Calendar: Tuesday

Children of Paradise

French films of the Occupation and Postwar Era.

Though the Nazi Occupation of France lasted from 1940 to 1944, it cast its shadow far longer for the French cinema. Many of the most vital works of the 1930s addressed the looming political crisis on the Continent, either through explicitly proletarian narratives that aimed to unite the factions of the left into Le Front Populaire (such as Renoir’s collectivist comedy Le crime de Monsieur Lange or his Revolutionary history lesson La Marseillaise) or through comparatively reactionary works that championed appeasement as a thoroughly acceptable compromise (as in Feyder’s La kermesse héroïque, which finds the women of Flanders saving their town from destruction by granting sexual favors to the invading Spaniards in the 17th century). In the other direction, French cinema continued to grapple with the implications of the period long after Liberation, with the Occupation serving as the subject or the subtext for many films in the latter part of the 1940s and afterwards (such as Melville’s 1969 Resistance epic Army of Shadows).

The hardships faced by all French citizens during the Occupation – curfews, censorship, shortages ’ had their parallels in the film industry. The best talent of the French talkie cinema – including Clair, Feyder, Duvivier, and Renoir – had been forced into exile; the industry veterans who stayed in France and the young filmmakers who began their careers during this period faced shortages of raw film stock and ideological regulations from the collaborationist Vichy regime. more

Unable to directly address the crises facing their country as they had during the 1930s, many French directors gravitated towards period pieces and fantasy subjects. Films in this vein included Tourneur’s La main du diable, L’Herbier’s La nuit fantastique, and, supremely, Marcel Carné’s Les visiteurs du soir (4/15), a medieval allegory in which the devil sends two of his envoys to spread despair and provoke innocents towards eternal damnation throughout the countryside. When one of the envoys falls in love with his intended victim, the devil returns to Earth to demonstrate the futility of resistance. Other period films sublimated the rebellious impulse to persistent class conflicts, as in Claude Autant-Lara’s Douce (4/29) in which the granddaughter of a countess falls in love with her tutor’s paramour during the waning days of the nobility.

Films that did take on contemporary subjects did so with the subtlest air of critiques. Jacques Becker’s Goupi mains rouges (5/6) was, on the surface, a black farce about the sinister implications of life in the provinces in which a visiting city clerk finds tension, betrayal, and murder at his family’s inn. When later released in America, the New York Times noted a “certain brutality in jesting is evident in this film… which may be significant,” and indeed those who had not lived through the Occupation failed to grasp the importance of the film as a rebuke to Vichy propaganda that promoted an idyllic return to the land. And Jean Grémillon’s Le ciel est à vous (5/13) – ostensibly a paen to traditional values with its story of a loving husband who supports his aviatrix wife break the world record for solo flight – implicitly promoted feminism, presented a repeated allusion to Aragon’s Resistance poem ‘Lilacs and Roses,’ and suggested the possibility of transcending earthly constraints.

A string of works begun during the Occupation but released after the Liberation vindicated the industry and portended a post-war renaissance. Chief among these was Carné’s Children of Paradise (4/1), a spectacular epic of the nineteenth-century theater and the criminal demimonde that surrounded it with stand-out performances by Jean-Louis Barrault as the mime Baptiste and Arletty as the unattainable prostitute Garance. Its mode of address was unabashedly popular, a monument that spurred recollection and reclamation of national heritage. Jean Cocteau’s fantastic retelling of Beauty and the Beast (4/8) yielded a similar effect, with its endlessly creative rendition of otherworldly romance. Future nouvelle vague auteur Jacques Rivette remarked, “Along with Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (5/20), it was the key French film for our generation – François, Jean-Luc, Jacques Demy, myself. For me, it’s fundamental.” Les Dames, Robert Bresson’s last studio film, adapted a lovers’ quarrel from Diderot with an inspiring luminosity. Bresson’s dexterity with the resources of studio filmmaking is as tight here as his control over the formal elements would be in his more austere later work.

Jacque Tati’s first feature Jour de fête (4/22) also reflected a streak of post-war optimism. A comedy about the efforts of a provincial postman to modernize and Americanize his delivery technique, Jour de fête portended a new style of social satire free from political critique but attuned to the rhythms and cheerful contradictions of everyday life. Darker strains were visible in Jean Cocteau’s Les Parents terribles (6/3), a comedy about hypocritical sexual mores and stifling family abuses that succeeded in expanding the aesthetic vocabulary of the post-war cinema by hovering provocatively close to the theatrical model. Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Silence de la Mer (5/27), the masterpiece of the period, offered an even more stripped-down style. An adaptation of a famous Resistance novel, Le Silence explicitly explored the scars of war with its story of a Nazi office quartered in the cabin of an old man and his niece. The family refuses to speak to the officer, who peppers them with melancholy monologues for the duration of the film. Melville’s extraordinary ability to evoke profound emotions through the resilience of flesh survived as the unacknowledged source of much post-war style. When accused years later of imitating Bresson, Melville replied, ‘No, it is Bresson who is Melvillian.’ KW close

Children of Paradise
Marcel Carné, 1945 - 190 min.

One of the most celebrated films in the history of French cinema, this lushly romantic work has been called the French Gone With the Wind, and is one of the great triumphs of Occupation-era filmmaking. Set in Paris in the 1840s, it tells the epic tale of Garance (Arletty), an actress and woman of the world, and the men who love her, among them the mime Baptiste (unforgettably portrayed by Jean-Louis Barrault) and the actor Lemaître (Pierre Brasseur). The dazzlingly literate script, which explores the themes of life and art, dreams and reality, was written by the great screenwriter Jacques Prévert.In French; subtitled. 35mm.

