Blanche

Pasolini is concurrent with The Canterbury Tales, but the true affinity is with Rohmer's Perceval. (Audience titters over the castrato's "blunted sword" are a feint for the implacable medieval tragedy to come.) The castle is "beautifully situated but gloomy as a Holy Land dungeon," autumnal woods outside and stony chambers within like panels on a tapestry. The maiden (Ligia Branice) is as pure as her name, her fleeting flash of nudity is swiftly swathed in fabric, another precious item in the collection of her husband (Michel Simon). The visiting king (Georges Wilson) and his young page (Jacques Perrin) are inflamed by her innocence, her longing stepson (Lawrence Trimble) completes the quintet. "Blanche, all my hope rests in your body!" Mazeppa, not Byron's but Slowacki's, transposed to thirteenth-century France by Walerian Borowczyk in a stark recomposition of Goto, Island of Love. The push-pull of delicacy and brutishness, the electric wire of desire running through ornate tableaux. Simon's massiveness suits the elderly lion who can still bite, he worships his wife until he doesn't, his abrupt accusation of sorcery points up the Day of Wrath element. The realm of intoxication and dream ("Forget Bacchus in the arms of Morpheus"), caged dove and scampering monkey. Feminine honor is the entombed treasure, murmurs behind the bricked-up alcove yield to the resurrection on the corridor. Looming crucifix and lacy curtain, green apples and golden bowls, a Morandi obsession with expressive objects. The duel is brief, planks and bodies on a cold floor as befits a darkening fairytale. "I wanted to die by the hand she had blessed." Borowczyk evokes La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc in the haunting coda, only the fluttering birds are viewed by the man dragged behind a galloping horse. With Denise Péronne, Michel Delahaye, and Jean Gras.