La Fin du jour (1939)
Directed by Julien Duvivier

Film Review

The gloomiest of the poetic realist filmmakers of the 1930s, Julien Duvivier began work on his most sombre film of the decade just as Europe was about to be plunged into a second devastating conflagration, the first act of WWII.  La Fin du jour would prove to be a depressingly apt title for a film made on the eve of a war that might well have brought a decisive end to human civilisation, if not the world (as Abel Gance had envisaged in his earlier film La Fin du monde, released in 1931 but horribly prophetic).  The film marked something of a turning point in Duvivier's career, a total rejection of the tempered optimism that crept into French cinema in the mid-1930s - including his own La Belle équipe (1936) - and a blithe acceptance of the fact that human existence is inescapably dire and most human beings are irredeemably bad.  Even a spell in Hollywood did little to cure Duvivier of his chronic pessimism - if anything it reinforced it, making him the grumpy old man of French cinema when he was barely into his fifth decade.

Whilst it is notionally a comedy-drama rather than a straight drama, La Fin du jour offers little in the way of comic relief.  It deals with the most depressing of subjects, and one to which cinema tends to give a wide berth: the trauma of growing old.  Duvivier and his esteemed screenwriter Charles Spaak (the team that had previously brought us La Bandera and La Belle équipe) chose to set their film in a retirement home for a specific kind of person, actors who have fallen on hard times, but it is nonetheless a film that speaks to us all, confronting us with the grim realities that await us at the end of our lives, and doing so with surprising brutality.  The fact that the three lead actors (Michel Simon, Louis Jouvet and Victor Francen) were made up to be much older than they were lends the film a heightened poignancy (particularly as Jouvet died comparatively young, at 63).  It is worth nothing that Maurice Jaubert, who supplied the film's magnificently wistful score, died not long after the film's release, one of the early casualties of WWII.

As you might expect for a film that deals with the bleakest of subjects, Duvivier's trademark cynicism is rarely out of sight.  The bitterness and rivalry to which the acting profession is especially prone are distilled into the deadliest venom which the protagonists cannot help spitting at each other as they cling to their sad delusions and old enmities.  Some, notably the wretched Cabrissade (Michel Simon at his most devastatingly pathetic), cannot accept the failure of their lives and create a fiction for themselves, believing that they were once great actors.  Others, including Saint-Clair (Louis Jouvet in an unusually antipathetic role), resort to subterfuge (such as sending old love letters to themselves) to prove they are still admired.  In one memorable night-time tracking shot, where the camera roves along the labyrinthine corridors of the home, we hear the applause that the aged actors recall in their dreams - faint echoes of a happier time, their main (and perhaps only) consolation.

Yet, in the midst of this sadness, delusion and fermenting resentment, there are also some moments of exquisite tenderness, something that is rarely found in a Julien Duvivier film.  An old couple who have resisted marriage through fear that this might end in bitter divorce finally agree to tie the knot so that they cannot be separated.  The embittered classic thespian Marny is moved to tears when he finds that his work is still remembered and valued by an enthusiastic young man (François Périer) who persuades him to give a private reading of Romeo and Juliet.  Later, Marny finds himself unable to read a mendacious speech at Cabrissade's funeral and instead improvises a more heartfelt and sincere tribute to a former comrade.  It is these touchingly humane digressions that give La Fin du jour its lyrical charm and poignancy - quite a contrast with the avalanche of pessimism that Duvivier would habitually offload onto his audience after the war, in such films as Panique (1947) and Voici le temps des assassins (1956).

Film Synopsis

After a final performance, the faded star Raphael Saint-Clair is ready to take up residence at the Abbaye de Saint-Jean-la-Rivière, a retirement home for actors who have fallen on hard times.  The man who is most hostile to Saint-Clair's arrival is his long-time rival Marny, who considers himself a far greater actor and bitterly resents Saint-Clair's easily won success.  Saint-Clair finds an unlikely friend in Cabrissade, a deluded old ham who spent his whole career as an understudy and never once had the opportunity to shine on the stage.  When Cabrissade demands rights for his fellow inmates, the home's director makes a shocking revelation.  The home's owners have run out of money and have decided to close it down.   It looks as if Cabrissade and his fellow suffers will be split up and sent to the state-run institutions across France...