FRANTZ (2016)

François Ozon is one of those excessively talented writer/ directors who out-thinks himself, like a track runner unaware he’s already lapped the guy coming up in front of him. Here, a touching but flawed expansion of the same post-WWI Maurice Rostand play that made a touching but flawed Early Talkie for Ernst Lubitsch (THE MAN I KILLED/’32), is over-beaten. Lubitsch’s pic, sans expected saucy tone & naughty subject matter, was a big flop in its day, though critically well-received. Quickly retitled BROKEN LULLABY, even more quickly forgotten, it’s recently been reevaluated upwards, a strong pacifist fable about a guilt-ridden French soldier who goes to a German town to ask forgiveness from the family of ‘the man I killed.’ Unable to get his confession out, and having been seen laying flowers on the grave, both parents & fiancé assume a Paris friendship before the war; a lie he doesn’t deny. Ozon skips Lubitsch’s stunning prologue (Armistice Anniversary Day, Paris 1919), to jump directly into the German town, the cemetery, family complications. But since you’ll guess why the soldier is there, there’s little added suspense. Ozon wants to emphasize the feminine/German perspective, knowing, as Lubitsch & Rostand couldn’t, that the war to end all wars didn’t. But his larger change comes after the big confession and his return to France. In an entirely new story arc, the girl follows in pursuit, a narrative parabola with nearly as many lies used to get to her goal. And the story becomes less who than what she will find. Working largely in b&w, with color reserved for recollections (false & true), and for moments of high emotion, much in here is lovely, if at times over genteel. (A dance hall sequence with far more woman than men is a gem.) In general, the men are more believable than the women who all seem a decade too modern for 1919. (Though Paula Beer, as the fiancé, is a fine actress and a heart-stopping beauty in b&w or color.) And how interesting, in a scene where the dead boy’s father confronts the town’s old guard on how they sent their boys off to die willingly, eagerly, to see how close it is to the Lubitsch. Swings-and-roundabouts in what does & doesn’t work between two films which compliment rather than cancel each other out.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: (If you can find it!), THE MAN I KILLED. Released in January of ‘32, the film, in spite of Early Talkie pacing & technology, is loaded with finds. Not just the prologue, but in dozens of marvelous town life details in this first collaboration for Lubitsch & favorite scripter Samson Raphaelson. With unforgettable turns for Lionel Barrymore & Louise Carter as the parents, even if the soppy romantic perfs of Phillips Holmes & Nancy Carroll drag.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-man-i-killed-broken-lullaby-1932.html

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