the film, either a film processing problem or the legacy of Marius’s cement factory.

« Marius et Jeannette » is a long -102 minutes- promo-reel of left wing « bobo » -Bohemian bourgeois- ideology : how great are the « petites gens » -the humble people-, especially in Marseilles.

Even more in L’Estaque : the neighbourhood became fashionable, « bobos » rushed in to buy and renovate its small houses ; real estate agents loved the film.

Film serves thick slices of uninteresting lives, interspersed with stale wisdom about religion and politics. As an added bonus, spectators are given the recipe for true Marseilles-style « aïoli » ; considering its source, recipe should be taken with a bit of salt and tested with great care.

Upon its release, French critics marvelled at the film freshness and moving sincerity, the unbending dignity of its characters in the face of hardship, the amazing talent of its mostly unknown cast.

It was clearly one from the heart, organic filmmaking, a wonderful break from industrially packaged multiplex fare.

The public apparently agreed. At least to the point of paying for the right to their own opinion.
Why such raving unanimity ?

A « Paris, Texas » style misunderstanding, as the crowds cannot resist cheap love stories dressed in intellectual or radical garments ?

A tribute to Robert Guédiguian’s persistence and resilience, as if his years of obscure toiling, if not his talent, entitled him to one success, like patiently accumulated air mileage to a round-trip to Venice, possibly during the film festival ?

Fortunate timing, as Marseilles was recovering from its dreadful reputation -a crumbling city with a booming crime rate- and coming back in vogue, the film itself part of the city promotional effort to revive its fortunes ?

A Pavlovian reflex to the film title as, sixty-five years after the first instalment in the Pagnol trilogy, Marius seemed to promise another made in Marseilles classic and Jeannette an improvement over Orane Demazis’s dreary Fanny ?

Lightning did not strike twice. Guédiguian’s subsequent movies were met with the same public indifference which had greeted his former ones : « Marius and Jeannette » spectators had perhaps made their own opinion and decided that, as they had the « aïoli » recipe, they could do without Guédiguian « bouillabaisse » for a while.

It did not matter. Thanks to his one success, the director had entered the intimate circle of French pre-approved directors. Subsidies and unquestioning financing flowed freely for his projects.

In 2005, Robert Guédiguian completed his rise to institutional insignificance : he shot « Le promeneur du Champ de Mars » ; the film was the screen adaptation of François Miterrand’s final days gossip with sycophant journalist Georges-Marc Benhamou.

Like every true « Marseillais », Guédiguian fulfilled his life-long dream of making it in despised Paris.

... the "ligne claire" mystery.

In « Tintin et le mystère de la toison d’or », Capitaine Haddock inherits an old boat wreck moored in Istanbul, « la toison d’or », which a dubious shipowner seems determined to make his by any means.

Like a Tintin comic strip, the film is attractive in a deceptively low key but impregnating way. It can be dismissed summarily as mediocre, but is surprisingly much harder to forget, though « papyboomers » in the higher end of the 7-77 bracket are more likely to enjoy it than their grandsons fed on higher octane entertainment.

« Tintin et le mystère de la toison d’or » rewards spectators who have kept their capacity for merriment with the simple unadulterated pleasure of cinema : moving images in colour, in the same way as the Tintin albums offer their readers the charm of comic strips at its purest.

The film includes no special effects, its action scenes are limited to a motorbike chase and a touch of judo but no John Woo-style choreography, its sense of comedy to Capitaine Haddock’s antics, its thrills to a team of bad guys, some of them truly ominous if not scary.

Screenwriters were intelligent enough not to try and improve on Hergé ; the transfer of his paper universe of still drawings to flesh and blood action is faithful to the original.

Its on screen avatar also confirms that Hergé’s world is mostly realistic : the unique form of « réalisme poétique » which runs through the Tintin albums permeates « Tintin et le mystère de la toison d’or » and its tale of treasure hunt and Haddock’s loyalty to a friendship of his lost youth.

The film was shot in Greece and Turkey at a time when, like « L’homme de Rio »’s Brazil, both countries remained exotic and candidly ignorant of their mass tourism future.

Istanbul and the Bosphorus, the villages of the Greek countryside, the Mediterranean sea are still stunningly beautiful, no smog hangs over the Golden Horn and the Meteora region is richer in monasteries than in tourist buses.

