Film Review
The oeuvre of Claude Autant-Lara exemplifies the quality tradition of
French cinema which the directors of the French New Wave were quick to
condemn as stillborn art, gloss without substance.
Before he became a director, Autant-Lara was a very accomplished set and costume
designer, and it was through this work that he acquired the keen visual
sense which would later allow him to craft films of exceptional
quality. But Autant-Lara was far from being a conventional
filmmaker. There is a darkly subversive quality to most of his
films, and some can even be seen as outright attacks on the
institutions for which the director had a personal loathing - the
Church, the army, and, in particular, the bourgeoisie. The fact
that Autant-Lara is far less well-known and less well-regarded than
other great filmmakers of his day is largely down to the adverse
criticism which his films garnered, largely in the popular rightwing
press. Contrary to what his Nouvelle Vague detractors would have
us believe, Claude Autant-Lara was one of the great mavericks of French
cinema, as much a
franc-tireur
as a master craftsman.
One of the films that most perfectly illustrates Autant-Lara's skill as
a filmmaker and his reputation as an agent provocateur is
L'Auberge rouge, a black comic
masterpiece which is now considered a classic of French cinema.
Autant-Lara had originally intended to make an adaptation of one of
Honoré de Balzac's works,
L'Auberge
des Adrets, to celebrate the centenary of the death of the
writer, but the project collapsed through lack of finance.
Instead, his writers - the legendary team of Jean Aurenche and Pierre
Bost - proposed a macabre comedy inspired by a real-life story.
In 1833, the owners of an inn in the Ardèche were publicly guillotined,
along with their servant, for having murdered 53 of their guests.
The story offered enormous comic potential, which Aurenche and Bost
tapped, with scant regard for good taste, in what would be their
darkest and funniest screenplay.
One precondition that was imposed on Autant-Lara by his producer was
the casting of Fernandel for the lead role, which, at the time, was
about as likely as Eddie Izzard being foisted on Ken Loach.
Whilst it was true that, by the early 1950s, Fernandel had become a
major star of French cinema, few rated him as a serious actor.
His straight performances in such films as Richard Pottier's
Meurtres
(1950) and
La Vache et le prisonnier
(1959) would gradually alter his public perception, but when he walked
onto the set of
L'Auberge rouge
it was evident that he and Autant-Lara belonged to completely different
universes - even if they had previously worked together on
Fric-Frac
(1939), an inconsequential comedy. At first, Fernandel
was keen to work with Autant-Lara on one of his prestige productions,
and his presence in the cast-list would virtually guarantee that the
film would be a box office success. Unfortunately, it was not
long before Fernandel and Autant-Lara realised that their union was not
to be a match made in heaven. The director's patience was stretched
to breaking point as he struggled to overcome his star's innate
tendency to hog every scene, whilst Fernandel resented having to share
the limelight with Françoise Rosay and Julien Carette, two
veterans of the French quality tradition and extremely talented
performers who were unwilling to be eclipsed by a mere vaudevillian.
Fernandel also had great misgivings over the content of the film.
A conservative and god-fearing man by nature, always mindful of his
responsibility to his family audience, the actor was extremely unhappy
with the way in which the film portrayed the Church and he found it
difficult to play his character, a monk, as a hypocritical
coward. Fernandel's eagerness to play the part of a more
sympathetic priest in
Le Petit monde de Don Camillo
(1952) can be read as a conscious attempt by the comic actor to redeem
himself after what he considered an aberration.
Fernandel's concerns about the film were soon borne out. On its
initial release,
L'Auberge rouge
was met with a barrage of negative publicity, mainly from the same
quarter that had savaged Autant-Lara's previous anti-bourgeois
offerings
Douce (1943) and
Le Diable au corps
(1947). The film was like a red rag to a psychopathic bull for
the Catholic Church, which vehemently condemned it for its humorous
assault on the sacraments (they were evidently far less bothered with
the notion of hotel guests being bumped off for their money).
Despite the extremely hostile reaction it ignited,
L'Auberge rouge still managed to
draw a respectable audience of 2.7 million - a modest result for Fernandel, who
would attract almost five times as many cinemagoers with his first Don
Camillo outing a year later.
The film was
remade in 2007 by Gérard Krawczyk, with
Gérard Jugnot struggling to fill Fernandel's shoes as the
unfortunate monk. Even with Christian Clavier and Josiane Balasko
valiantly lending their support to Jugnot, the film proved to be a
spectacular misfire that bears scant resemblance to Autant-Lara's
timeless classic. The original
L'Auberge
rouge may have provoked controversy and barrowloads of
hate-filled invective when it was first seen, but today it is
considered one of the highpoints of 1950s French cinema. Not only
does it stand as one of Claude Autant-Lara's best made and most
enjoyable films, it also features Fernandel at his most unrelentingly
hilarious, ably supported by the magnificent Françoise Rosay in
her most memorable villainess role. An added bonus is the blood
curdling song which accompanies the opening and closing credits, sung
by none other than Yves Montand:
C'est de trois monstres inhumains / Leurs
crimes sont épouvantables / Il y a bien environ vingt ans /
Qu'ils assassinaient les passants... Brrrr, I think I'll stick
to Holiday Inn in future.
© James Travers 2003
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Next Claude Autant-Lara film:
Les Sept péchés capitaux (1952)