La Fête à Henriette (1952)
Directed by Julien Duvivier

Film Review

A full two years before François Truffaut published his provocative essay condemning the 'tendency of French cinema' Julien Duvivier arrived at a similar prognosis in his decidedly tongue-in-cheek film La Fête à Henriette.  Whereas Truffaut ends up hurling trite pseudo-intellectual invective at the old guard that he and his New Wave buddies would shortly go to war with, Duvivier relies on good, old-fashioned satire to show us the malaise that was besetting the film industry at the time.  In the film's framing story, two screenwriters - magnificently portrayed by Louis Seigner and Henri Crémieux - have to come up with a new idea for a film.  Their latest attempt was stamped on by the censor and so they have to go for something a little less controversial.  Neither writer wants to turn out the usual mindless crowdpleasing pap, but how far can they allow their over-active imaginations run?  Duvivier's eccentric film is a witty observation on the pleasures and pitfalls of the creative process - a struggle in which an author's desire to express something new is constantly at war with the need to gain the approval of the audience, the producer and the censor, that unholy trinity of conservative mediocrity that has put the kibosh on many an aspiring auteur.

By this stage in his career, Duvivier was sufficiently experienced to know the limitations of his art.  His own attempts at experimentation - of which this is surely one - had rarely gone down well and the film industry was predominantly geared towards giving audiences what they wanted.  The screenwriters who appear in La Fête à Henriette are readily identified as facets of Duvivier's own split personality - the play-it-safe traditionalist and optimist (Siegner) at eternal loggerheads with the mischievous cynic and borderline psychopath (Crémieux).  Amusing as the latter's narrative digressions are (most involve someone being horribly murdered, in the manner of a truly bad American B-movie thriller, with the camera constantly inclined at 45 degrees), it is the former that always seems to get the upper hand.  What audiences want, and what the censor smiles on, is good-natured sentimental drama, not sadistic blood-fests which leave the authors struggling with the problem of what to do with all the dead bodies.  The fact that the film concludes with an entirely predictable happy ending is a wry admission from a now distinctly nonplussed Duvivier that French cinema has become irredeemably staid and formulaic.

Whilst it remains a comparatively minor entry in Duvivier's impessive body of work, La Fête à Henriette does have the distinction - perhaps somewhat ironically - of having an expensive Hollywood remake.  The 1962 film Paris When It Sizzles, starring William Holden and Audrey Hepburn, may have more enduring appeal, but it lacks the acerbic tone and anarchic fun of the original.  Robert Guédiguian's 2000 film À l'attaque! is another near-remake of Duvivier's film which is more authentic in its representation of the trauma of the creative process.  Whilst both of these films are entertaining and insightful neither is as effective as Duvivier's in showing the factors that limit an artist's vision - in particular, the cold commercial pragmatism that forces a screenwriter or filmmaker to give audiences only what they are used to.

In later years Duvivier's schizophrenic attitude towards filmmaking would be reflected in his films, which alternated traditional quality crowdpleasers - Pot-Bouille (1957) and Le Diable et les dix commandements (1962) - with more daring and pessimistic works - Voici le temps des assassins (1956) and La Chambre ardente (1962).  It is as if Duvivier was trying, perhaps a little too self-consciously, to refute Truffaut's flat denial that there could ever be a "peaceful co-existence of the Tradition of Quality and an auteur's cinema."  To a degree, La Fête à Henriette is as incisive a commentary on the state of French cinema in the 1950s as Truffaut's famous essay, with the added advantage that it is much funnier and considerably less po-faced.  In May 1956, at the Cannes Film Festival, Duvivier and Truffaut discussed the possibility of making a film together.  If Duvivier hadn't been tied up on another project (L'Homme à l'imperméable) it might even have come off, with the result that the French New Wave may never have happened.  Now there's a thought - Julien Duvivier singlehandedly derails the Nouvelle Vague...

Film Synopsis

When the censor rejects their latest script two screenwriters set about developing the scenario for a new film.  They soon decide on their main characters - a young Parisian dressmaker named Henriette and her fiancé, a photo-journalist named Robert.  The difficulty is coming up with an original story to place them in.  As Henriette's birthday is the 14th July, what better than to set the entire film during France's national holiday?  Henriette and Robert will arrange to meet up amid the festivities but, for some reason, fate keeps them apart.  Of course!  Robert has another love interest, the irresistible starlet Rita Solar.  Whilst Robert is called away, ostensibly on business, Heniette is left alone - but not for long.  This is when the third character in the film will show up, a suave gangster type, Maurice.  With nothing better to do, Heniette hooks up with Maurice, and before she knows it she is caught up in his latest criminal exploit.  But how will it end - with a stage strewn with gore-splattered bodies, or with the lovelorn couple happily reunited under a night sky ablaze with fireworks?  The audience will no doubt expect the predictable happy ending, but do they deserve to get what they expect...?