I'm Crazy for Loving You

Film: The Story of Adele H
Format: DVD from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen.

Issabelle Adjani has been nominated for two Oscars: one for Camille Claudel and one for The Story of Adele H, which is what I watched today. Three other movies of hers I can name off the top of my head are the remake of Diablolique, the remake of Nosferatu and the psychotic horror film Possession. I haven’t seen the first film mentioned, but evidently in that film, Adjani plays a schizophrenic. What does this mean? It means that virtually every Isabelle Adjani film that I can name has her playing someone with some sort of mental illness.

The Story of Adele H concerns the life of Adele Hugo, the second daughter of Victor Hugo, who wrote “Les Miserables” and “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” This is a story told in much less of a grand sweep than the tales of Hugo tend to be, though. This is because this is not a grand romance, but a tale of mental illness disguised as a romance.

Raising Hell

Film: Les Quatre Cent Coups (The 400 Blows)
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

(This review is a part of the Blind Spots series. See others in the series for February at The Matinee.)

My long-time internet bro Kevin, aka Big Hominid, posted something a few months ago concerning his frustration that movie titles are often left untranslated from English, causing films like True Grit to be released in Korea with a Koreanized version of the American title. The problem as I see it, though, is that idiom is difficult to translate, creating the possibility that another culture might translate an idiom like “true grit” as “actual sand.” This is the case with a film like Les Quatre Cent Coups (The 400 Blows). I went into this film cold, and based on the title assumed that it would be about a kid who was badly abused. Turns out that the title is part of a French idiom meaning to raise hell.

The film concerns Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Leaud), a young boy with a number of problems. He’s misdirected, bored, and somewhat listless. He has no interest in school and also happens to have ferociously bad luck. When a pin-up girl’s picture is passed around the class, it happens to be in Antoine’s possession when the teacher (Guy Decomble) spots it, getting Antoine in trouble. He earns extra homework as his punishment, and when he doesn’t finish, he skips school instead of admitting it.

And yet this is not a dumb kid. In his spare time, he reads Balzac, and when he writes an essay in class, plagiarizes shamelessly from his favorite author. But it’s worth noting that he plagiarizes so shamelessly from memory. For this he is expelled, as is his friend Rene (Patrick Auffay). The two, now with no school to worry about, become petty criminals. Antoine hides out in Rene’s room. It soon becomes evident that neither boy has much of a home life. Neither one is mistreated, but neither one gets much attention or affection. Since they are both constantly in trouble, their parents simply treat them as delinquents.

Eventually, the boys steal a typewriter from Antoine’s step-father’s business. When they can’t find a buyer, he tries to return it, and is caught. His parents, not wanting to deal with him any longer, force him to spend a night in jail and then send him off to the French equivalent of a juvenile camp for wayward boys, not that he lasts long. He escapes at his first opportunity.

Evidently, the film is highly autobiographical of Francois Truffaut, who led a life of petty juvenile crime and spent as much time as he could in a theater as a boy. It was the movies that in many ways saved his life. It also may well be the reason that the portrayal of Antoine is as sympathetic as it is. Additionally, we learn eventually that many of his problems seem to stem from the fact that he seems to be little more than an afterthought and a burden to his parents. He isn’t abused in any way, but there is no question that he is neglected. And because of this neglect, he is unmoored in the world, unable to find direction because no one in his life cares enough to put him on a path.

And so, there is a definite touch of tragedy to the film in that he is essentially forced to grow up on his own. There is very much a feeling through the film that he’s not a bad kid despite the things that he seems to get up to. His virtual abandonment followed by his actual abandonment by the end of the film simply underscores that tragedy. At the same time, there’s a part of me that thinks the kid is better off without his folks.

This most definitely is not the film I thought it was going to be, and yet in many ways I wasn’t too far off. Certainly I believed that there must be some level of physical abuse in the film, a fact that is not in any way changed by the picture of young Antoine on the cover of the DVD case looking mournfully through the bars of a cage. There is no physical abuse, of course, but that doesn’t mean that Antoine hasn’t been badly used by his indifferent parents.

It’s also one of the better performances I’ve seen from a young actor. Leaud was in his early teens when this film was shot, but he gives an adult performance, one of a seasoned actor who already knows his craft. This role of Antoine is one that he reprised multiple times in his career for Truffaut. Based on that, I’m curious to see the other, later films that chronicle Antoine’s life. It helps that I’m predisposed to like Truffaut, and the fact that Antoine is an interesting and likeable character certainly doesn’t hurt.

Why to watch Les Quatre Cent Coups: A formative film of the French New Wave.
Why not to watch: The story isn’t what you think it is from the title.

What's Behind "Behind the Scenes?"

Film: La Nuit Americaine (Day for Night)
Format: DVD from NetFlix on various players.

On a long enough timeline, every director will do a film about films and filming. Altman did with The Player, Fellini did with 8 ½, and recently Scorsese did with Hugo. Francois Truffaut did with La Nuit Americaine (Day for Night) in the early ‘70s, and in many ways his film is the quintessential meta film about filming. We have a crew making a movie about a woman who falls in love with her father-in-law. We see a couple of the important parts of the film as it continues, but mostly, we see the cast and the crew and experience the problems and frustrations of the filming process rather than the joy. Were some of the events not so tragic, these moments would be wonderfully comic. Instead, they are comedic with a large dose of tragedy in places.

Francois Truffaut directs the film and is also a major player in the film as Ferrand, the director of the movie within the movie. Much of the time on and off the set is spent with him as he attempts to navigate the process of completing the project. We see him deal with problems at virtually every level, from set design to casting decisions to the surprise pregnancy of a minor cast member, love-stricken stars, and a fragile female lead. It is completely unromantic and completely believable. His job appears to be little more than putting out fires constantly, swapping schedules, rewriting script pages, and wondering how he can complete the film in the time available.

His cast of players are just as believable as he is. His young male lead, Alphonse (Jean-Pierre Leaud), is smitten with the script girl Lilianne (Dani) and proposes to her, but she can’t remain true to him, running off with the stunt man instead. This leads Alphonse to a one-night stand with his on-camera wife Julie (Jacqueline Bisset), who is emotionally fragile and recently married to her doctor. The other female lead, Severine (Valentina Cortese) has faded and is fading rapidly, unable to remember a line. Instead, she wishes simply to say numbers so it looks as if she is speaking and then record in post. During all of this, Ferrand deals with rewrites on the script, animals that won’t do the job they are supposed to on camera, and a crushing schedule that forces changes in how the film is shot. Tragically, something happens to his second male lead (Jean-Pierre Aumont) that threatens the entire production.

In a large way, it’s difficult to see exactly why Truffaut continued to make films if this one was a capsule of his typical experience. Nothing in the production within the film goes the way he wants or needs it to, and every shot that we see is fraught with problems and endless retakes. Many of these retakes we sit through, seeing the same actors walk the same path and say the same lines. This happens repeatedly throughout La Nuit Americaine as if to emphasize that the most common emotion on a movie set is not something emoted by the actors but pure boredom. For Ferrand, though, the emotion is frustration, and it is near constant.

The thing about Truffaut is that I find him immediately and consistently likeable. It may simply be my own bias coming through based on his role in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but I’ve always liked him on camera. He seems very genuine to me, as if he is not acting, but simply existing as his real self while a camera happens to be there. He’s just as likeable here and for exactly the same reason, although in this case, it’s likely he wasn’t acting so much as just relying on experiences he’d had in the past.

And yet, with all of the problems experienced on and off the set, there is a real sense of joy in this film. Despite everything, there is pleasure in the work of creating a film for Truffaut, and this comes through completely in his character of Ferrand. There is a particular feeling of pleasure in the struggle of getting through one more scene or jumping over one more hurdle and moving on to the next day. Ferrand expresses doubts in his film in one scene in the middle—his writing partner is working on a better project in Japan—but is continuing because of the irrepressible need to keep creating and to keep his flawed vision alive.

La Nuit Americaine does kill the magic a little. When we see the problems it takes to get a particular shot, it’s impossible not to wonder how much trouble Truffaut had in real life getting the same shots for the real film. I assume that in time, that opinion will fade, but I know that it’s a question I will have for the next half dozen movies I watch at least. How much am I not seeing? How much work and detail went into a scene? How many takes? I’ll never know, of course, but it’s something that I’m now made acutely aware is a question that can be asked.

