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Bastille Day preparations, flags and decorations for the benefit of Tati's Jour de Fête. (Tracking shots from one tenement window to another owe a debt to the Murnau of The Last Laugh, with a direct nod as the sun rises over the artificial Parisian cityscape.) Spirited proles at the outdoors shindig, sterile swells in a nightclub pas de deux, the flower girl in between (Annabella). Her beau the cab driver (George Rigaud) enters the ritzy forbidden realm via fender-bender: "Can't you look where you're going? You got the hiccups?" A young couple trying to dance is a challenge of its own, first the band keeps stopping for beer and then a sudden downpour disperses the revelers, the kiss at the doorway is caught by the disapproving concierge. The former girlfriend (Pola Illéry) awaits upstairs. "Every time a dream of love is born, another is broken," goes the chanson. René Clair and the art of meticulously constructed slightness, the fanciful studio dollhouse gently cracked by melancholia. Street urchins and bickering chauffeurs, nosy biddies and Apache pickpockets, descendants of the Revolution one and all. Walsh's Me and My Gal for the flirtation with the underworld, changing hats are concurrent with Duck Soup. Pure blondes and tempting brunettes, Chaplin's changes of fortune, a certain Glackens canvas. Maurice Jaubert choruses exalt and lament romance, the other major sound belongs to the mechanical piano that wakes up the entire neighborhood in the middle of a robbery. "People just aren't cheerful anymore," complains the tippling millionaire mindlessly polishing his pistol. A work of marked importance to Jacques Demy, undoubtedly. With Raymond Cordy, Paul Ollivier, Raymond Aimos, Thomy Bourdelle, and René Bergeron. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |