La Fin du jour (1939) - film review

A one-time popular actor Raphael Saint-Clair takes up residence in a home for retired actors, where he meets up with a former rival, Marny.  The inmates revive past glories and failures, even old jealousies.  Another resident, the has-been Cabrissade, demands rights for his fellow inmates, but is humiliated when the director informs him that the owners of the home have run out of money.  It looks as if Cabrissade and his fellow suffers will be dispersed into state-run asylums...

This is a very sombre film which offers an uncompromising depiction of the humiliation and bitterness that accompanies the end of an actor’s life.  Even the great actor Raphael Saint-Clair has to share the same fate as the failed non-entity, Cabrissade (played superbly by Michel Simon).  All perish in the end, the great, the good and the mediocre.

It is difficult not to be moved by the fate of the collection of old people that populates Duvivier’s film, knowing that in their youth they each enjoyed some fame and success as actors and actresses.  Some seek solace in their memories, playing tunes on the piano, singing long-forgotten ballads, or laughing about old times.  It is a sad reminder of our own mortality and the cruel injustice of ageing.  For an actor, the brutality of this outcome is all the more acute – for he has tasted glory, but in the end it earns him nothing.

A sad film whose impact is heightened by Duvivier’s sober direction and Maurice Jaubert’s melancholic musical score.  Also, seeing Jouvet and Simon (both actors at the height of their popularity) playing characters who were much older than themselves adds a certain tragic poignancy.

© James Travers 2000

Write a review for this film...

What do you think of this film?