Truffaut was a special filmmaker, and La Nuit Americaine is a special film. For anyone interested in film at all, particularly in what happens just off camera or when the camera stops rolling, this is the number one film to watch.

Why to watch La Nuit Americaine: One of the better odes to the film process ever made.
Why not to watch: It kills the magic to see the same scene over and over again.

Noir Avec la Comedie

Film: Tirez Sur le Pianiste (Shoot the Piano Player)
Format: Streaming video from Hulu+ on laptop.

Film noir is an American film style, perhaps the only truly American film style in existence. This isn’t to say that Americans filmmakers don’t create innovative, interesting films in different genres, but film noir is a decidedly Yankee creation. It’s also the only accidently genre of film ever created—it wasn’t until after noirs fell out of fashion that they were determined to be their own thing. The French discovered film noir (hence the French name of the genre), so it comes as no surprise that some French directors might try to duplicate this style of film. Francois Truffaut’s Tirez Sur le Pianiste (Shoot the Piano Player) is one of the finer examples of a non-American noir in existence.

We start with Charlie Kohler (Charles Aznavour), a honky-tonk piano player in a dive bar run by Plyne (Serge Davri). Charlie is a pretty good player—good enough to be on the bar’s sign at least. We soon discover thanks to Plyne that one of the servers, Lena (Marie Dubois) has a bit of a crush on him. Also, almost immediately, everything goes to hell. A man named Chico (Albert Remy) rushes into the bar and begs Charlie for protection. It turns out that Chico is his older brother and Charlie is actually Edouard Saroyan, a noted concert pianist who is now hitting the ivories in the dive bar for some unknown reason.

And so Lena and Charlie/Eduoard (Edouard from here on out just for convenience) pick up a couple of new “friends” in the persons of Momo (Claude Mansard) and Ernest (Daniel Boulanger), the two thugs who were chasing Chico in the first place. The outwit the pair on the night in question, but are sort of kidnapped the next day. Some quick thinking by Lena gets them away from the duo and she leads Edouard back to her place where we discover that she has known his identity all along.

It’s here that we get a long flashback that tells us really what is going on with Edouard and why he plays the piano where he does. Edouard was married once, but as soon as he started having some success as a pianist, his marriage started to fall apart. His wife, Therese (Nicole Berger) and he grow apart, and it seems there is nothing he can do. And we learn that his success actually came from Therese giving herself in the Biblical sense to Edouard’s impresario, Lars (Claude Heymann), and thus she resents all of the success because of what it cost her. She confesses, he leaves, but returns immediately. It’s still too late—she has flung herself from their apartment. And thus, Edouard becomes Charlie and gives up his success as a sort of penance.

This takes us through the first half of the film. From here, we have a number of plots to be resolved. Edouard has to deal with his new-found romance with Lena; Clarisse (Michele Mercier), the prostitute across the hall; Momo and Ernest, Chico; and Fido (Richard Kanayan) his kid brother who lives with him. It’s quite a bit of plot to charge through in what amounts to about half an hour, and it’s compounded by the fact that Fido gets kidnapped and Plyne and Edouard get into a scuffle that ends with Plyne dead.

A great deal of the film takes place inside Edouard’s head, a sort of stream-of consciousness narration. Much of this deals not only with his past, but with what is going on around him as the film progresses. His first walk with Lena, for instance, is filled with his own self-doubt and a sort of constant mental anguish about his own desire for her and to not appear to forward with her. He is very much like a young boy in these moments, while in others, he speaks like a man almost at the end of his life, given over to despair and a little self-loathing.

This is a supremely strange film in many ways. While the overall tone of the film is bleak and despairing, as befits film noir, quite a bit of what happens is done strictly for comic effect. One of the two kidnappers, for instance, boasts to Fido about his scarf, saying something to the effect of “If I’m lying, may my mother keel over.” We’re quickly given a shot of an old woman suddenly stricken and dying. It’s obviously comedic and silly, and ultimately feels a bit out of place, as does much of the rest of the humor.

And so Tirez Sur la Pianiste is a film of multiple parts and multiple intents that never quite gels. It’s interesting for what it is, in part interesting because it is Truffaut early in his career when he was still figuring things out. It’s worth a watch for that reason if no other, but it’s a difficult film to recommend on its own merits.

Why to watch Tirez Sur le Pianiste: The French have an affinity for film noir, and this film is proof.
Why not to watch: It never really decides what sort of film it is.

Sociopath de L'amour

Film: Jules et Jim (Jules and Jim)
Format: DVD from NetFlix on kick-ass portable DVD player.

I don’t think I’m a prude. I don’t object to sex, or to expressions of sex, or even to honest conversation about sex. But I didn’t expect what I got with Jules et Jim (Jules and Jim). What I expected was the summary on the NetFlix envelope: “Writers Jules (Oskar Werner) and Jim (Henri Serre) are close friends who fall in love with the same woman, the unpredictable Catherine (Jeanne Moreau)…What results is a decades-long love triangle that both tests and strengthens the bond between the two men.” Sounds interesting, no? Yeah, it’s not that at all.

What Jules et Jim is instead is a film about capriciousness, jealousy, infidelity, dependency, and selfishness. To a one, these are character traits that I don’t hold in a lot of esteem. There’s love, and then there’s this film, in which love appears like someone looking in through a window. It’s sort of there, but not really a part of the gathering. Love is an onlooker here, not a member of the cast.

So, while the Austrian Jules and the French Jim have their names emblazoned in the title, it is Catherine who truly takes center stage in this strange little drama. Our two writers meet and become close friends, bonding over art, writing, poetry, and eventually, over a particular statue that bears an enigmatic smile. Later, they meet Catherine, who has the same smile. It is Jules who she attaches herself to first. They leave for Austria, and almost immediately, World War I begins.

Jules and Jim survive the war, and eventually Jim goes to visit his friends. What he finds is their child, Sabine (Sabine Haudepin) and a marriage that is on the rocks. Catherine has not been faithful and has never been faithful. In fact, she was unfaithful to Jules the night before the wedding because of some slight uttered by Jules’s mother. And there were others, of course. We are given to believe that there have been many others. Jules, of course, has been faithful because Catherine demands it—in her philosophy, one person in a relationship must be faithful, and it certainly isn’t going to be her.

Jules eventually figures out that Catherine is looking for a reason to leave him. He confesses that she has in the past—she walked out for six months before returning. Why? She wanted to. Or something. Eventually, Jules convinces Jim to marry Catherine just so he can stay close to her. Jim does, and then they have to wait for awhile before sexing it up because Catherine wants a child with Jim, and wouldn’t know if the child was his if she became pregnant right away. And naturally, when they don’t instantly conceive a child, Catherine decides that she is tired of Jim and hates him and wants him to go away and never come back. Until she discovers she is pregnant and loves him more than anything. Until she loses the child and decides she hates him again.

Essentially, this film is supposed to be about the tremendous bond of friendship between Jules and Jim that endures and grows stronger despite the war between their countries and (really) despite them both falling madly in love with Catherine. And my reaction is to wonder why anyone would put up with the antics of Catherine, because they aren’t lighthearted, whimsical moments that anyone would find endearing, but fickle, erratic actions of someone who cares only about herself and damn the cost. Catherine is abusive and thinks only of herself constantly with no regard to how anyone else feels at any time. She turns her love for someone on and off like a faucet. In fact, she may be a borderline sociopath, and "may" and "borderline" might not apply.

So with Catherine sufficiently analyzed (or at least to my own satisfaction), let’s take a look at our two titular characters. These two, especially Jules, are men who seriously need to grow a pair. Jules even comments that Catherine is not particularly “…beautiful, intelligent, or sincere, but she’s a real woman.” And? That’s worth your own personal misery? But they are completely unable to break away from Catherine. Jim tries; he returns from Paris at one point when he is planning to marry Catherine only to discover that she has disappeared because she didn’t like his last letter. So Jim prepares to return to Paris and be done with things when she shows back up. So he stays.

This says nothing of the fact that Catherine vanished so she could have revenge sex with a guy named Albert (Boris Bassiak). And this doesn’t touch on the fact that Jim was in Paris sleeping with an ex-girlfriend named Gilberte (Vanna Urbino) who is still waiting for him to get over this whole Catherine thing. And this says nothing of the ultimate ending to the film (which I will not spoil) in which Catherine pulls one of the greatest dick moves in film history, and which we are supposed to accept as essentially the natural culmination of her “charming” ways.

Suffice to say that while this film is considered a nouvelle vague masterpiece, I didn’t think much of it. Catherine was not the enchantress I was led to believe she would be, but was a vain, vindictive, selfish person with severe emotional and mental issues. Eventually, even if the sex comes gold-plated, there’s a time to move on, but Jules and Jim never get there. What a couple of clods.

Why to watch Jules et Jim: Truffaut is too good to make something not worth watching.
Why not to watch: Sociopathy is not a positive character trait.

Love in the Time of Nazis

Film: La Dernier Metro (The Last Metro)
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on itty bitty bedroom television.


Some situations are naturally dramatic without much being added to them. For instance, there’s enough potential drama in World War II to last a filmmaker a lifetime. The right situation makes almost anything watchable, at least in theory. With the right people and the right direction, though, a good story can become something that lasts forever.

La Dernier Metro (The Last Metro) is such a story. Take occupied Paris in 1942, a city under the grinding bootheel of German occupation. Certainly this situation is filled with possibilities for a great film. Add to this a theater desperately trying to stay afloat, a situation made easier by the fact that people flock to the theaters at night to lose themselves in the troubles of others and to avoid the discomfort of their daily lives. The lives of these people in the theater could make for a fascinating film. To Be or Not To Be did the same thing, blending drama with comedy in Poland, and did so beautifully.

La Dernier Metro, though, is no comedy. The theater is run by Marion Steiner (Catherine Deneuve), the wife of the theater’s director and also its star actress. She has recently taken over the business of running the theater because her husband Lucas (Heinz Bennent) has fled the country. He’s done this because he sees the writing on the wall—he is both an immigrant to Paris and a Jew, and has let discretion be the better part of valor.

The theater hires a new leading man named Bernard Granger (Gerard Depardieu), who is a talented actor. What the others in the theater do not realize is that Bernard is also an active member of La Resistance, and plots with friends to plant bombs at German rallies and other places where they may get a few high value targets. The possibility of increased scrutiny causes several significant problems. First, and most importantly, we discover that Lucas really hasn’t fled the country. He has instead moved into the basement of the theater, where he directs the company’s new play in secret.

Adding to the troubles is that the “director” the company shows to the world is Jean-Loup Cottins (Jean Poiret), who is a known homosexual, who were hated by the Nazis only slightly less than they hated Jews. Sniffing around the theater is Daxiat (Jean-Louis Richard), a pro-German theater critic who espouses intense hatred for the Jews publically, although he frequently confides to Marion that her husband isn’t included in his vitriol.

Daxiat wields incredible power—he can help decide if the new play can be staged or should be censored completely. Additionally, he would like the theater for himself, and has discovered a way that he can force Marion and Jean-Loup to bring him in as an equal partner, which will almost certainly lead to him discovering Lucas’s hiding place in the cellar. Throw into this some love stories, particularly between Marion and Lucas, and Marion and Bernard, and there are plots here that could carry a film on their own.

La Dernier Metro could easily have gone in a variety of directions. With so much built on top of an already intense situation, the chance for this film to slip into melodrama would be the easiest thing in the world. So many interweaving plots and so much potential angst could either become comic or simply overwhelming and muddled. Fortunately, Francois Truffaut helmed this picture, and he is a master in the director’s chair.

In fact, as good as this film is, it’s not even close to his best work. One of the tragedies of the world is that often times, those who are the most brilliant in their work are also those who are so unfairly taken at a young age. Truffaut died in his early 50s, sadly taking away a good 20 years or so of an already brilliant career.

This is a beautiful film, strongly acted and carefully paced. While long (a shade over two hours), it does not slow down, get boring, or ever get confusing. It is thoroughly engrossing, with fully realized characters acting believably in every situation. The ending is perhaps a sly wink at the melodrama that could have ensued, but I for one was suckered into it and took Truffaut’s bait as if I were a large-mouthed bass.

In the end, La Dernier Metro is less about the war and the occupation, but about sacrifice and art. To what lengths will someone go to create that which they are meant to create? What indignities will they suffer, what physical, emotional, and mental pains will they endure to be given the opportunity to create? The answer to these questions is lovingly and carefully revealed throughout this magnificent film.

Why to watch La Dernier Metro: Ars gratia artis, for real.
Why not to watch: Your soul is made of stone.