TONI - #1040

Toni is the 1935 drama from revered French director Jean Renoir. By his own admission (as seen in the intro included on this disc), Toni was Renoir’s attempt at Neorealism--though well before such a term existed. A story based in fact, shot in the town where the event happened, using people from the region--it’s not as raw as De Sica or Rossellini, but it is different from your classic Renoir. It’s sharper, less adorned, and more candidly honest about the lives it depicts. 

The titular Toni, as played by Charles Blavette, is an Italian who has come to a remote French community that is home to many migrant workers. Toni works in the quarry, has an affair with the woman running his boarding house (Marie, played by Jenny Hélia), and lusts after the sexy farm girl Josefa (Celia Montlaván). Toni has big romantic notions, but more along the lines of his own success than of the lovemaking kind. Sure, he imagines a future with Josefa, but it’s also part of his bigger plan to take over the quarry and improve his status. This takes on an even more macho cadence when his rival Albert (Max Dalban) also decides to pursue both tgose things. A scant few minutes separate Albert’s encounter with Josefa and Toni’s arrival, enough time for Albert to force his affections on her. Disheartened, Toni marries Marie, leaving Josefa to a less-than-ideal union with Albert. 

But, of course, it doesn’t end there. Josefa’s uncle ties Toni to his niece further by insisting he be the godfather to her child. The twists and tangles this causes marginalizes Marie, exposes Albert’s greed, and basically turns Toni into a weird white-knight stalker.

 

It’s interesting to consider this material and how Renoir might have approached Toni at a different time. This is really a melodrama in Neorealist clothing. Yet, instead of milking the script for the big emotion, Renoir’s mission aesthetic strips the story of its grandiosity and gets down to the nitty gritty of human desire and selfishness. Toni is no hero, and Josefa is no princess waiting to be rescued. If she has any real affection for either man, it’s never stated. And that kid that Toni is so concerned about protecting? You never really see it. 

Renoir seems fascinated by these sordid affairs. It’s like he’s wound up all these toys just to watch them go. And he inserts innocent bystanders like Toni’s older pal Fernand (Édouard Delmont) to play a little bit of devil’s advocate, to probe on behalf of the filmmaker and his audience, and be a voice of reason when Toni offers none; also, there is a Greek chorus of traveling minstrels reminding us of the macabre ballads that told these stories once upon a time. There is an even keel to the proceedings, the laser focus of Toni’s mission not really allowing for bigger swings, he’s all about what he can make his own. Even Marie’s bold decision in the final third is absent of any exaggeration. She is just as determined as the man who spurned her, and Toni’s heart rate only rises after he realizes the truth too late. (Though, really, it’s Fernand, who himself loves Marie, that pieces it together.) 

This seems by design. By going small, somehow things feel big. One love triangle crumbles, workers disappear, and a new train pulls into the station, unloading those that will come next, to either repeat this squalid history or make their own. The human tide beats on. 

 The new 4K restoration on Toni brings Renoir’s intentions to life, delivering a crisp black-and-white picture that gives sharp life to Claude Renoir’s photography. The location shooting looks amazing in this format, adding to the realism that the cameraman’s father was aiming for.

This disc provided by the Criterion Collection for the purposes of review.

COLUMBIA NOIR: MURDER BY CONTRACT/HUMAN DESIRE/DRIVE A CROOKED ROAD/NIGHTFALL - CRITERION CHANNEL

I am continuing to work my way through the Criterion Channel’s “Columbia Noir” bundle, a collection of crime and melodrama spanning three decades of the Columbia studio. You can see my first group review here; it appears this collection will be off the Channel at the end of the month, so hurry if any of these sound like your thing.

Murder by Contract: This raw 1958 hitman picture from Irving Lerner is considered a B-movie classic, lauded by Martin Scorsese and others for its rough-hewn, independent style. It’s a bit like Allen Baron’s Blast of Silence [review] in that what it lacks in polish, it makes up for in earnestness.

Vince Edwards, who played Val in Kubrick’s The Killing but was probably best known as TV’s Dr. Ben Casey, stars as Claude, a self-motivated would-be contract killer looking to earn enough cash to buy a house on a lake far away from the grind. Claude’s m.o. is that he uses his brains rather than weapons, avoiding any pitfalls that might lead to the police tracking him down. After a few successful jobs, he is sent to Los Angeles to take out a nightclub performer (Billie Williams) about to testify against a colleague of Claude’s boss. With the trial a few days away, Claude decides to soak up Hollywood...only to find the time wasted when the girl proves harder to kill than he thought.

It’s funny to watch Murder by Contract now, as it’s hard not to think about the HBO show Barry, in which Bill Hader plays an assassin who tries to leave the life to become an actor. Too bad Murder by Contract has none of Barry’s wit, character, or even action. This is all pretty standard stuff, obviously done on the cheap, with little editing or rewriting applied to Ben Simcoe’s sloppy script. The narrative meanders, and Edwards appears committed to the role but incapable of delivering what that commitment requires.

Human Desire: Master director Fritz Lang had scored a noir hit with The Big Heat, also for Columbia, in 1953, and Human Desire sees him reuniting his principal cast a year later for another go. This time, Lang is adapting La bête humaine, the Emile Zola novel that also inspired Jean Renoir’s excellent 1938 drama of the same name [review]. Glenn Ford takes over the Jean Gabin role, playing Jeff, a fresh discharge from the Korean War returning to the small town where he grew up to pick up where he left off. Jeff is looking to resume his quiet life as a train conductor, renting a room in a house with his co-worker, the man’s wife, and the growing daughter who has eyes for the levelheaded boarder.

Enter temptation. On a random trip, Jeff crosses paths with Vicki Buckley (Gloria Grahame), who lays on the charm. Little does Jeff know that Vicki’s flirting is to distract Jeff from finding the body of the man her jealous husband, Carl (Broderick Crawford), just killed. As Jeff is drawn into Gloria’s web, he soon ends up covering for her misdeeds and heading toward the inevitable: he’ll have to kill the husband if he wants the wife all to himself.

Stylistically, Human Desire has more in common with Lang’s 1952 steamer Clash By Night than it does The Big Heat. The title says it all: this is a plot about base emotions and internal struggle. Grahame sizzles as the manipulative femme fatale, playing off nicely with Jeff’s more earthy paramour, the innocent who can see no wrong in the man she loves (a noir trope). Ford conjures some of that grinding anger that worked so well for him in Gilda [review], but the real star here is Broderick Crawford, who portrays Carl as scheming and black-hearted, but also nervous and insecure. He makes the violent creep almost sympathetic.

Drive a Crooked Road: Okay, now this is more like it. This 1954 crime piece from director Richard Quine (Sex and the Single Girl [review]) is sharply written and unflinching in its dark cynicism. Mickey Rooney plays Eddie Shannon, a natural wunderkind with a car engine who also likes to race from time to time, but always comes in second. Ribbed at work for being short, and self-conscious about the scar on his face, Eddie is a lonely guy just getting by.

Enter into his life Barbara Mathews (Dianne Foster, The Last Hurrah), a Beverly Hills swell with a car that needs his special touch. When Barbara takes Eddie outside the garage, however, it’s she who will be applying her own special touch. Barbara is a unique kind of femme fatale--she plays the part of the loving, open girlfriend so convincingly, there isn’t even a hint that Eddie is being played. Rather, it’s guys in Barbara’s social circle who eventually approach Eddie, looking for a driver who can navigate the winding California roads.

Quine makes great use of the landscape, from beach to mountain to the almost space-age confines of Eddie’s dealership. There’s a sparkle to it all that hypnotizes our protagonist, and though Eddie is an A-grade patsy, Rooney brings empathy to the role. You really feel sorry for the guy, and Foster is such a warm presence, so kind, it feels like a double betrayal when it goes wrong. These factors give special stakes to Drive a Crooked Road’s finale, affecting who we root for and why in a way that has more emotional truth than the standard noir payoff.

To see Mickey Rooney in a similar role, and also just to see another quality film noir, also seek out Quicksand from 1950.

Nightfall: Jacques Tourneur could bring style to any genre, be it horror like I Walked With a Zombie [review] or the quintessential noir Out of the Past. While his 1956 Los Angeles crime picture Nightfall does not necessarily rise to the level of that classic Robert Mitchum collaboration, it’s still a solid chase picture in its own right.

Aldo Ray (Miss Sadie Thompson [review]) plays Jim, a Navy vet built like a quarterback with a cool, gentle demeanor. Jim is hiding out in Los Angeles, where he is being watched by several pairs of eyes. Most notably, by two crooks, John (Brian Keith, The Parent Trap; The Pleasure Seekers [review]) and Red (Rudy Bond, On the Waterfront), bank robbers who ran across Jim in Wyoming while on the run. That tussle left one man dead and a bag of money went missing--money the pair of hoods believe Jim is hiding.

It just so happens the night they catch up with Jim is also the night he meets Marie (Anne Bancroft, The Graduate [review]), a lonely model who lucks out by meeting the one gentleman in Hollywood. Or so she thinks. Her chance encounter puts her in danger once Jim gives the bad guys the slip, and the two of them end up in a race to get out of town and find the cash.

Tourneur, working with a script by Stirling Silliphant (In the Heat of the Night [review]), strikes an interesting balance here. The hunt has all the great tension of an urban thriller, while flashbacks to Jim’s story, and really the man himself, have the easygoing calm of a farmland drama. The blonde patsy is not your typical noir hero. His voice is soft, his vocation is art, his origins are rural; he’s a light fish swimming in a dark pond. That means when we shift to Jim’s terrain for Nightfall’s snowbound climax, things get a little quieter than we are used to in a noir showdown, but Tourneur and Silliphant are letting the characters dictate the action, bringing the hunter and the hunted full circle to have an ending that perfectly suits who they are.

THE MARSEILLE TRILOGY: CESAR - #884

Though only made a few years after its predecessors, César moves The Marseille Trilogy forward nearly twenty years. Marcel Pagnol takes full control this time, both writing the original screenplay and directing. The results put the film somewhat at odds with itself. Of the three movies, César is the most comfortable in its own skin, yet so much so, it’s also a little too easy with itself and thus less realized, and at times even borders on self-parody when Pagnol is clearly pushing to deliver more of what everyone liked about Marius and Fanny [review].

The primary cast returns for this go-around, including Fernard Charpin as Panisse, the older sail maker who married Fanny (Orane Demazis) and accepted her son with Marius (Pierre Fresnay), Césariot, as his own. André Fouché (Playtime [review]) joins the film as the grown-up Césariot, and we are introduced to the boy as he returns home to visit Panisse on his deathbed. At the urging of the local priest (Thommeray), Fanny tells her son the truth about his parentage, stoking a curiosity in him. Who is this Marius, and why has he hardly been spoken of? And why doesn’t he have a relationship with his father, César (Raimu), who has been Césariot’s godfather this whole time?

Choice is an important driver in The Marseille Trilogy, and the choices made in Marius and Fanny come to consequence in César. Marius is justifiably upset by decisions that were made without his being kept in mind, but he also has to reckon with his willingness to go along. We find out that he and César fell out, and the older man has to wrestle with his decision to put his grandson ahead of his own child. And Fanny has to answer to Césariot for the years of deception. Not to mention Marius’ broken heart.

As is to be expected, Pagnol’s script really shines when it focuses on his principle characters in deep conversation. The past is scoured and hurt feelings exposed, and there is something compelling about listening to adults dig into actual emotions this way. They are unreliable and inconsistent in their expression, as most people are, and the flaws make them all the more real. Far less natural are the light-hearted scenes of César and his friends spending idle time together; a highlight of the first two films, they feel a little forced here.

Pagnol’s direction suffers from some of the stiffness of the early sound era, despite freeing his narrative from the stage origins of the first two films. His framing and the staging can be a little obvious, and the camera movements occasionally clumsy. Pagnol inherits less of the smooth hand of Marius-director Alexander Korda, and more of the realism of Fanny’s Marc Allégret. In fact, in a lot of ways, César feels like early Neorealism, with the film having an overall natural look and making use of the seaside locations to an even greater extent than Fanny.* It makes for an interesting mix, since much of the plot here, with Césariot visiting his father incognito and Marius’ business partner filling the boy with lies about their supposed life of crime, borrows from traditional comedies of error. This juxtaposition works incredibly well, with the tone being reminiscent of some of Jean Renoir’s best work.

Smartly, the auteur leans into the lighter side for his ending, making César a fine cap to the lengthy trilogy.

* A year before César, Marcel Pagnol also produced a short musical documentary called Marseille, showcasing the city and its culture. This short is included on the César disc.

This disc provided by the Criterion Collection for purposes of review.

LA MARSEILLAISE - FILMSTRUCK

Originally written for the Jean Renoir's Collector's Edition released in 2007. Read the full review of that collection here.

In this early entry from Jean Renoir's sound pictures, the maestro does his part to inspire patriotic fervor and maybe goes a little too far over to the propaganda side. La Marseillaise, an historical epic set during the French revolution, follows a battalion of citizen soldiers--painters, masons, and other working-class warriors--as they gather together to stop aristocratic rule and take down Louis XVI (Pierre Renoir) and his foreign-born queen, Marie Antoinette (Lise Delamare). They march from Marseille to Paris. Along the way, a humble hymn gathers steam to become the anthem of the forces of revolt, and "La Marseillaise" becomes a phenomenon.

The script by Renoir, Carl Koch, and N. Martel Dreyfuss often feels more like a string of anecdotes than a wartime narrative. The movie strikes an odd tone, dramatizing the French Revolution as the most polite of wars. Rather than duke it out, combatants stop to discuss philosophy and politics--quite literally. When Honoré Arnaud (the singly named Andrex) leads his ragtag bunch in the takeover of a state fortress, the presiding commander, Saint-Laurent (Aimé Clariond), shrugs and asks his rival what's it all about. Arnaud explains the common man's cause to the rich man before sending him on his way, taking him at his word that he'll leave the country and the battle to the righteous. When there is fighting, it all takes place elsewhere, and we only hear about it later. You get the sense that this whole thing could have been settled over a good glass of wine if the right folks could have just sat down and talked it over. It's a revolution where cross words hurt worse than crossed blades. When a swordfight does break out in Paris, the sky immediately opens up and a sudden rainstorm sends the brawlers scurrying for shelter. Even Mother Nature wags her finger at the prospect of violence when there are more speeches about brotherhood to be made and complex dissertations on the new power structure.

Paradoxically, for all the history lessons, I often found myself lost, not knowing who certain historical figures were or what faction was fighting for what rights. I suppose attention to such reality may not be important in a story so broadly drawn. The revolutionaries are all genial, caring men who'd rather stop in on a puppet show than fight, while the rulers are clueless gadabouts who are more concerned with remembering their dance steps than the needs of the people. La Marseillaise definitely has a satirical bend, but it doesn't go very deep. Renoir nearly suckerpunches himself with this approach. When the unavoidable is finally encountered in the last fifteen minutes of the picture, his band of merry men look like they've been caught in a joke that's gone too far. Though the people do rally, and it's likely Renoir wanted to show from what humble beginnings great things spring, the brutality of the insurrection is off-kilter with the comic journey that got us there. The end result leaves one feeling a little nauseous and confused rather than fired up.

THREE SILENT FILMS BY JEAN RENOIR ON FILMSTRUCK

The below reviews were originally written for the Jean Renoir's Collector's Edition released in 2007. Read the full review of that collection here.

Whirlpool of Fate (La Fille de L'Eau) (silent; 72 minutes - 1925):

This overwrought melodrama is Renoir's second film, and his first as a solo director. Working from a script by Pierre Lestringuez, a frequent collaborator in this silent period, Renoir tells the story of Virginia (Catherine Hessling, Renoir's wife from 1920 to 1930), a hard-luck case who can't catch a break. First her father dies and her uncle (Lestringuez) tries to rape her, then she hooks up with poachers and gypsies, only to be persecuted by the local bully and driven mad in the woods. Through it all, the local rich boy (Harold Levingston) keeps his eye on Virginia, and it's quite clear to Renoir's camera that he is developing a thing for the urchin. Naturally, he waits in the wings to pull her out of the whirlpool that threatens to drag her down.

There are far more complex plots than this one. In some ways, The Whirlpool of Fate comes off as if it were written for a cliffhanger serial. Every couple of scenes, Virginia's life takes another turn, and her very existence is put in peril over and over. As a mild diversion, there is a kind of goofy charm to the movie, but it shows the great director only taking tentative steps into the cinematic arena. He doesn't yet know how to draw great performances out of his actors, and pacing is a definite issue for the young filmmaker. There are several scenes that go on too long, which we particularly notice when we see it takes an inordinate amount of time for people just out of frame to react. Even so, early hints of what was to come are here. Renoir's often slapstick sense of humor pops up from time to time, and he's already showing a flair for it. There are also some fairly ambitious dream sequences that prefigure the surrealist movement's experiments in cinema years later (including some sideways imagery that reminded me of Cocteau's Blood of a Poet), as well as an incredibly ambitious use of quick cutting in the scene where Virginia is attacked by her uncle. Jumping swiftly from the brutal fight to a barking dog and then to a ringing alarm clock not only amps up the frenzied feeling, but it even evokes sense memories of sound.

Nana (silent; 130 min. - 1926):

Once again working with Lestringuez, Renoir adapts the Emile Zola novel, casting his Whirlpool starlet, Catherine Hessling, in the title role--and oh, what a difference a year makes! Renoir took to this grand costume epic much easier than he did any of the pre-sound shorts in this collection. Nana is a terrible stage actress whose sexual allure draws in several society men. Wrapping them around her finger, she convinces one to bribe her into a starring role in the theatre and another to ruin his good name betting against his own racehorse in favor of one named after the starlet. Eventually, though, the acting thing is going to meet its inevitable doom, and Nana ends up becoming a courtesan, seeing gentlemen callers in her opulent mansion. With so many men obsessed with her and competing for her affections, it's only going to lead to trouble, and eventually, Nana's wicked ways catch up with her.

Hessling is way over the top in her performance, even by silent-era standards. Yet, there is such a consistency to her demonstrative acting that she actually pulls it off. Nana is a larger-than-life character, and so Hessling's exaggerated gestures and wide-eyed expressions seem like the right notes to hit (even if Hessling is ironically being a bad actress in her portrayal of a bad actress). In comparison to the overly staid performances from the actors filling the roles of the upper classes, these choices make sense. Nana's sexual appeal is her wildness. It's what makes her different than the uptight bourgeoisie.

For Renoir's part, the future director of The Rules of the Game is already interested in the hypocrisy and hidden secrets of the rich. He uses massive set pieces to show the ridiculous opulence enjoyed by the well-to-do in French society. They have more space than they can ever possibly fill, and their tiny lives look even smaller within it. He also takes a certain impish glee in exposing their bedroom activities, paying particular attention to a Count (Werner Kraus) who goes in for a little domination. Decked out in his full military regalia, he gets down on all fours and barks like a dog, all for Nana's pleasure. For all the public shame these characters will experience in the final act, it compares little to their private shame.

The Little Match Girl (La Petite Marchande D'Allumettes) (silent; 33 min. - 1928):

This slight adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen story stars Hessling as the titular heroine and is really only interesting for the early special effects efforts. Renoir uses models, rear projection, double-exposure, and fake backdrops to portray the fantasy journey of the Little Match Girl during her night out in the cold. Though some of the effects may look quaint to our modern eye, it's still impressive when you put it in its historical context and has a cool, expressionistic quality. The movie overall is a bit of a snooze, however, with the performances and the editing being a bit too laconic.

LA CHIENNE - #818

Jean Renoir had made nine films before he made his first sound picture, the 1931 comedy On purge bébé (Baby’s Laxative). His second, the more serious La chienne (The Bitch) followed shortly after, released the same year. Both are included on this new Criterion edition of La chienne, and they couldn’t be further apart in content, even if they do show the same confident, inventive storytelling.

In fact, La chienne shows its ambitions from the very start. Unlike many early sound directors, Renoir doesn’t sacrifice camera movement for audio. The narrative is framed as a puppet show, with Renoir referencing the classic tropes of Punch and Judy and the constable caught between them as a set up for his lover’s triangle, before cutting to his second shot, a dish riding up a dumbwaiter, being taken out, and served to a group of accountants out on the town for the evening. Entering as we do through the dumbwaiter, we are practically crawling through the screen. Renoir is serving up his movie, evoking the familiar and luring us in with his tantalizing ingredients.

Those ingredients are a pimp, his girl, and the sad middle-aged man that picks the wrong time to do the right thing. Legendary French actor Michel Simon (L’Atalante [review]; The Two of Us [review]) plays Maurice Legrand, one of the accountants whooping it up for the night. Except he’s not. Legrand is the office joke, a notorious wet blanket, and a henpecked husband. No one takes him seriously, much less his dreams of being a painter. Yet, when he comes across Dédé (Georges Flamant, The 400 Blows [review]) beating on Lulu (Janie Marèse), he steps in and pushes the man off. Lulu chastises him, defending her abuser, but then enlists Legrand’s help further. In this surprising white knight, she’s spotted a predictable sucker.

From there, she stokes Legrand’s desire, getting him to put her up in an apartment and playing the role of his mistress. When his meager allowance and the money he steals from his wife (Magdeleine Bérubet) proves insufficient to support Lulu and Dédé, whom Legrand naturally has no idea is on the payroll, the shady pair resorts to a scheme where they sell Legrand’s paintings, passing Lulu off as the artist.

If the plot sounds a little familiar, it might be because Fritz Lang would remake La chienne several years later as Scarlet Street [review]. While Lang’s version would be invigorated with the salacious tang of film noir, Renoir’s original mined the seedy side of Paris life for a far more interesting dynamic. While his story has the trappings of a good potboiler, it also takes a serious look at abuse, with Flamant playing Dédé as purely selfish and wholly dishonest, building up Lulu only to tear her down through denial and violence. It’s a dark, unromantic portrayal of a pimp, all false swagger and despicable bluster. Juxtaposed with this is Legrand’s own abusive relationship: his wife verbally lays into him every time he goes home. While that subplot will have a more comic outcome, things can only go bad for those tangled up in the main story.

Michel Simon, as ever, is fantastic. In some ways, his performance as Legrand calls to mind Takashi Shimura in Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru [review]. Simon shows a similar reserve, pulling back to create an image of a shy, but relatable man who often gets ignored or passed over. That both men in these movies find some comfort with a younger woman is a whole other thing, perhaps to be explored at a later time; here, the more important aspect is how the relationship emboldens the older man to stand up for himself, while also challenging the audience’s judgment of him. On one hand, we want him to be happy, but on the other, we lose faith in Legrand as he lies and steals and lets himself be taken advantage of.

Renoir stages his climactic scene with a touch of irony. When Legrand confronts Lulu, their disagreement is soundtracked by a live band playing in the streets below the window of the love nest he has provided. Their song is a romantic one, even as what happens far above, outside of eye and earshot of the gathered crowd, is anything but. If La chienne were a noir, this would likely be the end of it, but Renoir is curious how everything else will play out, showing us the full extent of the consequences for all involved, down to a short epilogue jumping ahead several years. Noir is about the hard end, there is not much carrying on from the bad decisions everyone makes; Renoir’s view of life is far more generous, and also more sad.

No such sadness creeps into the other feature, On purge bébé, a short comedy (just under an hour) adapted from a play by Georges Feydeau. Michel Simon has a part in this film, as well, playing Chouilloux, a well-connected politician who is the guest of Follavoine (Jacques Louvigny, Hotel du Nord), a porcelain manufacturer intent on convincing Chouilloux to give him the contract to supply the French Army with chamber pots. Uncooperative in this endeavor is Follavoine’s wife Julie (Marguerite Pierry), who is more concerned with their son’s failure to go to the bathroom. Much of the movie is the husband trying to convince his spouse to get dressed for the lunch with Chouilloux, his wife, and her lover, while Julie is trying to convince their son, a.k.a. Baby, to take a laxative. There is also much business with chamber pots and slush buckets, and even some mild slapstick surrounding the mineral oil.

On purge bébé is harmless and silly, if a little uneven in pacing. The humor is overly chatty, and perhaps lost to time and translation. Simon is excellent, though, playing a more genial and bumbling fellow than we have otherwise become accustomed to from him. For more on the relationship between Renoir and Simon, this disc also has a 1967 television documentary featuring the two old friends looking back over their collaborations. It is directed by Jacques Rivette, and rounds out what is an impressive presentation of both films. The restorations of La chienne and On purge bébé are fantastic. Fans of European comics will also appreciate the new cover and interior poster by Blutch, whose graphic novel So Long, Silver Screen is a must for all cinephiles.  

This disc was provided by the Criterion Collection for purposes of review.

  

A DAY IN THE COUNTRY - #746

After watching Lonesome last week, it seemed only fitting to chase Paul Fejos’ sublime tale of two lovers meeting on a day trip to Coney Island with Jean Renoir’s short 1936 film A Day inthe Country. It’s another romantic story, though one with complications and more social commentary than Fejos had to offer. If love and romance are true and real in the earlier film, they are a bit more questionable in Renoir, even if they can be just as strongly desired.

Renoir’s movie is based on a story by Guy de Maupassant. It details an afternoon getaway for the Dufours, a Parisian family of middle-class wealth, likely of new money. Monsieur Dufour (André Gabriello) owns a shop, and his wife (Jane Marken) and daughter, Henriette (Sylvia Bataille), don’t seem to lack for the finer things. When the group finds a little out-of-the-way inn along the Seine, they stop to get some food and enjoy the sights of nature.

These city folk are immediately spotted and sized up by the locals, and just as he would in his most revered film, The Rules ofthe Game, Renoir balances his story on the divide between the two classes. A pair of layabouts, Henri (Georges D’Arnoux) and Rodolphe (Jacques Brunius), begin scheming to steal the ladies away from their male companions--Dufour brought his dimwitted underling, Anatole (Paul Temps) along--and have a little fun before they move on. It could be a harmless action, or even comical, but there’s more motivating the boys than just lust. As they see it, Parisians are a bit like the cliché of “Ugly Americans.” They go where they want and do as they please and see the rest of the world as there to serve them. So for the more serious and dark Henri, this is a little bit about revenge. He quickly goes from being the reasonable foil to Rodolphe’s clowning, and morphs into a more sinister and calculating villain. He even goes so far as to shove his friend aside to get what he wants.

As the day wears on, it becomes clear that the perception of the Parisians is a bit skewed. Sure, they are demanding, but they are also looking to take part in the world around them. It may be a bit like slumming for them, but it’s also genuine. Dufour is a loudmouth and a boor, but he’s there to fish and enjoy what nature has to offer. When the boys finally engage the family, the out-of-towners are genuine in their friendliness. It’s the reverse of a country bumpkin being taken advantage of by the city slickers. The impending squall doesn’t serve as clear enough metaphor to warn Henriette out of the way.

Made in 1936, Renoir designed A Day in the Country as a short film. As he explains in the vintage introduction recorded for a later TV broadcast of the movie, he wanted to see if a short form film could be every bit as complex and artfully crafted as a longer feature, with the idea that three 40 minute movies could be strung together for an evening’s entertainment. Interestingly enough, A Day in the Country was not quite complete when Renoir was pulled away from the production to go make The Lower Depths (and Gabriello and Temps would go with him). It would be some ten years, and the director would have already moved on to Hollywood, before Renoir’s remaining team would assemble the footage and add a few explanatory title cards to hold it together. The final product doesn’t feel unfinished, not even remotely, you’d never notice it if you hadn’t read this (or the back of the Criterion box, or the intro put on the film--everyone wants you to know!).

On the contrary, A Day in the Country does exactly what a short film should: it draws its audience into its setting, orients them to the situation, and then leads them to a certain revelation or question, its compactness allowing for the storyteller to be simultaneously more direct and more ambiguous.

This plays out when we see Henri make his move on Henriette. She resists his suggestion to pull the boat into the tall grass by the riverbank and sit alone, but her defenses keep failing. Henri has an answer for everything. The young woman’s resistance continues on the bank, but his persistence proves stronger. Just how does Henriette feel about this? One can only judge by her expressions: refusal, acceptance, regret. There are many potential reactions and consequences to what happens, it’s not some afternoon fling whilst on vacation. A small event looms large, a point Renoir emphasizes in the film’s final scenes when he jumps ahead many years. Henri seems to have added some actual affection to his nostalgic view of what happened, but Henriette’s feelings remain unexplained. In a longer film, with room for a more conventional denouement, or perhaps in less capable hands, this is the moment when the girl would make her feelings explicit. We can only guess why she cries the tears she does, all we know is that she cries them for herself.

It’s kind of beautiful and brutal all at once, not unlike the remarkable tracking shots of the rain hitting the river that Renoir and his cameraman, his nephew Claude, managed to grab when their location shooting was overtaken by the weather, prompting a rewrite. One can only wonder how differently the sexuality might have appeared had they been able to stick to their original plan to shoot in the heat and sweat of summer. The moody gray makes Henri appear more cold, more predatory; the coupling is devoid of passion. The clouds and the rain recolor everything. The frivolity turns serious. Perhaps this is why Henriette ends up with Anataole, a man of no great significance, a capacity for more has been robbed from her. The lingering question of what might have been could go either way. Sylvia Bataille shows us how much the girl’s heart is broken, even if we could debate over what.

And it’s in this that Renoir elevates a lark into something grand and powerful. By stretching his movie beyond the one afternoon and peering across time, A Day in the Country proves to be something with lingering effect.

SIDELINE: MORE REVIEWS FOR 3/13

The non-Criterion movies I saw last month...

IN THEATRES...

* Spring Breakers, Harmony Korine's hotly debated, inconsistent subversion of Girls Gone Wild and thug life.

* Stoker, the weird, creepy, baffling English-language debut from Oldboy director Park Chan-wook.

* The We and the I, Michel Gondry's social experiment following a group of Bronx high schoolers on their bus ride home.

My Oregonian columns:

* March 7: featuring Tess, Roman Polanski's adaptation of Thomas Hardy; a climate change documentary called Greedy Lying Bastards; and an absolute waste-of-time horror anthology entitled The ABCs of Death.

* March 14: the documentaries A Place at the Table, about food distribution and poverty, and Turning, featuring a special performance piece by Antony & the Johnsons. Plus, Yossi, a sequel to the Israeli gay-themed love story Yossi & Jagger, picking up ten years after the events in the first film.

* March 21: horror-based documentary My Amityville Horror and war drama The Kill Hole. (Worst title of the year?)

* March 29: the poker documentary Drawing Dead, an indie "trapped in a car" thriller called Detour, and the Faux Film Festival.

ON BD/DVD...

* China Heavyweight, a documentary following three Chinese boxers on their way up and maybe on their way down.

* College: Ultimate Edition, the latest Buster Keaton reissue is predictably hilarious.

* Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel, a documentary about the legendary fashion editor, whose career spanned half a century.

* Diary of a Chambermaid, the Jean Renoir adaptation from 1946, almost twenty years before Luis Bunuel.

* For Ellen, the third film from So Yong Kim is as emotionally wrought as her others, but lacking certain connections. Starring Paul Dano.

* The Great Magician, a recent period piece set in 1930s China, with Tony Leung as an illusionist. The movie wants to be old-style entertainment, but it's not much fun.

* Killing Them Softly, Andrew Dominik's crime film was my second favorite movie of 2012, and it's even better the second time. Starring Brad Pitt.

* On Approval, a witty British comedy from 1944, directed by and starring Clive Brook.

* The Song of Bernadette, a dismal religious picture from the 1940s, starring Jennifer Jones as the girl who sees visions.

* Strangers in the Night, a middling early career melodrama from Anthony Mann.

* This is Not a Film, the lauded political documentary from Iran turns out to be much ado about nothing.

DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID (1964) - #117

Revisiting Jean Renoir’s 1946 version of Diary of a Chambermaid compelled me to dust of Luis Buñuel’s 1964 remake, as well. As I noted in my review of the former, I have an irresistible urge to put the two of them together, much like Criterion did with the Renoir and Kurosawa versions of The Lower Depths. Apparently there is a new adaptation in the works starring Marion Cotillard, as well, and time will only tell if I’m going to end up having a triptych.

Cotillard is certainly a worthy successor to the great Jeanne Moreau as Celestine. Moreau played the lead with a strength and dignity absent from Paulette Goddard’s original interpretation. Goddard mistook loudness for being assertive, which might have been a good choice had the film been portraying the chambermaid as a rube who didn’t know her place rather than the city girl all the country peasants admire and lust after. Moreau understands the complexity of Celestine’s position, of the discrepancy between the woman’s self-worth and the dictates of her class. Hers is a far trickier method of navigation, catering to her boss’ and giving them what is required, but also withholding a little of herself for her herself.

The Buñuel Diary of a Chambermaid updates the setting of Octave Mirbeau’s turn-of-the-century novel, placing it in France post-World War I, amidst racial turmoil and the nascent fascist movement. Celestine has left Paris to join a wealthy country house, primarily to cater to the elder head of the estate, Monsieur Rabour (Jean Ozenne). She quickly finds that all is not as it seems. Money here does not equal culture, but the pretense of such. Rabour’s daughter, Madame Monteil (Francoise Lugagne), is stingy and demanding, while her husband (Michel Piccoli, Belle de jour [review]) is distracted and horny. As the neighboring maid, Rose (Gilbert Géniat), warns Celestine, the madame will fire you and the monsieur will leave you pregnant.

As was his wont, Buñuel once again set out to dismantle the façade of bourgeois society. For all their airs, the moneyed folk are dysfunctional and prone to sinful peccadilloes. Monsieur Monteil can’t get what he wants from his wife, so he goes elsewhere. Madame Monteil, ironically, is almost another kind of madam, acting as an indirect procurer for her husband and a direct one for her father. Rabour made his trade as a cobbler, and he now has a shoe fetish--as Celestine is soon to find out--and he needs a model for his wares. (Unlike the Renoir film, which was shackled by 1940s moralism, this Diary of a Chambermaid doesn’t need to couch its sex or its politics under layers of euphemism. Buñuel even takes a poke at religion, giving us an ineffectual, moneygrubbing priest who takes his lord’s name in vain at the first sign of an obstacle.)

Given the political climate throughout Europe in the 1930s, and the existing class conflict in the narrative, Buñuel could have created an either/or scenario here, with the working class painted as the heroes poised for a revolution. The groundskeeper for the estate actually speaks of one, and he seems to see a new day for men like himself, but the Joseph in this version, played as a brute and a rapscallion by Georges Géret (Z [review]), is never mistaken for a hero. His revolution is a nationalist one. He is a racist and an anti-Semite who wants to take France back “for the French.” Buñuel shows Joseph for everything he is, and bitterly so. He is an elusive figure, escaping his deserved fate. When a local girl is raped and murdered in the woods, Celestine is convinced Joseph had something to do with it, but she can’t prove it. She can’t even frame him for the crime.

Unless I missed it, Diary of a Chambermaid ends without ever really telling us who the killer is. There is at least one other suspect, and for a time, Buñuel lets us believe he’s the one, only to surprise us by revealing whom we thought to be the next victim is still alive. The true identity of the murderer doesn’t really matter, though. The death of this innocent is meant as a symbol. Her killing is representative of the dark cloud that was on its way, one that Buñuel was caught under and persecuted by in his youth. Though she is killed off screen, we know exactly what happened to her by how Buñuel and director of photography Roger Fellous frame her body when her death is revealed. It’s a foreboding image, alluring and repellent at once, as the girl is returned to nature and nearly blends in with her surroundings, the snails she was out hunting for supper crawling over her lifeless skin.

Thus, Joseph heads off to be divisive, denied the love of Celestine, who then, by some irony, becomes a unifying force, ending the feud between Monsieur Monteil and his neighbor, the old soldier Captaine Mauger (Daniel Ivernel), by marrying the elder man. Now the neighbors are friends, and Mauger even reverses his positions, blaming his past consternation on the attitude of Madame Monteil and declaring her husband, the man he once called a “dirty jew,” to be a righteous dude. Slyly, Buñuel adds another layer of irony. Our last image of Celestine is of her in bed, eating breakfast, and ordering Mauger to take away her food. She has become the Madame.

At the same time, she has already grown bored. It’s the second time we’ve seen her as such. Prior to that, at what is pretty much the dead center of the film, we witness what I would call Diary of a Chambermaid’s pivotal moment: a yawn. While old Rabour fusses with her boot and waxes poetic about how he will polish it, Celestine is barely able to stifle her disinterest. This is Jeanne Moreau’s masterstroke. She shows that Celestine is above all of these petty things, above the jealousies and the base desires and even the seemingly silly politics. She belongs elsewhere, she’s not just not sure where. That restlessness creeps back in at the end. She realizes that Mauger’s home is not her own, and as it’s immediately juxtaposed with Joseph and a fascist march, we can extrapolate that France is no longer her home either.