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The anthem is first heard wafting in from a banquet room, the genial mug (Edmond Ardisson) in line to sign up for the cause finds it a bit on the cumbersome side: "It's full of unpronounceable words." The Revolution from 1789 to 1792, the national epic as human tragicomedy, Jean Renoir wouldn't want it any other way. Fall of the Bastille, not seen but told to Louis XVI (Pierre Renoir) as he enjoys a snack in bed. (He later steals away from Versailles matters to savor the novelty known as the tomato, "the stomach is ignorant of the subtleties of politics.") Citizens meeting atop Haute Provence hills and marching through Alsace forests, "an army of cobblers, weavers and lawyers" dreaded by aristocrats determined to hang on to privilege. A new concept, "la nation," defined by the clerk turned firebrand (Andrex) to the nobleman (Aimé Clariond) whose garrison has been overtaken: "C'est vous, c'est moi." An effortlessly mobile camera on some of Renoir's most densely packed frames, the airiest of historical sprawls. (The view takes variegated form—assembly, burlesque, swashbuckler, war film, newsreel, shadow play.) Multiple perspectives and multiple voices, with Louis Jouvet's exacting irony under a severe peruke as vital as Julien Carette's rambunctious grousing around a plebeian bonfire. "What's going on in Paris?" A tracking shot timed to a commander's inspiring speech ends on a volunteer's offhand comment about hoping to see his girl again, a high-angled composition of the monarch and Marie Antoinette (Lise Delamare) departing the gardens cranes down to the royal scion playing on fallen leaves. The storming of the Tuileries Palace hopes for fraternity in the face of bloodshed, the closing vista of the clash with Prussian forces gives the last to Goethe. "It's not a painting... it's a fresco!" The camarades are Vidor (War and Peace) and Rossellini (Viva L'Italia). With Léon Larive, Jenny Hélia, William Aguet, Gaston Modot, Nadia Sibirskaïa, Jean-Louis Allibert, Jean Aquistapace, Ëdouard Delmont, Georges Spanelly, Irène Joachim, Jaque Catelain, Paul Dullac, and Elisa Ruis. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |