Political theory and practice

Le silence de la mer (1949).

Genre: Drama.

DNA: French.

Verdict: One of a kind.  

 Tag line: Adieu.

Executive Summary: ‘A niece and her uncle sit in a small room; he smokes a pipe, while she knits.  An unwelcome boarder sits with them every night, but they never speak to him, though he talks of his love of music, admiration for French literature, and hope for a united Europe.’

Not exactly a sales pitch to win financial backing in 1946 France, now is it, but it sums up 90% of the film. The putative director, screenwriter, and producer had never made a feature film, nor had he served an apprenticeship in the movie industry and knew nothing of the technicalities of film-making.  Yet he went ahead…. 

It is the fall of 1941 in rural France and the boarder is an artillery officer billeted with them. He is young, educated, polite, and German with perfect French. As he talks, the uncle and niece sit in silence without eye contact. Uncle puffs his pipe; niece sticks to her knitting.  

There is a remarkable scene at the local Kommandatura in which nothing is said, and much is reflected in a mirror.  Silence and more silence. 

In this sea of silence the French pair learn that not all Germans are beasts, and the German learns — when he goes on leave to occupied Paris — that Germans are beasts. His erstwhile army friends, listening to sentimental love songs, talk of reprisals, executions, extermination, and more with enthusiasm. Now is the time to crush France and the French. 

Surprise, shock, disgust, these are some of his reactions to his colleagues. And none is more adamant than a friend with whom he went to the music Conservatorium in his home town.   

When he returns to the billet after two weeks he is a changed man: depressed, forlorn, disconsolate, bereft in a marvellous scene. He confesses his mistake to the silent jury of two and announces his departure for the Eastern Front. He has sentenced himself to death.

The niece has grown to love this earnest dreamer and as he takes his leave she says one word, her only word, to him: ‘Adieu.’  It is the only word she speaks in the film. 

***

The niece is played by Nicole Stéphane (1924-2007) who was Jewish and survived the war in the Resistance before escaping to England where she joined the France Libre.  She funded much of the film.  

It makes a counterpoint to Le Corbeau (1942) discussed in a recent post. 

There is a Belgian version shot in colour in 2004 that is not nearly as austere, and not as focussed.  But it gets high praise on the IMDb.  

Making of ….

It is characteristic of Jean-Pierre Melville, the director, to concentrate on images rather than dialogue.  Little is said but much is conveyed as only film can convey it. 

That a novel composed in Occupied France presented an innocent German army officer is a surprise. It was written and clandestinely published in 1942 by Jean Bruller under the nom de guerre Vercors. The book itself, by the way, is shown among others early in the film.

Melville both wrote the screenplay and directed, carried the film stock around and did not much of the heavy lifting himself.  He had to apply his interest in judo to this project, that is, to make weakness a strength.

There was no money for a sound engineer so he resolved to use a spare voice over narration by the uncle. That increased the ‘silence’ the German experiences.  

There was no money for more than an absolute minimum of location or outdoor shooting so he used stock footage and integrated the German in it with some clever cutting.  

There was no money for first rate film stock, so he used old, cheap stock and let the black voids indicate the distances and uncertainties among the characters.  The German in particular at the start is filmed in the manner of German expressionist films of the 1920s. 

BTW, Jean-Pierre Melville was a pseudonym of the Alsatian Jew Jean-Pierre Grumbach (1917-1973) who took the code name Melville, after the American author, while in the French resistance.  Earlier he had been evacuated from Dunkerque. Like 100,000+ other poilus within a fortnight he was repatriated to Bordeaux, as it turns out, just prior to the Capitulation. Rather than march into captivity with more than a million other French solders to be held hostage, he fled and later he and his brother tried to get to England to continue the fight. His brother was killed en route, but Melville made it and joined the Free French Army in the Italian campaign.  The rest of his family perished after the Vél d’Hiver Roundup.  (Look it up.)  All of this left a very dark stain on him, and though he was exuberant in private life, his films are, to say the least, noir. 

Finally…

Reading some of the disparaging reviews on the IMDb is a reminder that a hundred and fifty years of free public education is not enough.  

L’Assassin habite au 21 (1942) The Murderer Lives at No. 21. IMDB meta-data is a runtime of 1 h 24 m rated 7.3 by 3,700 cinematizens.

La main du diable (1943) The Carnival of Sinners (The Hand of the Devil). IMDB meta-data is a runtime 1 h 20 m rated 7.3 by 1,800 cinematizens.  

Le Corbeau (1943) The Crow. IMDB meta-data is a runtime 1 h 43 m, rated 7.8 by 11,000 cinematizens.

DNA: France occupée (1940-1944).   

Genre: Noir.

These three films, among others, were made by Continental Studios during the German Occupation of France, each of the trio starred Pierre Fresney and were directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, credited or not. They were united in another way, too, after the Liberation, all of them, but especially Le Corbeau (The Crow) were banned.  Why?  Each showed France, French society and people in a bad light.  

This social criticism of France by Studios managed (very loosely as it turned out) by Germans, got Clouzot and Fresnay ostracised (and briefly imprisoned) along with the co-star in two of the movies, Suzy Delair.  However, cooler and wiser heads prevailed and the ban was lifted quickly.  

This background reminds us that the producer and director did not have a free hand in these labours.  Indeed, even at this distance it is impossible to watch these three individually or in seriatim without seeing a watermark of the Occupation, but as a covert critique rather than an overt affirmation. Read on. 

In L’Assassin habite a boarding house’s inhabitants, men and women, are examined in the search for a serial killer.  The vanities, foibles, pretexts, dissimulations, vices, incompetences of each is laid bare as the detective (posing as a roomer) moves among them.  (Jules Maigret used this vantage point in Madame Quatre et ses enfants, the film version of which in 1991 is discussed elsewhere on the blog for clickers.) Suffice it to say there is more than one murderer at numero 21.  It is an allegorical tale of what France has now become in 1942: Schemers, spies, thieves, cheats, and liars. Nothing is as it seems to be because it is worse.

La main du diable is even more explicit in its analogy to the Occupation: Make a deal with the devil for the time being and discover that time never ends, as long as you live. Fresnay who played the charming and jocular detective in L’Assassin here is a tortured soul who can find no relief from his Faustian bargain.  He is France occupé both cursed and blessed: blessed to be out of the war and cursed to be occupied. The only way out is death. Grim.  

These two might have been forgiven and forgotten but then came Le Corbeau and no one forgets its relentless condemnation of picturesque, bucolic, rural, and eternale France as a nest of vipers, stinging each other to death. The parallel to the Occupation is obvious to any viewer at the time yet the German censors let it go. The plot engine is a campaign of poison pen letters at a time when the Occupier encouraged French citizens to denounce each other in anonymous letters just like those portrayed in the film.  While Fresnay carries the film, the elder doctor played by Pierre Larquey is mesmerising at times.  Watch for the scene with the swinging light fixture to see what I mean.  The final act condemned the film twice over when a nun commits a murder.  A nun!  Is nothing sacred. Non. 

Continental had a repertoire cast and they appear and reappear in these three and its thirty other films. 

***

By the way many will have seen, and surely remember, Fresney from Le Grand Illusion (1937) as the world weary aristocrat who sacrifices himself to pass the baton of moral leadership onto the energies of the working class Jean Gabin. 

Fresney soldiered in WWI and had his last screen credit in 1975. 

Absolutely Anything (2015)

IMDb meta-data is a runtime 1 hr and 25 m, rated 6.0 by 49,000 cinematizens. 

Genre: Sy Fy, sorta.

DNA: Brit Bruce Almighty. 

 Verdict: Absolute power bores absolutely. 

Tagline: More dog!

Blessed and cursed with absolute power by an astro-genie, Hero takes a long time to realise what is going on, and then fumbles the ball.  It is a frenetic race from one gag to another, and then to its undoing.  

There are pleasures, but they are few.  Loved the ice queen BBC book reviewer who hates books and never reads, but makes and breaks the careers of writers.  All too easy to believe.  

The talking dog was one joke that went on…far too long.  But for being loquacious there is too little of the dog, though it finally does save the day (and the world), but not the film.   

***

Rather think some of the players had stern words with the agents that committed them to this film.   

In this fluff our hero does not make a deal with the devil, he has absolute power conferred on him as a lab-rat test.  He sacrifices nothing for it, and gains little from it.  Ergo, what’s the point?  

For All Mankind (2019)

IMDb meta-data is 41 episodes of app 48 m each, rated 8.1 by 70,000 cinemtizens.  

Genre: Alt History.

DNA: USA.

Verdict:  Right Stuff (1980) played by college boys.

Tagline:  On and on it goes where is stops, does anyone care?

The Russkies got to the Moon first, and it’s time to catch up and escalate.  N.B. I have watched only the first three episodes before getting bored.  

As a period piece it is well done, though I would have liked a lot more 1960s music. Maybe that’s just me.

All the historical faces are there from Walter Cronkite to the astronauts and their entourage.  So far the Soviets are The Other with a flag.   

There is some very clever use of Nixon’s Whitehouse tapes. Likewise the portrayal of Werner von Braun is certainly more lifelike than the drooling madman in the Dial of Destiny. On von Braun one might see Robert Harris’s V (discussed elsewhere on this blog, click on).    

I liked the hiatus from Armstrong and crew, but if there was an explanation that I heard, but, well, let’s say my attention was divided. But so far there is just too little about the scientific, technological, and engineering complexity of the problems each of which had never been done before.  Instead the real problems seems to be with family, with women, with political priorities, with macho rivalries, and so on.  I hasten to add the wives get their due in a way, but still the focus of the problems does not seem to be space flight, but each other.  The human drama, I guess the marketing department would say, but we don’t need space or the Moon for that.  

***

The acting is superb, though the writing and directing are uneven: some scenes are attenuated and others rushed and much is omitted in favour of alcohol and sex. There is too little on the everyday racism and sexism of the time, but perhaps that is coming in later episodes, though it seems unlikely to me that a black would have been inducted into the program at the time. 

I do like the story arc with the Mexican girl, but it is a frail reed to hang so much upon.  

***

I made the mistake of reading the semi-literate review on Roger ebert.com which included the following irritants with the quotation marks followed by my fulminations follow the – sign.  

‘random Russian’ – This man was first in a highly selective program, hardly a walk-in off the street. Nor is he unknown for he is named. In short he was not just anyone.

‘the film wonders how that would feel’  – first I’ve heard that film has feeling. I’ll be more considerate around it from now on. 

‘lofty ideas that are heavily considered’ – Heavily, man.

‘the highly renowned John Glenn’  – Doubt the author even knew who he was.

‘reoccuring’ – recurring is so much simpler. No doubt this writer also speaks of ‘myself,’ uses ‘orientate,’ and ….

‘the story seek(s) compassion’ – more reification (look it up) with the story at work. 

‘spreads its charisma thin’ – ditto. 

‘she has big reasons’ – little reasons never get any consideration. Is this sizeism? Woke up!

‘a striking reinforcement of the toxics masculinity’ – Huh? Plural?

It ranges from annoying to incomprehensible. Sounds like teenagers talking about it on the bus, which would perhaps please the author, but might insult the teenagers who are usually more cogent.