Class-conscious, but decidedly apolitical, set in an 1887 household at romantic cross-purposes between Upstairs & Downstairs at Christmastide. Elderly Madame an overbearing tartar; a widowed middle-aged son with a wooden leg; his pretty, all-grown-up rebellious daughter; the governess who’s caught Father’s eye; the handsome estate manager who splits his attentions between them; and a household staff to see to every whim . . . . without seeing anything going on. Taken from a novel (though it plays like a stage adaptation), it’s a first collaboration for classic French scripters Jean Aurenche & Pierre Bost. (Collaboration a charged word at the time!) All those misdirected avowals of love in an ever-shifting romantic quadrangle just the thing for an audience needing a mental break during the Nazi Occupation. With a production as overstuffed in La Belle Époque furniture & decor as it is in delusions of la grandeur tragique. Claude Autant-Lara’s film a plus-perfect example of the kind of ‘la qualité cinema française’ that drove the young turks writing at Cahiers du Cinéma in the ‘50s to distraction. And Truffaut & Co weren’t far off*, though now, without having to deal with critical blindness on newer ideas, the film is never less than watchable even at its most stultifyingly sedate & tasteful.
DOUBLE-BILL: Films made during Occupation that can be read as anti-fascist allegory, like Henri-Georges Clouzot’s superb LE CORBEAU, also from 1943, get a lot more attention.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Autant-Lara will stick his camera behind flames in a fireplace . . . twice! Always a bad sign.
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