Its settings endow the film today with a near elegiac quality. The movie is sun-drenched, its colours sharply contrasted, its skies and waters amazingly blue : the ecological legacy of a lost world, which, like an endangered species, could not be saved.

In every respect, « Tintin et le mystère de « la toison d’or » » is faithful to Hergé’s « ligne claire » -« clear line »- style of well-delineated characters and backgrounds, strongly separated colours, eminently readable drawings.

Greece and Turkey, as they appear in the film, are far and away from the Balkans Eric Ambler depicts in his novels and Jean Negulesco in his screen adaptation of « The mask of Demetrios ».

Ambler’s universe calls for black and white cinema, menacing shadows at night and ambiguous « heroes », Hergé’s « ligne claire » for the bright colours of full daylight, straightforward storytelling and characters.

Hergé’s world is simple and optimistic : the good are good, the bad not beyond redemption. It is a tolerant world which does not condemn Capitaine Haddock’s bouts of drunkenness and crude language. It is not a perfect world : Hergé, like Simenon again, is not above stereotypes and prejudices, which remind us his time is not ours.

Hergé’s stories translate the simplicity of his world : linear, they are as easy to follow as his strips, drawn at eye level, nearly all in the same format ; nothing hides behind « la ligne claire » : again, self-effacing art, the conscious and obstinate refusal of any artfulness.

Beyond its cinematography, « Tintin et le mystère de la toison d’or » achieves similar luminous straightforwardness in its shot selection and seamless editing, focused story line and structure, a chase which bites its tail like in Hergé’s « Le trésor de Rackham le rouge ».

Like with Tintin comic strips, the film apparent modesty and lack of self-consciousness are among its more appealing features : its only claim is to provide decent family entertainment.

« Tintin et les oranges bleues » was produced three years later, in 1964, again by André Barret. Jean-Pierre Talbot returned as Tintin, George Wilson, a respected stage actor safely hidden behind his beard and under his cap, as Capitaine Haddock, Milou as Milou. Director was Philippe « who ? » Condroyer.

The series stopped there. This is probably better. Jean-Pierre Talbot was losing his hair, like Sean Connery in the James Bond franchise, which, in the very same years, adapted to the screen, on a grander scale and no hint of pastiche yet, the adventures of Fleming’s 007 agent : « Dr No » was shot in 1962, « From Russia with love » in 1963, « Goldfinger » in 1964.

Sean Connery’s toupee did not prevent James Bond from saving the planet and killing his way to worldwide success ; a similar contraption would have been unbecoming for Tintin : James Bond was all gadgets and special effects, Tintin was all about ingenuousness ; an artificial tuft of blonde hair would have breached the character’s fiduciary duties towards millions of kids.

Jean-Pierre Talbot became the sports teacher he planned to be. He never tried to outgrow Tintin and play in other films : his humility was worthy of his screen model ; there may be a career after James Bond, Superman, Batman, Spiderman, not after Tintin.

Both Tintin live action films may have provided negative inspiration for Claude Zidi’s Asterix screen adaptation forty years later. While they were low profile, Zidi’s movie was all about star, special effects and budget power. Different times, different comic strips.

In the 1960’s, Tintin and Asterix were intimate competitors and bitter rivals, like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones or, in the French cycling world, Jacques Anquetil and Raymond Poulidor.

Kids belonged to a Tintin or an Asterix family ; few homes offered equal treatment to both characters, fewer welcomed neither. Asterix was the newcomer : witty, he was fun and liked puns, Tintin was ageless, i.e., to Asterix fans, boring and outdated, if not corny.

Asterix’s adventures took place 2000 years earlier, but were more contemporary than Tintin’s : Asterix commented on Gaullist France ; its small Gallic, if not Gaullist, village resisted the Romans, while De Gaulle closed US bases in France and left Nato.

The big nosed character’s more immediate and obvious charm was his major long term shortcoming against its older competitor : sociological and political commentary dies young ; René Goscinny, Asterix’s screenwriter, did too.

As much as his competitor, Asterix was Tintin’s mirror image : two odd couples, Tintin and Haddock, Asterix and Obelix, four characters without family ties, two asexual heroes, two bigger and heavier sidekicks, one addicted to whisky, one on an endless cure from « potion magique » hangover, two white wise dogs, Milou and Idefix.

A conscious tribute by the challenger to the holding champ : Hergé’s competitors played by his rules.