Souvenirs perdus (1950) - film review

Four forgotten objects in a lost property office each has a story to tell.  An Egyptian statue was a present that Philippe once gave to his lover Florence.  After many years apart, the couple meet up by chance and spend a happy evening together, but they are too proud to admit that they have spoiled their lives.  A funeral wreath recalls a far more humorous romantic coupling, that of composer Jean-Pierre and his devoted admirer Suzy.  When her lover abandons her, Suzy is intent on killing him, but is heartbroken when, through a misunderstanding, she learns he is already dead.  Jean-Pierre’s reprieve proves to be short-lived...  A fur-lined cravat tells a more tragic tale, that of Gérard de Narçay, a dangerous killer who escaped from a lunatic asylum.  On the run from the police, he encounters a distraught young woman, Danièle, who is about to kill herself.  Fearing that the suicide will draw the police’s attention, Gérard befriends her and for the first time in his life discovers kindness.  Alas, the idyll is not to last…   An abandoned violin is all that remains of Raoul’s happy dream to marry a lonely widow, Florence, and trade his policeman’s uniform for a shopkeeper’s apron.  To win Florence’s affections, Raoul persuades a handsome young street singer to encourage her son’s attempts to play the violin.  Inevitably, Raoul loses his sweetheart to his younger rival...
© Willems Henri (Brussels, Belgium)

Souvenirs perdus is easily one of the best French anthology films (films à sketches), although it is not one of Christian-Jaque’s best-known films.  The popularity of this film and Max Ophüls’s La Ronde, released in France a few months earlier, created something of a craze for the anthology film (and not only in France), which was to last well into the next decade.  It is not too hard to see why this kind of film was so popular: cinema audiences get to watch several different films for the price of a single ticket, and the short films are sufficiently different that there is bound to be at least one that you will like.  If one of the stories fails to hit the mark, you only have to wait twenty minutes or so for the next one to come along.  Given its entertainment potential, it is surprising that the format is so rarely employed these days.

One of the most respected mainstream filmmakers in French cinema, Christian-Jaque had no difficulty attracting talent and Souvenirs perdus has probably the most prestigious cast list of his entire career.  What other film can boast such a glittering star-studded ensemble as Yves Montand, François Perier, Suzy Delair, Gérard Philipe, Armand Bernard, Edwige Feuillère, Pierre Brasseur, Danièle Delorme and Bernard Blier?  No French film enthusiast can avoid salivating at the prospect of so much talent in one film, and (as was not always the case for this kind of film), every actor is perfectly matched to his (or her) role and is given a script worthy of his talents.  The screenwriting team is almost as illustrious as the one that appears before the camera, with such creative giants as Jacques Companéez, Henri Jeanson and Jacques Prévert pooling their collective resources to deliver a very special end-of-year treat for French cinema audiences in 1950.

Unlike the vast majority of anthology films, each of the segments of the film was directed by one and the same director, Christian-Jaque.  You might think that this would undermine the main selling point of the anthology concept, namely that the segments should be very different both in subject matter and style.   Fortunately, Christian-Jaque was such a versatile filmmaker (as the most fleeting of glances at his filmography will demonstrate) that you could almost swear that the four segments of Souvenirs perdus were directed by four different filmmakers.  And the main appeal of this film is that the four stories are very different in their approach.  The first is a conventional romantic melodrama, the second a Feydeau-like farce, the third a film noir psycho-thriller and the fourth a wistful comedy-drama.  Artistically, the one segment that stands out is the third, in which Christian-Jaque goes Hell-for-leather in his attempt to imitate Orson Welles.  With its dramatic use of harsh lighting and slanted camera angles, not forgetting an utterly terrifying performance from Gérard Philipe, this is one of the most chilling entries in Christian-Jaque’s entire oeuvre, and certainly one of French cinema’s best pastiches of American film noir.  It also dispels the myth that the psycho-thriller genre began with Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960).  Unceasingly entertaining, this is one anthology film that definitely does not deserve to be forgotten.

© James Travers 2012

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