JULIEN DUVIVIER IN THE THIRTIES (Duvivier, 1930-1937)
Eclipse Series From Criterion, DVD, Release Date Nov 3, 2015
Review by Christopher S. Long
If director Julien Duvivier's star
dimmed in the post-war years, the 1930s witnessed him a the height of
his prowess. Few directors would make the transition from silent
cinema to talkies as seamlessly as Duvivier even if, like most
directors, he made the change only with great reluctance.
Following a successful run of more than
twenty silent pictures, Duvivier's talkie debut was an absolute
stunner. “David Golder” (1930) isn't exactly a cheerful
pick-me-up. The film's opening montage film shows a shouting crowd;
characters super-imposed over the masses warn us that the film's
title character is both a “scoundrel” and “a great man.” The
paunchy, aging Golder (Harry Baur, who stars in all four films on
this Eclipse set) backs up both claims in a difficult financial
negotiation set in a smoky room lit mostly by the glare reflecting
off sweaty, balding foreheads. This is a business man who means
business.
It's reasonable to be concerned about
the ultimate purpose of a film centered on a greedy Jewish banker and
his equally greedy wife and daughter. But the film, based on the
debut novel of Russian-born Jewish writer Irene Nemirovsky, paints a
vivid portrait of wealthy European Jews at the onset of the worldwide
economic depression, filled with the intrigues and scheming of any insular group of power brokers, and any family corrupted by easy money.
In a truly harrowing sequence, Golder,
recovering from a recent heart attack, argues with his wife Gloria
(Paule Andral) while bed-ridden. After Gloria accuses him of being
“the same little Jew” who sold scraps, he almost literally chokes
her to death by grabbing her extravagantly jeweled necklace. He
strikes another damaging blow when he reminds Gloria that she once
was known as Havke. It's one of the most bilious displays I can
recall seeing in any film, genuine, seething hatred from two fully
invested actors.
Duvivier and his team of
cinematographers balance grotesque imagery (David wanders in on a
sweaty obese man toweling himself off while wearing only underpants)
with many immaculate compositions, including a remarkable shot that
allows separate actions to unfold in different rooms, each cordoned
off in opposite halves of the frame. Duvivier is a big fan of
parallel action; when not peering into two rooms at once, he cuts
back and forth aggressively between simultaneous sequences, one of
which ends with a suicide on a night-time street. The camera also
lingers on the faces of impassive butlers while their “masters”
discuss their various schemes, showing that Duvivier had no problems
taking advantage of the new opportunities afforded by sound
technology.
“David Golder” is so relentlessly
gloomy that the next film in the set feels positively upbeat by
comparison. After all the title character of “Poil De Carotte”
(“Carrot Top”, 1932) is just a ten-year-old boy who contemplates
suicide due to the cruelty of his mother and the benign neglect of
his father (Baur). Carrot Top (Robert Lynen) does his best to endure
a family situation in which he feels so disenfranchised he refers to
his parents as Mr. and Mrs. Lepic. Mother openly despises him,
perhaps because he arrived late in life as an unexpected gift, while
doting on her feckless oldest son. Father is primarily concerned with
escaping his wife and running for mayor of their small town.
The film was a huge commercial success
for Duvivier in no small part due to the plucky performance delivered
by young Lynen. Carrot Top has a rich imagination which both allows
him to survive and also produces frightening manifestations such as
the circle of phantoms who swirl about him as he makes a nighttime
dash to feed the livestock. He is, unfortunately, too perceptive to
deny his situation and his prayers for mother to “forget I exist”
give way to voices in his head (also filmed as ghostly apparitions)
urging him to end his problems for good. A last-minute reconciliation
between father and son comes as an immense relief even if there's
little reason to believe the boy will live happily ever after.
“La Tete D'un Homme” (1933) sees
Duvivier try his hand at the detective story, this time casting Baur
as Georges Simenon's world-famous Inspector Maigret. Duvivier and
co-screenwriters Louis Delapree and Pierre Calmann remove all
suspense from the story, providing viewers access to the planning and
execution of the murder of an elderly American widow that kicks off
the action. The tension builds slowly in the unraveling, first when a
hapless schmuck of a thief (Alexandre Rignault, whose giant hatchet
face pegs him as a born patsy) is framed for the crime and later as
the supernaturally patient Maigret zeroes in on the real killer.
Rignault's flight into the nighttime Paris is a sequence of moody
perfection capped off by a thin, elongated shadow seemingly copied
directly from “Nosferatu.”
Since the crime itself is a bit of a
bore, the movie wouldn't work without an intriguing killer.
Fortunately the film delivers in the form of the tormented Czech
medical student Radek, a character seemingly plucked from a
Dostoevsky novel. Thinking himself superior and the unfair victim of
a terminal malady, he exhibits little guilt, preferring to taunt the
police instead. Russian import Valery Inkijinoff adds another
indelible face to the film's rogue gallery, his remarkably expressive
features practically an open window to a shriveled soul. Baur is
almost overshadowed in the process, but turns in a fine performance
as a calm, implacable investigator whose secret weapon is the ability
to listen.
The final film in the set provides at
least intermittent respite from the misery of the first three
entries. “Un Carnet Du Bal” (“Dance Card”, 1937) is an
episodic feature that may play to some viewers like an early Max
Ophuls film and is surely the most elegant feature in the set.
Christine (Marie Bell) is recently widowed and hopes to alleviate her
grief, or at least come to terms with it, by reconnecting with the
male suitors who danced with her at her coming-out ball on her 16th
birthday, nearly two decades ago.
Her adventures take her from Italy to
France and through a varied series of encounters that prove that the
past is irretrievable and the future entirely unforeseeable. Many of
the men have fallen on hard times, a few because Christine did not
entertain their advances back at the ball. Unsurprisingly, Harry Baur
delivers the most memorable performance. His disappointment with
Christine's rejection, as well as another great personal loss, drove
him to the priesthood where he feels he does great good, but not
enough to overcome his lingering heartache. In another vivid
encounter, she meets with a former lover whose life has taken him
from lawyer to petty crook. The two hours he spends talking with her
may be the last he spends as a free man, but the opportunity to see
himself through her eyes might make it all bearable.
Other men have adjusted to
post-Christine life more happily, including a heroic but lonely
mountain guide, a small-town mayor about to remarry, and an ebullient
hairdresser with a penchant for dopey card tricks. Christine's
travels are initiated by her memory of the ball, rendered by Duvivier
and team as a carefully choreographed phantasmagoria reminiscent of
Carrot Top's swirling ghosts, and her journey inevitably takes her
back to the beginning, to another ball and then back home to the
Italian villa she had shared with her husband. “Un Carnet Du Bal”
was yet another big hit for Duvivier, released the same year as
perhaps his best-remember film today, “Pepe Le Moko.”
The success of “Pepe” and, to a
lesser degree, “Carnet Du Bal” brought Duvivier to Hollywood
before he returned to France, with a few detours to the UK, after the
war. While he still directed some fine films during the post-war
period, his critical reputation would suffer once the “Cahiers Du
Cinema” critics lumped him unfairly in with their despised
purveyors of “the tradition of quality.” Duvivier has since been
embraced once again by critics, but still remains eclipsed by the
shadows of his contemporary stars like Marcel Carne and Jean Renoir,
the latter of whom rated Duvivier as one of the greatest filmmakers
of any era.
Video:
All four films are shot in
black-and-white. “David Golder” is presented in its original
1.19:1 aspect ratio, a ratio used only in the first few years of
sound film. The other three films are presented in their original
1.33:1 aspect ratios. As usual with Eclipse releases, the films have
not been restored for this release and they vary in quality. “La
Tete D'Un Homme” shows the most damage with several short shots
badly warped around the edges, but most of it still looks fine. “Poil
De Carotte” probably looks the best. Overall, while the film's all
show some instances of damage with the occasional skipped frame
evident, they are still sharp enough to show a pleasing grain and a
satisfying black-and-white contrast. Considering the age of the
films, these “no frills” restorations look quite solid.
Each film is on its own DVD housed in a
separate slim keep case. All four slim cases tuck into the cardboard
packaging for the set.
Audio:
All four films are presented in Dolby
Digital Mono sound mixes. Voices sometimes sound a little tinny and
the music a bit warbly, but overall the quality is acceptable if far
from spectacular. Optional English subtitles support the French
audio.
Extras:
As with most Eclipse releases, no
extras are provided aside from liner notes on each of the four discs
by Michael Koresky who, as usual, does a fabulous job.
Final Thoughts:
I think “David Golder” is a
flat-out masterpiece and “Un Carnet Du Bal” is so rich I expect
to enjoy it even more on repeat viewings; the other two films are
damned fine as well. Yet as marvelous as the movies in this four-disc
Eclipse set are, they also provide a sobering reminder of the tragedy
of history. Thanks to the success of “Poil De Carotte,” Robert
Lynen became one of France's pre-eminent child stars in the '30s. By
the age of 20, he joined the French Resistance and was executed by
the Nazis in 1944. The great Harry Baur, nearly omnipresent in this
set, appeared in several other films for Duvivier, enjoying his own
stardom. Baur would also die at the hands of the Nazis in 1943.
Novelist Irene Nemirovsky was killed in Auschwitz in 1942.