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Capra's Lady for a Day provides the root of the tale, the Occupation on the horizon provides the mood. "The hottest nightclub in Montmartre," La Sirène, "the Ice Nymph" (Edwige Feuillère) weary amidst hanging nets and bare under fur coats. Demimonde widow and single mother, numbly servicing high rollers and wistfully confiding in the emcee (Paul Azaïs). The shock from the past is a doctor from Montreal (George Rigaud) in town for three days, their time together was a snowy idyll halted mid-matinee, the truth about her current station must not be found. "My profession is written on my face," keeping up appearances means a lavish apartment secured via a ruthless gangster. Fabrication of illusion, burden of memory: "Life begins today, okay?" "No, it doesn't." Max Ophüls' Camille, as it were, the perfect midpoint between Liebelei and Madame de... A heroine of exposed body and anxious soul, flitting from charade to charade and freezing before a mirror. "Is it believable?" "What?" "Me." The rented suite is a realm of sumptuous pretense, reminiscences unfold in the dark following a blown fuse, a cabin serves as a temporary sanctuary. (The camera parts window curtains to find the cuddling couple like a bubble in the void: "I'd like to stay here forever, and not let the world touch our happiness.") Persistent past and uncertain future, the most painful present of all. The son (Michel François) plays with toy trains and bids adieu to mom aboard a real one, the description of a child's game ("This is all very charming to me, but also a little cruel") doubles as the essence of Ophüls. The darkening coda (unattended table, unhooked telephone, unanswered cry) is parallel with Carné's Le Jour se Lève, and expanded in Antonioni's L'Eclisse. With Daniel Lecourtois, Mady Berry, Georges Lannes, and André Gabriello. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |