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The cloddish boulevardier, the tarnished ingénue and the vengeful lady, an Occupation triangle. Clad in a series of black-widow gowns, María Casares is half steely aristocrat and half wounded sorceress. Anxious about her lover's (Paul Bernard) waning interest, she tests him by suggesting an end to their affair and is dismayed when he gladly accepts. "Je me vengerai," dissolve to her comely instrument (Elina Labourdette), a sort of Gallic Eleanor Powell who tap-dances up a storm at the cabaret and rents herself out to tuxedoed patrons. Laclos by way of Diderot, Lubitsch dipped in acid: Paris is split between the socialite's lavish penthouse and the tart's bare flat, outside is the rain-swept netherworld of shadows and cruel Cupids. Jean Cocteau's voluptuous dialogue ("There is no such thing as love, only proofs of love") builds up a hothouse chilled by Robert Bresson's laconic camera, conflicting auteurs in continuous play. A most elegantly absurd chronicle of grace and disgrace, riddled with mysterious objects ("This is Cinderella's slipper," the smitten Bernard declares of a rejection letter) and incandescent gestures (when Labourdette rebels against her claustrophobic surrounding by turning pirouettes until she conks her head, it's like a lost Leos Carax short). Is there a funnier, more nightmarish sequence than the puppeteer's revelation of her grand scheme following the lovebirds' wedding, with her gloating grin sliding again and again into the screen as the distraught groom tries to drive off? An ascending crane dutifully poses the newlyweds on a divan surrounded by purifying bridal veils, yet the blend of flame and frost in Casares' gaze is where Cocteau and Bresson really meet and meld. With Lucienne Bogaert, Jean Marchat, and Yvette Etiévant. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |