Film Review
Inactive throughout the duration of the Second World War, Dimitri
Kirsanoff resumed his filmmaking career with this remarkable short film
based on Guy de Maupassant's 1883 novella
Deux amis. A Russian
émigré, Kirsanoff came to prominence when he started
making experimental films in France in the early 1920s, combining
Soviet ideas of montage with the 'impressionistic' approach to
subjectivity favoured by his avant-garde contemporaries Abel Gance,
Germaine Dulac,
Jean Epstein
and
Marcel L'Herbier.
During this early period, Kirsanoff garnered acclaim for his dazzling shorts
Ménilmontant (1926) and
Brumes d'automne (1929).
But even though he helmed a number of commercial films -
Rapt (1934),
La Plus belle fille du monde (1938),
Le Crâneur (1955),
Miss Catastrophe (1957) - he was
for the most part a marginal figure, his most inspired work being low
budget experimental productions over which he had complete control.
Deux amis is arguably
Kirsanoff's most intimate and humane film, one that succinctly
encapsulates the futility of war and the cruelty of existence. It
also a meditation on the value of friendship and honour, the two things
that most ennoble the human spirit and give meaning to life in a
seemingly absurd and barbaric universe. Kirsanoff eschews the
technical artifice of his early experimental films in favour of a more
coldly realistic approach which emphasises the warmth of the friendship
between the two main protagonists. The interiors are drab and
confined, the exteriors cold and dreary. The opening shots of a
hand reaching for a bird in a cage and dead rats being removed one by
one from a platter suggest immediately a hungry, comfortless world in
which civilisation is descending into savagery. Then we notice
the unremitting sounds of war in the background - shells
exploding like a continuous thunderstorm.
The only thing that comforts us is the sight of two old friends
enjoying each other's company and reminiscing on happier days.
With a jolting abruptness the happy reunion turns to tragedy.
Just as the friends are lamenting the folly of a totally pointless war
they are captured by Prussian soldiers and there is a clockwork
inevitability to what then ensues. As Morissot's last few minutes
of life are played out before us we hear the ticking of clocks that we
first heard in his shop at the start of the film. Are the
clockmaker and his friend mere cogs in a cosmic machine or are they
free to choose their destiny? - this seems to be the question Kirsanoff
wants us to reflect on as the all too predictable outcome unfolds
before our eyes.
In a departure from Maupassant's novella, the Prussian officer (Richard
Francoeur) is not a soulless barbarian but a strangely ambiguous
individual who, when he is first seen, is absorbed in painting a
landscape. He shows little emotion whilst discharging his duties
but betrays his humanity in subtle ways, at one point picking up and
caressing a small dog. As he orders his soldiers to execute the
two Frenchmen he is no more a villain than the two Frenchmen who had
previously yanked fishes out of the river for their supper. It is
just another case of one animal preying on another - or is it?
What prevents everything in creation from being just a clockwork toy is
the capability that human beings have for making a moral choice.
Messieurs Morissot and Sauvage submit to death not because they are
machines conforming to some hidden law of nature, but because they are
free to choose what they believe to be the right outcome. With
astonishing economy, Kirsanoff subverts Maupassant's pessimistic story
and gives it an incredible modern resonance, the moral being that of
all the forces in nature none is more powerful than the human
will.
© James Travers 2015
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
1870, during the Franco-Prussian War. Paris is under siege and
food is so scarce that its inhabitants are forced to eat their
household pets and any rats they can catch. Whilst walking the
empty streets, Monsieur Morissot, a middle-aged clockmaker, meets an
old friend, Monsieur Sauvage, and the two take a drink together.
Recalling happier times when they used to go fishing, the two men agree
to return to their old spot by the river just outside the city.
Whilst fishing, the two friends are reflecting on the barbarity and
futility of the war when half a dozen Prussian soldiers appear and herd
them at gunpoint into a boat. They are taken across enemy lines
to a Prussian officer, who tells them that he is justified in having
them shot as spies. The officer offers to spare their lives, if
they give him the password that will allow them safe passage back into
the city...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.