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The fateful poetry of trains in La Bête humaine is foreglimpsed, railway bridges bracket the tale. Rural Southern France, Pagnol country deepened and darkened by Jean Renoir, a tessitura of songs and dialects. The Italian laborer (Charles Blavette) lives with the local landlady (Jenny Hélia) but pines for the Spanish flirt (Celia Montalván), on the road by the vineyard they share quite a frisson involving a wasp-spung back and an unbuttoned dress. "Our country ways," the maiden is stuck with the foreman who raped her (Max Dalban), two couples miserable at the roisterous double wedding. Years go by, tragedy comes leisurely, workers waiting for a quarry explosion have a little joke: "That fuse sure is taking its time." (The cliff side collapsing in the background is but one of the actualités that come with open-air filming.) Peasants reenacting their dramas, concurrent with Flaherty (Man of Aran) and ahead of Powell (The Edge of the World) and Visconti (La Terra Trema). "A new life under different skies" is the dream, the light in the window glimpsed from the gypsy camp in the woods. The brute demands sardines at the dinner table and throws a cat around, the heroine gets a thrashing and defends herself with a pistol, his corpse lies on the floor as the cat eats the sardines. Seaside view, outdoors faucet and window opening on a white wall, distinct compositions linked by Renoir in a panning shot. The complementary vividness of sunlight and mud, creeping mist for the landlady rowing on silvery waters, a funeral scored to tolling bells and rustling wind. "My country is wherever I can earn enough to eat." The gamekeeper with the shotgun returns in La Règle du jeu, naturally. Cinematography by Claude Renoir. With Édouard Delmont, Michel Kovachevitch, and Andrex. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |