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The plow and the star, as it were, from campagne to music-hall like "descending a rung or two on the old evolutionary ladder." The country girl (Simone Berriau) goes to town, a circular pan gives the theater behind the scenes with rehearsing hoofers and bustling technicians, it might be Busby Berkeley in Paris. "Obviously it's not the Folies Bergères." Apoplectic directors, egotistical thespians, suspicious policemen at the entrance checking for drugs. (The black valise sneaked in is revealed to contain a baby, one of the chorines breastfeeds him.) The matinee idol (Philippe Hériat) is a shady pasha who invites the heroine to dine à la japonaise, his concubine (Gina Manès) dons kimono and wields cigarette-holder. The artiste's dilemma, amply served by Max Ophüls with a Colette screenplay. Question of gaze, "fresh meat for the slave market": Dancers stripped on pedestals, among them the ingénue who, besieged by disembodied audience peepers, literally strikes back at the camera. (The live snake she handles during her number is a suggestive bonus.) "Qu'est-ce que tu veux? C'est notre vie." The smitten milkman (George Rigaud) is also a farm boy, romance blooms amid empty bottles on the staircase. Plenty of Ophüls bravura, including an early glimpse of the rotating stage from Lola Montès, later appreciated by Truffaut, "a masterpiece, a real little Renoir." Burned evidence brings down the house, the foiled clerk near the end sports a familiar mustache and cowlick. "I've survived forty-four reviews, I'll survive this one." Fellini and Lattuada in Luci del Varietà adjust the line of thought. With Yvette Lebon, Jeanne Fusier-Gir, Paul Azaïs, Nane Germon, Marcel Vallée, and André Gabriello. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |