Shezan1 Reviews

Cloportes (1965)

An underrated classic deserving of a revival.

[10/10 · 14 September 2003]

Of the many noir movies written by Michel Audiard during the 50s and 60s, and performed by a superlative ensemble cast numbering, at times, Jean Gabin, Lino Ventura, Bernard Blier, Françoise Rosay, André Pousse, Robert Dalban, Maurice Biraud, Jean Lefebvre, and many more, "La Métamorphose des Cloportes" is in many respects the supreme classic -- it's the last instance where gritty realism, with a rare sense of place in post-war Paris, is still balanced against the never-absent humour imparted by Audiard's chiseled scripts. Later, absurdist humour would take over in such "gangster comedies" as "Faut Pas Prendre les Enfants Du Bon Dieu Pour des Canards Sauvages" (1968) or "Ne Nous Fâchons Pas" (1966). Here, though, we still get a feel for a France in the early throes of modernization, in which Balzac's Paris in being torn down to be replaced by Marshall-Plan-funded, Gaullist-inspired tower blocks and freeways. The director is the honest warhorse Pierre Granier-Defferre, but this film is really a writers' movie: adapted from the real-life former convict (turned successful Left Bank literary celebrity) Alphonse Boudard's eponymous novel (Boudard rightly gets a credit), its screenplay is credited to both Michel Audiard and Albert Simonin, yet another famous ex-Paris mobster become a famous crime novelist. (Around the time the movie came out, Simonin also wrote a superb dictionary of 20th-century French mob slang, "Le Petit Simonin Illustré Par L'Exemple.) In other words, these guys know what, and whom, they're talking about -- and how it should all sound. Every line sparkles with made-guy wit, and a definite flavor of Jean Renoir's and Marcel Carné's universes.

Superficially, "La Métamorphose des Cloportes" is a revenge movie. Three little Paris hoods (Charles Aznavour, Maurice Biraud and Georges Géret) get tipped off about a possible burglary, but they need the help of a bigger fish (Lino Ventura) to fund their expedition. When things go south midway through their attempt to blow open a safe, they panic and run, leaving Ventura to be picked up by the cops. In the next five years he spends in jail, he vows to get even. He will, in settings ranging from Irma-la-Douce-like red-light districts to a fairground, a fake Swami retreat, and a posh Latin Quarter contemporary art gallery headed by the magnificent Pierre Brasseur, whom Ventura earlier knew as a decrepit stolen art fence. "The most elaborate swindle dreamt by professionals doesn't hold a candle to this abstract art wheeze," Brasseur pronounces, before sweeping Ventura along to an opening worthy of Tom Wolfe's best efforts.

But we're not meant to really worry about the protagonists' grisly fate. Bouncing superb lines throughout, Granier-Defferre and Audiard whisk us from Champs-Elysées hostesses bars (all gone today) to the East Paris Vincennes racecourse (now only sparsely attended for its unfashionable trotting races) to the gutted working-class wastelands behind Gare de Lyon railway station. None of the filmmakers that came afterwards, even those most aspiring to street-cred à la Mathieu Kassovitz, have been able to embed their movies so truly into the physical reality of France. The Nouvelle Vague crowd could sometimes achieve it (Godard in "Breathless" but not in "Week-End"; Truffaut in "400 Blows" but not in "Vivement Dimanche"). The actors are having a ball, too. Aznavour shows what a career he relinquished for his singing one - he manages to be hilarious and chilling at the same time when he threatens Géret's prostitute girlfriend (Annie Fratellini): "Si tu ne causes pas, je te commence à coups de lattes et je te finis au rasoir." Françoise Rosay, as Gertrude, the Paris mob's freelance "Q" (she rents out guns, crowbars and blowtorches) prefigures the glorious Aunt Léontine of "Faut Pas Prendre les Enfants Du Bon Dieu Pour des Canards Sauvages" ("Un mec qui t'emporte une brique de matériel, qui te laisse deux cents sacs et qui te donne plus jamais de nouvelles, moi, j'appelle ça une mauvaise personne.") Pierre Brasseur, a classical actor who towered over Carné's sprawling "Children of Paradise", switches effortlessly from gangster slang to upperclass sophisticate. "La Métamorphose des Cloportes" is an underrated classic deserving of a revival.

Napoléon (2002)

Terminally boring, but heavenly to look at

[1/10 · 8 October 2002]

This lavish production of "Napoleon", which cost French State TV and others $40 million, is everything a biopic should not be. Each historical character is given long historical tracts to mouth as best s/he can, of the "and now I've vanquished Prussia, I shall conquer Poland" variety (Christian Clavier as Napoleon), to which the Emperor's semi-faithful Foreign Minister Talleyrand (John Malkovich) answers "I understand Polish women are very beautiful, Sire." Then, just to ensure we get the hint, Police Minister Fouché (Gérard Depardieu) reprises about the same line to about-to-be-cuckolded Empress Josephine (Isabella Rossellini). "Your Majesty, I advise you not to go to Poland." Etc., etc.; Greta Garbo movies had better dialogue and far better historical savvy.

This mammoth (4 90-minutes eps, for a total runtime of 6 hours) mini-series is, however, utterly lovely to look at. Guy Dufaux's cinematography is sensitive and beautifully-lit, as effective in intimate scenes between Napoleon and Josephine as in great battle scenes. Shot in the castles and palaces of Eastern Europe, or in Morocco (standing in unconvincingly for Egypt, with the odd CGI-ed Pyramid thrown in), the entire production achieves the kind of Biennale des Antiquaires look no set decorator could afford. Clothes, uniforms, carriages all contribute to a splendid museum experience.

But it's not enough. A talented comic in farces like "Les Visiteurs", Christian Clavier is hopelessly miscast as Napoleon, lacking the drive and intensity that mesmerized all contemporaries. He walks dutifully through the part, eliciting no sentiment whatsoever. You can't believe Clavier could write a love-letter to Josephine, let alone the entire French Legal Code. His family of Corsican upstarts has been gentrified to the point of utter boredom, with Anouk Aimée trying to sound hard as Madame Mère Letizia Buonaparte, and looking merely exhausted. Equally, Isabella Rossellini has great charm, but none of the brittle elegance expected of Josephine. She performs in slightly accented French, which is more than can be said for Malkovich, who's obviously dubbed (English-language viewers will hear his voice and get Clavier et al. dubbed: this is a Eurosausage of a production, with money from half a dozen channels) but from what we can see has got the personality of the dapper, aristocratic and manipulative Talleyrand, whom he plays as a run-down Valmont from Dangerous Liaisons, wrong.

It's mostly not Malkovich's fault. The authors, best-selling popular historian Max Gallo and novelist/screenwriter Didier Decoin, have a tin ear for early 19th-century French, and make absolutely no attempt to give any of their characters period sensitivities. Ladies-in-waiting hop into bed with Napoleon like Carrie and Miranda in "Sex and the City"; the Pope expresses himself with the world-weariness of Peter Jennings tut-tutting the "Axis of Evil" speech. There is no psychological exploration of any kind: next to this clichéed pantomime, "Friends" could have been scripted by Ingmar Bergman. Talleyrand, a scion of the oldest French aristocracy turned sometime revolutionary, suggests the kidnapping and execution of a Bourbon prince after a Royalist bomb nearly blows up Bonaparte's carriage. None of the complex political and psychological reasons motivating him are even hinted at -- he's not just a slimebag, he's an uninteresting slimebag.

In the middle of this painted-porcelain debacle, Gérard Depardieu proves once again that he is one of our times' major actors. Given the underwritten part of Police Minister Joseph Fouché, Depardieu imbues the least move, the simplest word, with a haunted complexity he creates entirely on his own (and which constitutes a fascinating reading of Fouché's historical character: Depardieu's creation contains more valid historical speculation than the entire screenplay.) His Fouché sees the quasi-totalitarian secret police he invents and runs (it was Fouché who thought of making every concierge in France a police informer) as the last defense against the brutality of the dictatorial state. "If we know the thoughts of the citizens," he implies, "we can prevent them from committing crimes, and therefore spare them the excessive brutalities of widespread repression." It's a flawed rationalization, and his Fouché is a dark and tortured bear of a man, hoping vainly but ceaselessly for a goodness that eludes him. Depardieu alone would make this production bearable, but there simply isn't enough of him onscreen.

Zwischen gestern und morgen (1947)

A war-time "Grand Hotel" in Nazi Germany

[31 July 2002]

Unexpectedly sensitive movie, structured in a series of flashbacks from different points-of-view, about the destinies of a series of residents of a large hotel in Nazi Germany and immediately after 1945. This is much less romantic than what Hollywood would have produced on the same subject, but the character of Nelly, the Jewish actress who's had to divorce her stage star non-Jewish husband, is extremely well-drawn and memorable in her dignity abd elegance. Well-worth seeing. Why did German cinema vanish soon after this movie was made? What became of good directors like Braun?