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Sometimes the raid on the bourgeoisie is a delicate operation, sometimes it's a shotgun blast on a butterfly. Out of Paris and into the provincial manor, the knowing domestic (Jeanne Moreau) is greeted by mice in the kitchen. "You'll see plenty of them around." Madame (Françoise Lugagne) is "a stickler for cleanliness," makes sure the mausoleum is well-stocked with objets d'art, concocts potions to repulse her husband. Perpetually frustrated, Monsieur (Michel Piccoli) wields rifles and humps maids while proclaiming his belief in amour fou. The groundskeeper (Georges Géret) is a brutish bigot dictating right-wing pamphlets, the neighbor (Daniel Ivernel) is a retired Captain hurling garbage over the fence. Upstairs is the old patriarch (Jean Ozenne), who squeezes the newcomer's calf when she reads Huysmans and then bashfully introduces his footwear fetish: "Let me see those tiny boots move! Let me see them live!" Mirbeau's novel got Renoir to rework La Règle du Jeu in Hollywood, and here it allows Luis Buñuel to transpose Susana to France at the dawn of fascism. (The shrine to "religion, law and order, country above all" is orderly, notes the heroine, and it smells of cows.) Corroded elegance, with stately pans across the Franscope widescreen. The fable turns Grimm as the little servant (Dominique Sauvage) scampers through the woods, "watch out for wolves," the sequence of shots includes boar and rabbit and ends with a snail's slimy trail up the violated corpse's thigh. Jean-Claude Carrière's first script for Buñuel is already a model of erudite polish, and he has a droll turn as the curé advising Madame on her wifely duties. ("You mustn't derive any pleasure.") The social-climber becomes her own mistress and the murderer gets his own business, the rotten order's parade marches on. Losey in The Go-Between repays the compliment to The Servant. With Muni, Gilberte Géniat, and Bernard Musson. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |