Film Review
It was whilst he was working as an assistant to Gaston Ravel at Gaumont
during the early years of WWI that Jacques Feyder began making his own
films, although most of these were lowbrow commercial offerings foisted
on him by his employers.
Têtes
de femmes, femmes de tête, the first film he made, stands
out from these early offerings on account of its more sophisticated
narrative and some imaginative directorial touches that already reveal
Feyder's future capability as an auteur filmmaker. It is also one
of the longest of Feyder's first films (running to 36 minutes) and one
that has been best preserved, its near-pristine condition belying the
fact that it is almost a century old. The nuanced performances
(noticeably different from the stylised, over-expressive kind of acting
that was more prevalent at the time) also makes the film appear more
modern than it is.
Têtes de femmes, femmes de
tête is a playful social comedy with just a hint of malice
- not too far removed from the kind of amusement that Ernst
Lubitsch indulged in during the early phase of his career. A
woman discovers that her husband is cheating on her and enlists the
help of her enterprising sister to save her marriage. The plot is
simple to the point of banality and has no doubt serviced numerous
subsequent films but it provides a sound framework for a light-hearted
assault on the behaviour and attitudes of the bourgeoisie. The
most interesting character is the interfering sister, played with
unrelenting verve by Suzanne Delvé. A thoroughly modern
miss, Delvé's character has an independence of spirit and barely
contained contempt for the male sex that make it hard not to pin the
words 'lesbian' and 'suffragette' on her. In fact, she is
probably neither of these things, just a capable woman who knows her
own mind and how to use it to good effect. She is far more
deserving of the description
femme
de tête (strong-willed woman) than her ineffectual
sister. By contrast, Kitty Hott's cuckquean wife and André
Roanne's casually unfaithful husband are pretty pathetic, lame
representatives of an effete social class which looks as if it is
destined to drown in its own lethargy. If we pity the Princess
Orazzi, it is not because a pestilential do-gooder puts the kibosh on
her illicit romance, but because she had to fall for someone as dull,
vain and stupid as André Roanne's over-lacquered man about town.
Gaston Ravel was among Gaumont's most talented film directors and,
working in collaboration with him, Feyder was quick to learn from and
develop his technique as he came to grips with the challenges of the
new and still fairly pliant art of filmmaking.
Têtes de femmes, femmes de tête
is modest compared with Feyder's subsequent great films, consisting
mostly of static medium-shot portraits of two of the main
protagonists. The film has none of the ambition and visual
spectacle of
L'Atlantide (1921) and
La Kermesse héroïque
(1935), but there some inspired touches which point the way towards
these greater films. When the Princess Orazzi is introduced, we
see only her face reflected in a mirror as she scrutinises her
appearance, in a way that immediately reveals her true character.
When the sisters go shopping, we see only their reflection in the shop
windows, and when they conspire together it is often with one or both
of them seen in a mirror.
How appropriate that reflected images should play such a prominent role
in a film where surface appearances count for everything and where what
we think we see isn't necessarily the way things really are.
Even the title has a near mirror symmetry that suggests something
cruel beneath its innocent wordplay.
As you watch the film, there is a sense that you do so as an outsider
looking in on a closed world, observing but not quite understanding the
strange rituals taking place within its rigid confines. It's a
similar kind of subjective experience to that which Feyder would
achieve on his subsequent masterpiece,
Visages d'enfants (1925), in
marking the division between the separate worlds inhabited by children
and adults. Perhaps the most significant thing about the film is
that it was the first occasion that Feyder directed Françoise
Rosay, who appears here in just one scene, as a suitably overdressed
guest at a party. The following year, Feyder would marry Rosay
and over the next two decades gave her prominent roles in some of his
finest films, including
Le Grand Jeu (1934) and
Pension
Mimosas (1935).
© James Travers 2015
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Jacques Feyder film:
L'Atlantide (1921)
Film Synopsis
Distressed that her husband is having an affair with a society belle, a
young woman appeals to her sister for help. The sister's initial
suspicion that nothing is amiss is quickly dispelled when, during a
visit to the opera, both women witness the husband speaking on intimate
terms with the Princess Orazzi in her private box. The latter two
plan to meet up at a spa resort and, to that end, the husband goes to
the trouble of getting a medical note from his doctor. The
sisters soon see through the deception and act to prevent the husband
meeting up with the princess at the train station as they had
arranged. It is now time to bring the second stage of the
operation into action. The wife must convince her husband that
she is having an affair with another man...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.