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Outlawed miracles under German rule, as they say in Casablanca, still Marcel Carné understands cinema's fanciful-subversive side can never be wholly censored. "May I at least dream?" "As little as possible." Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1485 or nearly, the game of seduction in the Middle Ages is literally a diabolical one—the interlopers are infernal envoys, disguised as minstrels and dispatched to spread despair among mortals. At the blanched baronial castle, a pair of concurrent ballads. One is a tragedy about the weary Lothario (Alain Cuny) awakened by the purity of the young bride (Marie Déa), the other a cruel comedy where the heroine's humorless betrothed (Marcel Herrand) and her bereft father (Fernand Ledoux) are bewitched by the enigmatic troubadour with lavish thighs (Arletty). Affairs "as old as the world, and just as worn out," also a vision of romantic resistance achingly apropos to French eyes during the Occupation. A chorus of disfigured dwarfs, a ballroom stilled by the strum of a magic lute, a deadly joust glimpsed through the camera obscura of a water fountain (the loser's blood spreads like an oil slick). "Alors l'amour est comme la mort?" The grave atmosphere gets a lift from a most merry Diable (Jules Berry), who arrives via lightning bolt (cp. Murnau's Faust) and caresses flames in a bonfire like puppies: "I find the troubles of the world entertaining!" Moonlit gardens and dungeon chains for defiant lovers, an air of ornate elegance barely cloaking national deprivation. (Antonioni is uncredited assistant director, Alain Resnais and Simone Signoret are amid the famished extras.) The influence on Bergman is considerable (vide The Seventh Seal, but The Devil's Eye, too), Lubitsch in That Lady in Ermine remembers the painting's sudden smile. Carné ends on an invocation of Felicia Hemans, "through the pale marble's veins" and onto Les Enfants du Paradis. Cinematography by Roger Hubert. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |