(Not So) Green Acres

Film: The Southerner
Format: DVDs from NetFlix on laptop.

NetFlix moves in mysterious ways sometimes. I get only a single movie at a time, but despite having Cleopatra, I was sent The Southerner for no discernable reason. So what can I do? It’s a movie I have to watch eventually, and I won’t get anything new until I send it back. It’s not a movie I was prepared to watch though, and while yes, I would have had to watch it eventually, it’s not the sort of film I like very much. The Southerner is yet another “misery parfait” movie where nothing much good happens to our main characters, everyone seems to be out to get them, and even the forces of nature are turned against them for the entire short running time. At least it’s short, clocking in at just over 90 minutes.

Stop me if you’ve heard this plot before. Sam Tucker (Zachary Scott) and his wife Nona (Betty Field) are cotton sharecroppers trying to raise their kids Jot (Jay Gilpin) and Daisy (Jean Vanderwilt) and keep alive the cantankerous and consistently negative Granny Tucker (Beulah Bondi). What Sam really wants more than anything is to raise his own crop and make all of that sweet farmin’ money for himself. He arranges with his boss to clear off a patch of land that has lain fallow for some time so that he can raise his own cotton. Of course, the house on the property is a house in name only in that it has four walls and something like a roof. And, of course, the well is dry.

Riding in Style

Film: Le Carrosse D’Or (The Golden Coach)
Format: Streaming video from Hulu+ on rockin’ flatscreen.

How do I explain a film like Le Carrosse D’Or (The Golden Coach)? Roger Ebert used to talk about films that had what he called an “idiot plot,” a film in which the whole plot could be short circuited by someone saying or doing a specific thing at one point in the course of the film. In the case of this film, the issue is entirely one of personal pride. Everyone has an ego the size of a truck, and the entire film is these egos banging into each other.

So here goes: in a small area of South America, a magnificent golden coach is delivered to Ferdinand (Duncan Lamont), the viceroy of this Spanish colony. Also on the boat is a troupe of actors, the most relevant of whom is Camilla (Anna Magnani), the star of the show and evidently the most irresistible woman in the world. Also on the boat is her current squeeze Felipe (Paul Campbell).

An Embarrassment of Riches

Film: La Regle du Jeu (The Rules of the Game)
Format: Streaming video from Hulu+ on rockin’ flatscreen.

A large percentage of my readership here is fellow film bloggers of one stripe or another. When you write about the same general thing day in and day out, you get into a particular rhythm. So when you come across a film that leaves you wondering what to say about it, it comes as a bit of a shock. It happened to me a couple of days ago with Wong Fei Hung. In that case, I didn’t have much to say because I couldn’t follow the plot. In the case of La Regle du Jeu (The Rules of the Game), it’s that I don’t know where to start.

In a lot of ways, it’s a good problem to have. La Regle du Jeu is an astonishingly deep and layered film and moves in multiple directions at once, each successfully and with astonishing nuance. This film is currently ranked fourth in the Sight and Sound poll of greatest films ever made. It started in tenth on the first list and spent most of the rest of the last century in second. Second-best film in history. It’s one thing to see that and consider it. It’s another thing to have the film play out and realize that its position is entirely justified and that second might be more appropriate than its current fourth. It’s surprising when one considers that this is a sort of farce and a play of manners of the pre-World War II French aristocracy.

Gentlemen's War

Film: La Grande Illusion (Grand Illusion)
Format: VHS from Northern Illinois Founders Memorial Library on big ol’ television.

I’ve had a belief for a long time that many of the great World War II films, at least those up to the modern era, are prisoner of war films. Stalag 17, The Great Escape, The Dirty Dozen, The Bridge on the River Kwai, all take place all or in part in a prison, and I’m certain I’m forgetting a number of them. War films from the 1940s are tenerally propaganda, of course, and those of the 1950s and 1960s are frequently nationalistic, no doubt as a sort of pro-democracy reaction to the Cold War. Having seen La Grande Illusion (Grand Illusion) today, it occurs to me that all of those films owe this one a huge debt.

La Grande Illusion was filmed in the years running up to World War II but before the start of the war. It focuses (naturally) on the first war, but certainly has something to say about the rise of anti-Semitism and the Nazis. However, this is still a film primarily concerned with aspects of war and social class, exploring many of the same themes as Powell and Pressburger’s The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. I said yesterday in discussing The Thin Red Line that for many, World War II was our last noble war, a war that we fought on the side of right for reasons of moral good. La Grande Illusion suggests in many ways that World War I was the last war to be fought with a sense of honor and dignity among combatants, or at least the last war in which the rules of social class crossed and in many ways superseded national boundaries.

