L'Éternel retour (1943)
Directed by Jean Delannoy

Film Review

Although it is not entirely without interest, Jean Cocteau's first dalliance with cinema, Le Sang d'un poète (1930), was not a great success. The film's patron, the Vicomte de Noailles, was offended by its apparently anti-bourgeois slant and forbade it from being widely seen, whilst the critics who did see it dismissed it as a pale imitation of Buñuel's L'Âge d'or (1930).  After this discouraging setback, Cocteau gave up filmmaking and devoted himself to a milieu he was much happier with, the theatre.  It was primarily to further the career of Jean Marais, his lover, companion and principal muse, that he was lured back into cinema ten years later, to script the first of his great films, L'Éternel retour.

Marais had, by this time, become one of the rising stars of the French stage, although his association with Cocteau was proving to be both a help and a hindrance.  He had appeared in a few films, but had yet to make a name for himself in cinema.  Cocteau's attempts to make Marais a star had so far been frustrated by the illiberal collaborationist press, which used the couple's openly gay relationship to ferment public contempt for both men and their work.  Some of the plays which Cocteau had created for Marais - most notably Machine à écrire - were banned for their supposedly anti-Vichy sentiment. The success of L'Éternel retour, their first screen collaboration, must have come as a sweet victory.  The film not only made Marais an overnight film star, it also gave Cocteau the confidence to resume his filmmaking career.

Unwilling to direct the film himself, Cocteau passed that onerous responsibility on to Jean Delannoy, a film director for whom he had a great respect.  Delannoy had recently had a major success with Pontcarral, colonel d'empire (1942), although the film of his that Cocteau had particularly admired was Macao, l'enfer du jeu (1939), one of the best examples of 1930s French film noir.  Delannoy's reputation would later suffer at the hands of the gravediggers on the Cahiers du cinéma (notably François Truffaut), who saw him as the standard bearer of the 'qualité française' tradition.  Delannoy may not have been an auteur (at least not one that Truffaut would recognise) but he was a master of his craft and brought considerable flair and artistry to his films, evidenced by La Symphonie pastorale (1946), Les Jeux sont faits (1947) and Les Amitiés particulières (1964).

Cocteau could not have chosen a better director for his film than Delannoy, who respected Cocteau's unique poetic vision and did not attempt to superimpose his own signature on the film.  L'Éternel retour belongs unmistakably to Jean Cocteau's realm of realist poetry subtly draped in the trappings of the classic fairytale.  Had he been fortunate to have a larger budget, Cocteau would no doubt have preferred a historical setting for the film, akin to Marcel Carne's Les Visiteurs du soir (1942).  Instead, he was forced to have a contemporary setting, and this gives the film its unique character, where the ancient world (represented by a Medieval castle and misty island) finds itself in conflict with the modern world (shown by a circa 1940s garage).  L'Éternel retour is a dreamlike conflation of the real world as we recognise it and a sinister Gothic fairytale, in which the past and the present appear to be folded on top of one another like a fancy multi-layered gâteau.

It is clear that Cocteau learned a great deal from Delannoy whilst making this film.  The moody lighting and fluid camerawork that Delannoy frequently employed on his films to heighten the drama would be borrowed by Cocteau for his films, and are very much in evidence in La Belle et la bête (1946) and L'Aigle à deux têtes (1948).  It was whilst working on L'Éternel retour that Cocteau first met some of the talented technicians who would work on his later films, including the set designer Georges Wakhevitch.  By all accounts, Delannoy, Cocteau and Marais had an extremely good working relationship and would work together on another film, La Princesse de Clèves (1961).

If L'Éternel retour marked the start of one prominent screen career (Jean Marais's), it also provided the high point for another, that of Madeleine Sologne.  After appearing in Jacques Feyder's Les Gens du voyage (1938) and Sacha Guitry's Remontons les Champs-Élysées (1938), Sologne had her first major role in Richard Pottier's Le Monde tremblera (1939).  However, it was her role as the Blonde Nathalie in L'Éternel retour that brought her lasting fame.  Her flowing hair, dyed an almost iridescent blond, made her something of a cultural icon, and was copied by countless young women as a subtle gesture of defiance during the Occupation.  Alas, Sologne's fame was short-lived and her subsequent career was blighted by ill-considered roles in lacklustre films.  It was only in L'Éternel retour that Madeleine Sologne shone at her brightest, and her ethereal presence (beautifully complemented by Junie Astor's earthier Brunette Nathalie) contributes much to the film's arresting poetry.

The other legendary actress to grace the film is Yvonne de Bray, who very nearly steals the show as Jean Marais's grotesquely spiteful aunt.  A close friend of Cocteau, De Bray had previously triumphed on stage in his play Les Monstres sacrés and would be equally magnificent in his film version of his play Les Parents terribles (1948), in the role he created for her.  Yvonne de Bray had a gift for making her audience sympathise with her characters, no matter how intolerably venal they first appear.  Her character in L'Éternel retour is one of the most venomous she ever played, the epitome of the evil fairytale stepmother, but far from alienating her audience she arouses our pity and ultimately comes across as a tragic victim of circumstances, not merely a cruel monster.

The real villain of the piece is not De Bray's wicked aunt but the hideously malevolent dwarf son that she dotes on, a character played to perfection by the great Pierre Aleyrangues, better known as Piéral.  Having recently made his screen debut in Marcel Carné's Les Visiteurs du soir, Piéral very nearly makes himself the star of L'Éternel retour, so deliciously evil (and darkly humorous) is his character, Achille.  A one-time circus and musical hall performer (famous for his Mae West impression), Piéral cropped up regularly in historical films over the next few decades, including Jean Delannoy's popular Notre-Dame de Paris (1956), and would play the diminutive psychologist in Buñuel's Cet obscur objet du désir (1977).  Cinema's most famous midget actor, Piéral made no secret of his homosexuality and towards the end of his long and busy career he appeared in several gay-themed films, including two for director Guy Gilles.

The film derives its title from Nietzsche's 'eternal return', a belief that the same patterns in life are destined to repeat themselves over and over. Cocteau's characters Patrice and Nathalie are evidently modern versions of Tristan and Isolde, the mythical lovers who were separated in life but reunited in death.  It is easy to read into the story a subtle allegory of Occupied France, in which Patrice and Nathalie represent the soul of a nation torn apart by the evil that is visibly depicted by the dwarf Achille and his manipulative mother Gertrude.  Cocteau's own stance on Nazism and the Occupation is famously ambivalent, so it is hard to know whether the film was intended in a subversive vein.  An admirer of German art, Cocteau published an article in 1942 praising the work of the Third Reich's official sculptor Arno Breker - an article that led him to be charged as a collaborator after the war.  But, far from being a supporter of Nazism, Cocteau went out of his way to help his friends (Jews and resistant members) when they fell into the hands of the Gestapo.

The anti-Pétainism that Cocteau's detractors were keen to see in his work may be no more than an honest assertion of a writer's interest in the essential truth of human experience and a reluctance to be influenced by the political flavour of the month.  As tempting as it may be to regard L'Éternel retour as a courageous pro-resistance piece (in which Hitler is represented as a sick, psychopathic dwarf), it is unlikely that Cocteau, a closet admirer of the Third Reich, saw it as such.  It is not the tragedy of the Occupation that he depicts in the film, nor the senseless brutality of Fascism, but a much grander calamity - that perverse streak in human nature that compels us to go on repeating the mistakes of the past, reliving the same stories like a record being played over and over again.  Maybe free will is an illusion...

Film Synopsis

Patrice travels to a remote island to find a young wife for his uncle Marc.  There he meets a beautiful blonde named Nathalie, who agrees to return to the mainland to marry Patrice's uncle, if only to escape her life of penury.  The marriage takes place, to the chagrin of Patrice's aunt Gertrude, who lives in Marc's chateau with her timid husband and her malicious son, Achille, a dwarf.  Embittered because Marc has robbed her of her inheritance, Gertrude intends to profit from Patrice's obvious affection for Nathalie to gain her revenge.  Whilst Patrice and Nathalie are relaxing together, Achille pours liquid from a bottle marked poison into their drinks.  But the liquid is no poison - it is a powerful love potion...