Un carnet de bal (1937) - film review

After the death of her husband, Christine looks back on her life and reflects that she could have been so much happier if she had instead married someone else.  One by one, she visits the men with whom she danced at a ball during her youth, and is surprised at what she discovers...

Un carnet de bal is a good example of French cinema of the late1930s, and one of the earliest successful attempts at the episodic film which became so popular in subsequent decades.

The multi-part structure of the film (effectively a series of loosely connected vignettes) is a little unsatisfying, but the individual stories are themselves almost perfectly formed.  It is worth seeing if only for the remarkable performances of the legendary actors that make up the cast list: Jouvet, Fernandel, Raimu, Baur...

The director, Julien Duvivier, was so pleased with this film that he remade it during his time in Hollywood, in 1941, as Lydia.

© James Travers 2001

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The French film at its best. Years before the New Wave, this film had a wonderful look, some of the best actors that ever lived, a dramatic but believable plot, crisp and sharp cinematography. Nothing gimmicky at all.
Oradell (NJ, USA) 

Sadly neglected today, Julien Duvivier was one of the finest French film directors whose career spanned the silent era until the 1960s. He made memorable films in each decade, with the 1930s being especially rich.  In Un Carnet de bal he was working with Henri Jeanson, one of four (Jean Aurenche, Charles Spaak and Jacques Prévert) top French screenwriters (this became five in 1943 when Pierre Bost formed a writing partnership with Aurenche that endured until the 1960s).  The portmanteau film was fairly new at the time and Un Carnet de bal set the standard.  Marie Bell as the newly widowed Christine was surrounded by some of the finest male actors in France (including Louis Jouvet and Fernandel) and on the distaff side Francoise Rosay, in denial about the death of her son.  Along with La Belle Equipe, Pépé le Moko and La Fin du jour, this is one of Julien Duvivier’s finest films of the 1930s, and also one of the finest from France.
Leon Nock (London, England) 

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