Film Review
Immediately after completing his poetic realist masterpiece
Le
Jour se lève (1939), director Marcel Carné had
intended to adapt the popular James M. Cain novel
The Postman Always Rings Twice,
with Jean Gabin, Michel Simon and Vivian Romance lined up for the
principal roles. For various reasons, Carné chose to
abandon this project, allowing his contemporary Pierre Cenal to adapt
Cain's novel as
Le Dernier tournant (1939)
whilst he and his faithful screenwriter Jacques Prévert
conceived a far grander production, one that was destined to be one of
the biggest cinema events during the Nazi Occupation of France.
Les Visiteurs du soir represents a
seismic departure from the dark realist melodramas that had so far
predominated in Carné's oeuvre, a fairtytale fantasy that could
hardly be further removed from presentday concerns in occupied
France. The film was both a major critical and commercial success
and whilst it is now overshadowed by the director's subsequent
masterpiece
Les Enfants du paradis (1945)
it is, of all Carné's films, the one that is most poetic and
visually striking.
The scarcity of resources and the ever-present threat of German
censorship meant that
Les Visiteurs
du soir was far from being a trouble-free production. Yet,
despite these pressures, Carné was able to assemble a cast and
crew of exceptional ability and together they delivered one of the
grandest films made in Europe during the war, one that rivalled
comparable Hollywood efforts in its production values and aesthetic
qualities (the sets and costumes are particularly impressive).
The two big names in the cast list are Arletty and Jules Berry, both
perfectly matched to the roles that are alotted them. Arletty was
one of the most charismatic French actresses of her time and would
often as not be cast as the mischievous femme fatale, the part that she
effectively plays in this film. She had previously distinguished
herself in Carné's
Hôtel du Nord and would
later become immortalised as Garance in
Les Enfants du paradis.
Jules Berry was another actor renowned for playing morally deficient
characters, and as the Devil in
Les
Visiteurs du soir he is in his element. This was the role
that Berry was most eager to play - evidenced by his willingness to
learn all his lines before shooting began, something he very rarely did
(alas, once he got into the studio, he forget his lines). There
is such a manic relish to Berry's performance that he monopolises our
attention in every one of his scenes. When he makes his grand
entrance near the film's turgid midpoint, we know exactly who he is and
that the fireworks are just around the corner. Jules Berry's
bravura turn as a dandified Old Nick struggling to get his own way is
undoubtedly the film's main attraction, and in the end you cannot help
pitying the poor misguided wretch.
The lack of humanity displayed by Arletty and Berry's characters is
effectively contrasted with the torrents of human feeling exhibited by
Anne and Gilles, magnificently played by Maria Déa and Alain
Cuny (both at the start of their illustrious film careers). A
brace of fine characters - including Fernand Ledoux, Marcel Herrand and
Roger Blin - completes the ensemble to perfection, along with a job lot
of dwarfs who caused Carné no end of trouble on account of their
hypersensitivity and aversion to stunts.
Marcel Carné has stated that his main motivation for making
Les Visiteurs du soir was to avoid
censorship difficulties. It would be far easier for the Nazi
censors to find fault with a film in a contemporary setting that one
that takes place in a fictional land of the 15th century. It has
often been commentated that the film is far less innocent than it
seems, that it is in fact an allegorical commentary on the
occupation. This is perhaps most evident in the final sequences,
in which the Devil fails to lure the heroine from her true love and
becomes exasperated when he cannot extinguish the beating heart of the
lovers, even when they have both been turned to stone statues.
The message of defiance is less direct than that seen in Carné's
subsequent
Les Enfants du paradis,
but it is there all the same, for those who want to see it.
Right up until his death, Carné denied that the film was a
conscious attempt at an anti-Nazi allegory; he maintained that it was
an escapist fantasy, in a similar vein to his subsequent films
Juliette ou La clef des songes
(1951) and
Le Pays, d'où je
viens (1956). Even though it is all too easy to ascribe a
meaning to a film that was not intended by its authors, it is hard to
believe that Carné and Prévert did not have Hitler in
mind when they came up with their interpretation of the Devil - a
monster that delights in sowing discord, who expects unquestioning
allegiance from his minions, and who completely underestimates the
power of love and the resilience of the human spirit. But that is
in essence the beauty of
Les
Visiteurs du soir - like all great art it allows you to project
whatever meaning you want onto it, to interpret it as you
will.
© James Travers 2012
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Next Marcel Carné film:
Les Enfants du paradis (1945)