Arch of Triumph (1948) - film review

Paris, 1938.  As Europe rushes towards war, the French capital is flooded with illegal immigrants hoping to escape persecution and imprisonment in their own countries.  One such man is Dr Ravic, a fugitive from the Germans who practices medicine illegally.  One evening, he talks a young woman, Joan Madou, out of committing suicide.  Her husband has just died and she has nothing to live for.  She falls instantly in love with Dr Ravic and the two become friends and then lovers.  Ravic is at first reluctant to get involved with Joan.   He is more interested in finding the Nazi officer, Haaka, who tortured his previous girlfriend to death.  Not long after Ravic is arrested and deported to Switzerland, Joan begins an affair with another man.  When Ravic returns a few months later, Joan realises that she still loves him and is eager to renew their relationship.  It is August 1939 and time is fast running out...

This adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s best selling novel Arc de Triomphe was ill-received when it was first released in 1948 and is often overlooked today but it surely deserves a place alongside director Lewis Milestone’s other great films.  Milestone had previously adapted Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front in 1930, a work that is now considered one of the greatest anti-war films of all time, but here he is somewhat less successful at capturing the essence of the writer’s novel.  Much of the complexity and richness of Remarque’s book is lost, largely as a consequence of drastic cuts that were insisted upon by the studio bosses, which reduced the film’s runtime from four hours to two.

Despite being pared down to the minimum, Arch of Triumph still manages to convey something of the bleak times in which the story takes place.  In the months that preceded Britain’s declaration of war on Germany in September 1939, Europe was in a state of limbo; everyone was living on borrowed time; the future was not a reality that anyone could face with equanimity.  This is really what the film is about: living for the moment, seizing those last moments of happiness before the storm breaks and drowns everything in dismal sorrow.

Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer are brought together for a heartrending rematch after their first successful pairing in George Cukor’s dark thriller Gaslight (1944).  Both actors are at their best here.  Bergman trumps her performance in Casablanca (1942) and is devastatingly poignant in her later scenes where her character realises that her one chance of happiness has eluded her forever.  Boyer is superb as the man who, haunted by a terrible past, is unable to accept the tenderness and affection that Bergman offers him.  Both actors are perfect for the roles they play, their distinctive accents emphasising their sense of perpetual estrangement with the world around them (even if Boyer is a Frenchman playing a German).   The only false note is Charles Laughton, who is obviously miscast as a sadistic German officer; his performance, as subtle as a Zeppelin covered in swastikas, would not be out of place in the sitcom ’Allo, ’Allo.  

Russell Metty’s atmospheric chiaroscuro cinematography adds greatly to the mood of the piece, which clearly owes something to the poetic realist style of late 1930s French cinema.  Admittedly, the budgetary constraints are a little too obvious in a few places (the back projection used for the Riviera sequence is bad even for a film of this period) and, at two hours, the film does drag somewhat towards the end.  But the beguiling performances from Bergman and Boyer, supported by a well-honed screenplay, sustain our interest and make this a memorably moving romantic melodrama.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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