Marcel Carné's Les Assassins de l'ordre | The Lawbreakers (1971)

This is one of Marcel Carné's last films, and is a gem. And not just because Jacques Brel (as Le Juge d'instruction) and dear Boby Lapointe (as Louis Casso) are in it. An innocent man is murdered here by the cops in the cop station, there are witnesses (one being a minor cop himself), two others in the next door cell who hear the terrible sounds of torture, and as it turns out there was also a prostitute who heard not an interrogation but a murder.

Bernard the judge goes through all the procedures to get the three murderous cops convicted, but he's working against a system which is rigged against justice, which cheats in every way it can, intimidates witnesses into silence and lying, and distorts the truth as much as possible: in fact, as Orwell said, lies are truth and vice versa. If this film doesn't turn you against the corruption of the status quo there's no hope for you.

Marcel Carné's Les Enfants du paradis | Children of Paradise (1944)

This Carné/Prévert collaboration is set in the Parisian theatrical world, on 'Le Boulevard du crime', Le Boulevard du Temple, where so many theatres existed in the first half of the nineteenth century. This film lasts for over three hours and is in two parts: 'Le Boulevard du crime' and 'L'Homme blanc'. The story revolves around Garance (Arletty), and four men who are in different ways involved with her.

These men relate to four characters who existed in reality: Baptiste Deburau (Jean-Louis Barrault), an immensely talented mime artist; Frédérick Lemaître (Pierre Brasseur), a very talented actor who is also full of self importance and a chaser of women; le Comte Édouard de Montray (Louis Salou), inspired by le Duc de Morny, who is in love with Garance and willing to protect her; and Pierre-François Lacenaire (Marcel Herrand), who is a sinister criminal posing as a scrivener.

The first part is set in approximately 1828, the second several years later: in this later period, Baptiste is a well-known mime artist, Frédérick a well-known actor, and Garance has lived for several years abroad with Montray. On her return to Paris she secretly visits Le théâtre des Funambules to see Baptiste, with whom she's remained in love. It's the following events by the three men that are also of interest in the film.

Frédérick has always wanted to play Othello, and when he re-meets Garance he for the first time experiences jealousy, meaning that he can now play the play; the cuckolded Montray is killed by the nihilistic Lecanaire, who stoically awaits execution; and, following his night of love with Garance some years after marrying Nathalie (Maria Casarès), Frédérick seeks in vain for his lover. There's a lot here to be made of the relationship with Shakespeare's Othello.

NB. 'Paradis' refers to the highest and cheapest seats in a theatre, formerly called 'the gods' in English slang.

Marcel Carné's Drôle de drame | Bizarre, Bizarre (1937)

This film – far from conventional as a part of Marcel Carné's canon – could easily be dismissed (or relished) as a Hollywood-style screwball thirties comedy, maybe especially because it's set in an Anglophone country and because Jacques Prévert's script is based on J. Storer Clouston's novel His First Offence (1912). There's more to it than that though. Certainly there are some preposterous things happening: Inspecteur Bray (Pierre Alcover) thinking all the milk bottles are an antidote to poison; the fact that no one (including Margaret Molyneux (Françoise Rosay)) should be thought to have been murdered in the first place; that the milkman Billy (Jean-Pierre Aumont) should be arrested for the supposed murder; that a 'sleeper' should be employed by the police to discover things in his dreams; that an employee in a Chinese hotel, told to get a bunch of flowers, should mug men with flowers in order to get them; and on and on.

It's hopeless to relate the events in the film as they just don't add up, but then if we look at the themes of this we can't help but see a kind of sense: the world is riddled with corruption and absurdity, there's very little truth to be found anywhere, and anyway how can anyone be trusted to make sense of anything anyway? Everything's scewed, and pretence abounds: Irwin Molyneux (Michel Simon) is the detective novelist Félix Chapel; Margaret is also Daisy (to William Kramps (Jean-Louis Barrault)); and the greedy, hypocritical, self-seeking bishop Soper (Louis Jouvet) disguises himself as a Scotsman to re-find the compromising comment on a Folies Bergère programme by another Daisy (a dancer of 'loose' morals) that he's left at Molyneux's home. An anarchist criticism of religion, the law, the family, all institutions?

Certainly this is a satire on British behaviour: the necessity to keep up appearances, the hiding of everything (including the sexual organs Scotsmen are said to hide under their kilts); the London fog; etc. But there's more to this than is beneath a sporran.

Cimetière Saint-Vincent, Montmartre (continued): #3 Marcel Carné

Marcel Carné (1906–96), the world famous film director noted perhaps mostly for Quai des brumes (1938), Hôtel du Nord (1938) and Le Jour se lève (1939). He was homosexual and is buried with his partner, the actor Roland Desaffre (1927–2009).

Marcel Carné's Le Jour se lève (1939)

It's been a few years now since I've written any blog posts about films, a fault I shall correct forthwith. Marcel Carnés Le Jour se lève is a classic work of French cinema, and without doubt one of Carné's major works. The dialogue here is written by Jacques Prévert, and Jean Gabin's acting is superlative.

The expression 'poetic realism' is frequently made of this film. The concentration is on objects, the psychology often tacit, particularly on the part of the Gabin character François. The film begins with a working-class street setting, moving to a dingy lodging house where a man clasping his belly falls down a few flights of stairs dead at the feet of a blind man who shouts for help.

We then enter the room on the fourth floor which the dying man has staggered from, where François has obviously shot him, and locks himself in from the police who try to shoot the lock off the door but François barricades himself in using a wardrobe. 

The audience doesn't know the motive or anything of the backstory, and it is this which, unusual for the early date of this film, will be shown in three flashbacks, returning to the present to watch the chain-smoking François and his limited activities in his claustrophobic one-room home.

Le Jour se lève proved popular with the public, although it was banned by the Vichy régime as it was too pessimistic, too defeatist for the desired mood of the time. The dead man is Valentin, a dog trainer who works in music halls and is played by a very active and menacing Jules Berry, whose behavior strongly contrasts with the pensive François.

Contrast is a major feature of the film: the sultry language and actions of François against his beloved  Françoise (Jaqueline Laurent) as opposed to the forced jollity of the music hall, the silence of François alone in his room as opposed to the gunfire of the police, the (visually expressed) loneliness and despair of François as opposed to the excitement of the crowd outside, etc. Until he releases all his anger at the crowd, until he avoids the police gas by killing himself, which seems inevitable.

A tremendously powerful film that evidently has to be watched than once.

Eugène Dabit: L'Hôtel du Nord (1929)

Marcel Carné's film Hôtel du Nord (1938) is a story of a bungled suicide pact by two lovers in financial difficulty set against the backcloth of the characters living in or using the rather seedy hotel. It is bungled because the man – Pierre – shoots his lover Renée but fails to go through with killing himself. But Renée recovers and is offered a job as a maid at the hotel, which she accepts and enjoys, although Pierre – now in prison for wounding her – is ashamed of his cowardly actions and refuses to acknowledge Renée, who still loves him.

In her emotional confusion, Renée wants to leave the country for a new life with Monsieur Edmond, who has been living at the hotel with Mme Raymonde, a prostitute he abandons after falling for Renée's charms. Finally, Renée changes her mind and goes back to the now released Pierre, and the defeated Monsieur Edmond accepts death at the hands of one of two men seeking revenge for an action performed by Edmond some time before the start of the film.

Eugène Dabit's parents owned the hotel represented in his book Hôtel du Nord (1929) when he was a child, although the film and the book are very different. Dabit's novel is more of a series of episodes that occur at the hotel, the suicidal pair are absent, and 'Monsieur Edmond' here is called Pierre Trimault and his lover Renée: she becomes a prostitute after Pierre leaves her on learning that she is pregnant by him.

People come and go at the hotel, and proprietor Louise Lecouvreur in particular has a much stronger role in the book, looking after the women from predatory men, and ever wary that the hotel doesn't get a reputation for being a brothel. One of the few characters who is occasionally present throughout most of the book is Mimar, who doesn't exist in the film but whose main interests are playing the card game manille and bedding women, both activities at which he is highly skilled. Until he realises that it is time to settle down and marry, which he does, only his wife Lucie dies not long after the marriage.

Of particular interest is an early representation of homosexuality: Adrien is a very fastidious guest and Louise is pleased that he cares so much about the cleanliness of his room, and shows no concern when he has men friends up with him, even when they stay the night. But then she has no idea what is going on, and is merely bemused when Adrien dresses up in drag in preparation for the bal de Magic-City.

In the book then there is nothing of the high drama of the film, which begins with the suicidal lovers crossing the Saint-Martin canal towards the hotel, and ends with them crossing the canal in the opposite direction towards a new future. But the book ends with the demolition of the hotel.

My other posts on Eugène Dabit:
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Eugène Dabit, Cimetière du Père-Lachaise

Eugène Dabit: L'Hôtel du Nord