on 12/4/2024, 8:07 am
Tuesday, December 3 (Day 5)
The festival opened in 2014 with two films directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, perhaps the French director associated with French film noir who is most popularly known by American audiences because of LE CORBEAU (1943), QUAI DE ORFEVRES (1947), WAGES OF FEAR (1953), and LES DIABOLIQUES(1955). How appropriate that the series close ten years later with the same two films. The first shall be last…or something akin to that.
In MANON (1949), two lovers are trying to escape – he rescues her from villagers who think she is a Nazi collaborator and they run off to Paris. Through his brother, they engage in the illicit – he in the black market and she in a high-end brothel. Then, together, they escape Paris for Palestine. Or, they think they will escape.
This hits a sweet spot for me – lovers, enduring much travail, but spending eternity together. Love triumphant…or so it seems. The only way that this love gets to triumph, however, is that the lovers believe they have survived going through Hell. They may think they have gone through Hell, but the reality is that they have not completely gone through it. Instead, they constantly experience it. There simply is no escaping Hell. This film serves as a reminder that the French popularized existentialism, part of the underpinning and essence of film noir.
Also notable is the cinematography by Armand Thirard. The barren landscape in the latter portion of the movie is stunning and frightening. It becomes a character integral to the story. Thirard’s work was visible earlier in this series in PIEGE POUR CENDRILLON. Other collaborations with Clouzot are THE WAGES OF FEAR (1953), and LES DIABOLIQUES (1955).
Speaking of existentialism, LA VERITE (1960) had me reliving Camus’ The Stranger. A young woman (Brigitte Bardot) is on trial for the murder of a lover. Various witnesses, supplemented by the constantly sparring prosecutor and defense counsel, tell the story largely by flashback. A complex picture of the murderer emerges: a woman who vacillates from being free-spirited and elated to being fickle and morose. And sexual freedom – or, the idea of sexual freedom – underlies it all. The result is an appearance that she is less on trial for being a murderer than for exhibiting socially unacceptable behavior and portraying every human frailty. She also is a living demonstration that every act has a consequence and – as the finale builds to an operatic crescendo in the courtroom – humans would rather not accept that.
Don Malcolm’s mission in The Mission for the past ten years has been to rectify an error in the received history of film noir; i.e. provide evidence that film noir began in France, established its contours before Nino Frank labelled a collection of American movies as film noir, and continued in its own way. Whether he has moved the needle much over the past decade is unclear, but it is clear that the needle has moved. And, in the process, he has created an audience for dozens of French films that have been ignored or forgotten. Merci beacoup, Don.
FIN
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