Beauty and the Beast
Jean Cocteau, 1946 - 96 min.

A romantic classic and one of the most deservedly popular French films of all time. It’s an enchanting and elegant adaptation of the classic fairy tale. A traveling merchant happens upon the castle of a hideously ugly beast (Jean Marais) with magical powers. When the beast sentences the merchant to death, his beautiful daughter (Josette Day) agrees to take his place. The lonely, tormented, beast initially disgusts her, but over time she gradually comes to feel love for him, and that love eventually transforms him. Disney stole many of Cocteau’s brilliantly inventive touches for its animated version of the same story.In French; subtitled. 35mm.

Les Visiteurs du soir
Marcel Carné, 1942 - 90 min.

This antifascist parable is based on a medieval French legend: “And so in the beautiful month of May, 1485, the Devil sent on earth two of his creatures in order to drive the human beings to despair.” Two wandering minstrels arrive at a wedding banquet, sent by the Devil to corrupt and destroy mankind. But the plans go awry when one of them falls in love with his intended victim. Like a fairy tale come to life, it’s a lavish, beautifully stylized film. Jacques Prevert wrote the script and Arletty, who was so memorable as Garance in Children of Paradise, stars.In French; subtitled. 35mm.

Jour de fête
Jacques Tati, 1949 - 79 min.

Among the most important talents to emerge in the postwar period is the great actor/director/comedian Jacques Tati. In this, Tati’s first feature, he stars as a bicycle-riding mailman in a quaint, provincial village in central France. While watching a newsreel at a Bastille Day fair, he seizes on the bright idea of modernizing the post office to conform with American-style standards of speed, efficiency, and mechanization. Influenced by Chaplin and Keaton, the humor, which includes some brilliant slapstick, is mostly visual; the mood, however, is oddly melancholic, and the plot is fresh and surprising.In French; subtitled. Archival 35mm.

Douce
Claude Autant-Lara, 1943 - 104 min.

One of France’s most respected directors in the 1940s, Autant-Lara was later rejected by the Cahiers school, and is neglected today because of his right-wing politics. Douce, considered his masterpiece by admirers, tells of the titular heroine, a young socialite in love with a family servant, who in turn loves Irene, Douce’s governess and the object of Douce’s widowed father’s affections. Autant-Lara directs this class-based romantic tragedy with typical eloquence, leading The Reader to compare it with Welles’ Magnificent Ambersons ”both thematically and in its deep-focus exploration of interior space.” In French; subtitled. Archival 35mm.

Goupi mains rouges
Jacques Becker, 1943 - 104 min.

From Jacques Becker, renowned director of such classics as Casque D’Or, Touchez Pas Au Grisbi, and Le Trou, Goupi mains rouge is a sordid tale of interfamilial murder. A damning critique of the French country aristocracy, and by extension, Vichy France, Goupi tells the story of a naïve young city clerk who visits his relatives in the country, only to stumble upon the murder of a wicked Goupi woman, the stroke of the paterfamilias, and the mad dash for the family fortune that follows. Becker’s second film is his first major achievement, a striking stylistic departure from the “tradition of quality.” In French; subtitled. 35mm.

Le Ciel est à Vous
Jean Grémillon, 1944 - 105 min.

Often considered Grémillon’s best film, it was released during a politically chaotic time in France (spring 1944) and unfortunately got lost in the shuffle and never achieved the success it deserved. The strongly feminist narrative tells the story of a female pilot who, supported by husband, attempts to break the world solo flying record for women. This film has been called “beautiful” and Grémillon has been praised (by Dave Kehr) for the “perfection” of his musicianly technique. Le Ciel Est à Vous is also said to have been an important influence on the neorealist movement coming to the fore in this period.In French; subtitled. 35mm.

Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne
Robert Bresson, 1945 - 84 min.

This modernized version of Diderot’s Jacques le Fataliste is one of Bresson’s earliest and most accessible works. A society woman (Maria Casares) betrayed by her lover (Paul Bernard) wreaks vengeance on him by conniving to have him marry a prostitute (Elina Labourdette). It’s more conventional than Bresson’s later works – unlike many of the films to come, it includes professional actors, a musical score, stylized interiors, and dramatic, highcontrast visuals. But one can also glimpse the austerity and minimalism that later became his hallmarks. Screenplay co-written by Bresson and Jean Cocteau.In French; subtitled. Archival 35mm.

Le Silence de la Mer
Jean-Pierre Melville, 1949 - 88 min.

Jean-Pierre Melville’s debut film, and arguably his best, Le Silence de la Mer adapts Vercors’ iconic Resistance novella about a German officer who is billeted with a Frenchman and his niece. The two take a vow of silence, but are nonetheless riveted by the officer, who each evening warms himself by the fire and shares his ideals. Silence was an enormous influence on Bresson and the French New Wave, ushering in an era of independent, low-budget films that were marked as much by their stylish inventiveness as by their subtlety and humanity.In French; subtitled. Archival 35mm.

Les Parents terribles
Jean Cocteau, 1948 - 105 min.

When a young man announces his marriage, it distresses his neurotically overprotective mother, who fears she will lose him. This hilarious dark comedy about a dysfunctional family is rarely screened and not very well-known in this country. But it’s not only among Cocteau’s very best films, it’s among the greatest French films of its era. Originally written as a play, it’s set almost entirely in two cramped apartments. Jonathan Rosenbaum pointed to this film as “an illustration of the paradox that accentuating the theatrical aspects of theater on screen makes them quintessentially cinematic.” In French; subtitled. Archival 35mm.