Film Review
Comedy is not a genre that we would most readily associate with the
French filmmaker Henri-Georges Clouzot. Bleak dramas and
torturously suspenseful thrillers were more Clouzot's stock in
trade.
Miquette et sa
mère, the film he made immediately before his two most
famous films,
Le Salaire de la peur (1953)
and
Les Diaboliques (1955), is
something of an oddity in Clouzot's oeuvre. A boisterous period
comedy, this distinctly un-Clouzot-esque offering is a lively
adaptation of a popular turn-of-the century play of the same title by
Robert de Flers and Gaston Arman de Caillavet, which had previously
been adapted by Henri Diamant-Berger in 1934. There are no
gruesome deaths or twisted intrigue on offer here - just a constant
stream of good-natured gags and a slightly ironic look at the life of
the theatrical artiste.
Miquette et sa mère may
seem to be an odd digression for a director who had come to be
associated with more serious fare but it is less surprising when you
discover just where Clouzot began his career. In the early 1930s,
Clouzot started out in German film studios, scripting and later
directing a slew of French versions of German comedies and operettas,
such as
Tout pour l'amour
(1933) and
Caprice de princesse
(1934). It is easier to accept the myth than Clouzot began his
directing career with the devious whodunit
L'Assassin habite au 21 (1942)
but by then he had already been cutting his teeth for almost a decade
on much lighter mainstream entertainment. For Clouzot,
Miquette et sa mère may have
been a nostalgia trip as much as anything else, a chance to revisit his
past. It is certainly not a film that appears to have been made
by someone with an aversion to or lack of experience with comedy.
This is the film in which Clouzot reveals his human side perhaps more
than any other.
A superb cast and a cracking script help to make this one of Clouzot's
most entertaining films. More than just a classic French farce,
Miquette et sa mère offers a
thoughtful reflection on the relationship between theatre and cinema,
indeed between theatre and life. The theatricality of some of the
performances (Louis Jouvet and Saturnin Fabre are so O.T.T. that
they look as if they have absconded from a madhouse) highlight the
touching reality that Bourvil and Danièle Delorme bring to their
portrayals. The play-within-the-play which occupies most of the
final act allows theatre to take over completely and all of the
characters have, by now, become players whose world extends no further
than the boundaries of their stage.
Miquette et sa mère reminds
us that we are all actors, our lives contained within the roles that
have been created for us and which we perform for - who knows? - some
bored celestial onlooker. If Clouzot was able to direct a comedy
as deftly as this you can't help wondering why he never again made a
film like it. He seems to have preferred an altogether darker
kind of theatre, in which the vile perversities of human nature are picked
over for dramatic rather than comedic effect.
© James Travers, Willems Henri 2014
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Next Henri-Georges Clouzot film:
Le Salaire de la peur (1953)
Film Synopsis
In 1900, 18-year-old Miquette Grandier lives in a small provincial town with
her widowed mother, Madame Grandier, the owner of a tobacco shop. She
has long dreamed of a glorious career on the stage, and after seeing a play
performed by a theatre company run by the ageing actor Monchablon she makes
up her mind to be an actress. This doesn't quite accord with the plans
of her social-climbing mother, who is hoping that she will marry the Marquis
de la Tour-Mirande, a perfect match even if he is several decades her senior.
Alas, it is not the decrepit Marquis that the flighty Miquette is drawn to
her, but his lovably idiotic son Urbain. With Urbain forced into marrying
a rich heiress against his will, there is nothing to stop Miquette from moving
to Paris to realise her acting dreams, pursued by her interfering mother
and the over-attentive Marquis. Her new profession suits her and within
no time she has all the makings of a great stage actress. During a
tour of the provinces, Miquette and Urbain run into each other by chance
and discover that the time for playacting is over...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.