Fallen Idyll

Film: Un Partie de Campagne (A Day in the Country)
Format: Internet video on laptop.

Few things in this world are sadder than an abandoned project. Jean Renoir’s short film Un Partie de Campagne (A Day in the Country) is actually not really a short film, but a portion of a film he never completed. While this does tell a complete story, it tells it incompletely in many ways. It’s difficult to tell if the start of this film is the actual envisioned start, or if the ending here is the real ending Renoir wanted.

A family group heads to out to the country to spend a day. For the, the country is a huge change from their daily life in Paris. The country folk, on the other hand, are not too enamored of the Parisians, often wishing they would simply go away. But today is slightly different. The family consists of a Monsieur Dufour (Andre Gabriello), a businessman; his wife (Jane Marken); and their daughter, Henriette (Sylvia Bataille). Also along for the trip is an ancient, deaf grandmother (Gabrielle Fontan) and the promised husband of Henriette, Anatole (Paul Temps). Anatole, we are to learn very quickly, is something of a simp, and evidently quite a bit older than his betrothed.

Sitting along the river bank are two boaters named Henri (Georges D’Arnoux) and Rodolphe (Jacques B. Brunius), who immediately set their minds on the non-grandmotherly pair of women. Rodolphe, who sports mustaches so impressive that he wears a guard for them when he eats, initially has designs on Henriette, looking for a bit of fun and assuming that there will not be any consequences of such actions. They create a meeting for themselves and the women, and then, after the family has eaten, provide M. Dufour and Anatole with fishing poles, and offer to take the ladies out boating.

That’s really the whole film, although being alone with a strange man in the wild forests near a river bank certainly seems to make Henriette willing to (ahem) give of herself to Henri, for it is Henri and not Rodolphe that seems to catch her fancy. Rodolphe, initially rebuffed in his advances toward Henriette, determines to woo the older woman. While we learn of the success of Henri’s actions, we’re never really sure if Rodolphe sealed the deal, to use something like the common parlance. And that’s it. We’re given a five-minute or so epilogue that lets us know what happened to these characters after their eventful day in the French countryside, but overall, the very short running time sort of precludes a lot else from going on.

As a fragment of what should have been a larger work, this is quite interesting. There is a sort of lyrical beauty to many of the scenes that Renoir has created. The romantic angle is quite dated from a modern perspective, though—the women here are seen essentially as a quarry for the men to hunt. Actually, that’s probably not so dated from the perspectives of many a man. But it does seem to be the opposite of progressive in a lot of ways, which may well be either a function of the time in which it was made, or a function of the time Renoir was attempting to depict.

The look of the film is lush and the filming is languid and lovely, making this film something special to look at. It’s a terrible shame that the film was never completed. At twice this length, or perhaps a bit longer, Un Partie de Campagne has the potential to be something moving and beautiful. It approaches this in places, but still feels far too limited and too rushed for something that should be told at the pace that it wants to set—slow and tranquil, something eased into instead of rushed through.

For this, it’s a disappointment, although this is not the fault of the film itself. Renoir’s fragment still holds more power and more actual romance than films three times this length being made today, and for that, it is noteworthy.

Why to watch Un Partie de Campagne: Renoir brings lyrical beauty to film.
Why not to watch: It doesn’t really go anywhere. It’s half a movie.

Uneven Results

Films: La Chienne (The Bitch); Boudu Sauve des Eaux (Boudu Saved from Drowning)
Format: VHS from Highland Community College Library through interlibrary loan on big ol' television (La Chienne); DVD from NetFlix on kick-ass portable DVD player (Boudu).

Jean Renoir has six films on The List. I say that as a statement of fact, not as one of shock, surprise, or outrage. Before working The List, I had not heard of Renoir; that name was immediately associated with Pierre-Auguste Renoir, the painter and not the French director. Well, I’ve corrected that today, watching one-third of his entries.

The first is La Chienne (The Bitch). This is a surprisingly convoluted story for these early days of film. It’s complex and layered without being complicated. There are only a couple of major players here, so it’s simple to keep track of everything, and yet this film goes a very long distance from its starting point.

We start with a puppet show, and I mean that in a literal sense. The first puppet tells us that what we are about to see is a tragedy. It is interrupted by a second puppet who tells us this is a comedy with a moral. Both of these puppets are beaten into submission by a third, who tells us that that the story we are about to see is just a story with no moral and no lesson to share. The people are real people and the story is a real one, and it signifies nothing.

Maurice Legrand (Michel Simon) is a meek cashier who is dominated by his terror of a wife, Adele (Magdeleine Berubet). Adele constantly complains of his painting and compares him unfavorably with her first husband, who died in World War I. One evening, when out with his coworkers, he sees a fight between a man and a woman, and he intercedes.

The woman is Lulu (Janie Marese). Legrand is immediately smitten with her because of her youth and her beauty, not knowing that she is essentially a prostitute and that the fight was with her boyfriend/pimp, Dede (Georges Flamant). He also doesn’t know that Dede and Lulu are still a couple, and that this meeting with him is something they have essentially been looking for. Thanks to his infatuation, Legrand sets up Lulu in a new apartment, which he decorates with his own paintings. Dede believes that Legrand is actually a famous painter, and decides that he’ll sell the unsigned artwork under the name of Clara Wood, setting up Lulu as Clara. Meanwhile, to keep her (and, unknowingly, Dede) living in some comfort, Legrand begins embezzling from his company.

Things really come to a head when Legrand discovers that Adele’s first husband is not dead, but living under an assumed name. Both men are in the position now of wanting their own freedom from the terror that is Adele, causing some scheming by both. For Legrand, this is a way out of his loveless, terrible marriage and a life with Lulu, but of course he doesn’t realize that Lulu’s life is actually with Dede and she wants to keep it that way.

I can’t express how disappointed I am that this film was available to me only on VHS and that it hasn’t been remastered. This is a highly entertaining film all the way through. The story plays out like real life, with real people coming up against obstacles and reacting to them. The plot continues to thicken throughout, and while the story does require that the audience pay attention, it never gets so dense that it can’t easily be followed. I can only imagine what this would look like fully remastered and looking like it should. Certainly far less entertaining and less interesting films have been given the full-on Criterion treatment; Renoir’s early work would appear to deserve at least that same consideration.

That aside, though, this film comes highly recommended. The comedy is dark and not always obvious, but the people are real and the situation is one that plays out exactly as it should, even if it isn’t exactly how we as the audience would like it to end up.

There is a Chinese saying that goes along the lines of saving someone’s life makes you responsible for that person. Had you not saved the life, any evil that person commits would have never happened. No film explores this idea more completely than Renoir’s follow-up to La Chienne, Boudu Sauve des Eaux (Boudu Saved from Drowning). Priape Boudu (Michel Simon once again) is a tramp. His dog has run away, and despondent over this, he decides to drown himself in the Seine. Fortunately for him and unfortunately for the rest of us, he is pulled from the water (hence the title) by Edouard Lestingois (Charles Granval).

Lestingois takes the dripping tramp into his home to care for him, and we get a lovely view of exactly how Boudu repays the man who saved him. Essentially, his repayment comes in the form of acting like a complete bastard at every possible opportunity. He spits on things, drops things, breaks things, demands everyone get him whatever he wants, tries to have sex with the serving girl (Severine Lerczinska), polishes his shoes with the satin comforter, floods the kitchen, and otherwise acts like a sort of Will Farrell character with fewer manners.

At one point, Boudu has so offended everyone in the house that they are ready to push him out the door. This is after he has trashed the place, destroyed the kitchen, ruined one of Lestingois’s valuable rare books by spitting in the pages, and destroyed the bedroom by polishing his shoes with whatever he could find. Confronted by Lestingois’s wife Emma (Marcelle Hainia), he basically rapes her, which naturally causes her to fall deeply in at least lust for the man. Her husband isn’t too worried since he’s sticking it to the serving girl anyway.

I see what Renoir is trying to do with this film. He’s commenting on the sort of hypocrisy that is rife in the world. At the start, for instance, when Boudu’s dog runs off, he is given no help by the police officer he speaks to. Moments later, a rich woman with the same problem is treated seriously and the cop starts a doghunt to find her precious Pekinese. Okay, I see that. And I see it at the end as well (don’t worry about this being spoiled—you’re missing nothing). This horrible man who treats everyone terribly owns the winning lottery ticket, giving him a small fortune of 100,000 francs. And suddenly he is respectable, all is forgiven, and he can marry the chambermaid, who’s getting sexed by her boss. I get that. I see the hypocrisy of the situation exactly as I am supposed to see it.

But that doesn’t mean that the film works or that I like it. In fact, the film does not work in the main specifically because Boudu is such a hateful character. I believe he is intended to be funny, to be something of a clown. He is not. Instead, he is merely an ingrate and an asshole. As a character, he is a complete misfire, and since the entire movie revolves around him and what he does throughout, the entire movie misfires as a result.

My fervent hope is that of the two Renoir films I watched today, this one is the aberration and not the norm, because this one was painfully bad.

Why to watch La Chienne: For a film that is this old, it’s actually quite modern.
Why not to watch: It won’t be the ending you want.

Why to watch Boudu Sauve des Eaux: For the first hour or so, Boudu has a truly epic beard.
Why not to watch: Because it isn’t worth watching.