Montparnasse 19 (1958)

Montparnasse 19 is a French romantic film drama first released in 1958, directed by Jacques Becker and Max Ophüls.  The film stars Gérard Philipe, Lilli Palmer, Lea Padovani, Gérard Séty and Lino Ventura.  It has also been released under the title: Hero of Montmatre.  Our overall rating for this film is: very good.


In the Montparnasse district of Paris in 1919, a young Italian painter, Amedeo Modigliani, struggles to make a living as an artist.  He falls in love with Jeanne, the daughter of wealthy parents.  Against her parents’ wishes, Jeanne moves in with Modigliani, who is suffering from tuberculosis and has a drink problem.  An unscrupulous art dealer watches Modigliani’s health decline with patient relish...

Cinematic biographies of famous artists are not a rare phenomenon, but few such films manage to evoke the acute sense of despair and injustice that Montparnasse 19 does.  In his last film but one, Jacques Becker paints a poignant and engaging tale of an artist struggling to achieve both perfection in his work and public recognition.

It is a deeply pessimistic but honest film.   You can think of so many artists who have suffered a similar fate to Modigliani.  His work was shunned and ridiculed during his lifetime, but within hours of his death, the art-dealers were out in force, crawling all over his works.   The final scene of this film makes the point very effectively – it is a painfully tragic ending, and one which makes you feel both sad and angry.

The film itself had something of an eventful journey in production.  It was originally to have been directed by the legendary director Max Ophüls, but he fell seriously ill and could not continue the project.  He suggested that Jacques Becker, another great director, should direct the film in his place. Ophüls himself died just a few days before the film was released.

This is easily one of Becker’s better films.  As in his earlier film, Casque d’or , he manages to recreate the Paris in the early years of the 20th century – a curious melange of the gaiety and bustle of street cafés and the sinister shadowed back streets.   This schizophrenic atmosphere works to great effect, reflecting the changing mood of the film’s central character.  When Modigliani’s fate is finally sealed, the atmosphere becomes almost stifling – cold, dark, overwhelming.  And, in the shadows, lurks evil, in the shape of a wicked art-dealer (brilliantly played by Lino Ventura).

And who better to play Modigliani than Gérard Philipe?  An acting legend in his own lifetime, Philipe was the archetypal modern romantic hero – not the dashing, suave hero in the mould of Jean Marais, but a more human, slightly cynical kind of romantic hero.  Watching his performance in this film you might think he was made for the role of Modigliani – it is certainly one of his best screen performances.  Christian Matras’ masterful photography captures a real feeling of torment and despair in Philipe’s face – you can tell that the actor had a profound understanding of the artist’s psychology.  But what makes his performance so memorable – and so moving – is the knowledge that Gérard Philipe himself died within just a few years of making this film – aged just 37 (in fact, the same age as Modigliani).  This gives a disturbing tragic resonance to what is in any event a stirring film.

© James Travers 2001

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