I'm writing from home, off work till Sunday morning. Tonight I saw a great film by a French director who was unknown to me until recently. His name is Claude Autant-Lara, he lived to be 98 years old, and he made movies steadily from 1930 to 1972, but for some reason he has never been well known in the annals of French cinema, perhaps because he was not part of a young, hip New Wave of Truffaut & Godard, et al. Seeing his body of work on IMDB, I was surprised never to have heard of him, and if it weren't for Criterion, who just this month released four of his mid-40s films on their Eclipse label, and if the Libe had not carried those films, I would likely still not know his name. Claude Autant-Lara should be well known, at least to cinephiles, and now that may happen with these releases, of which I have three of the four dvds in my possession, and will be watching them over the weekend.
Tonight I began with "Lettres D'amour". You can't go wrong with a title like that, though I didn't know what to expect concerning style and story. Five minutes into the film, however, I was hooked. The movie is played as a farce, with quick repartee between the members of an ensemble cast. The year is 1855, in a provincial town in the French countryside. The local postmistress is receiving letters, addressed to her, but meant for her lifelong friend who happens to have graduated to the local high society. She is married to a "Prefect" (a Mayor or something like that), but he is an old fuddy duddy and she is having an affair. Her paramour sends her the Love Letters of the title, but to be discreet he addresses them to the postmistress, who then surreptitiously forwards them to her wealthy friend.
What could possibly go wrong? :)
The postmistress opens the letters and reads them before passing them on to her friend, the rightful recipient. The postmistress feels it is her right to open and read them; they are addressed to her, after all, and - most importantly! - this is a French farce. With the French, anything goes, and this time director Autant-Lara winds up a plot that is so deftly constructed, with layer upon layer of deception and mistaken identity, that you have to be on your toes while viewing to take it all in.
I was reminded of the time, about fifteen years ago, when I watched the classic American Screwball Comedy "His Girl Friday". The dialogue between Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell was so fast that I felt like a deer in the headlights. I could not keep up, and I wondered later how they even prepped to execute that kind of fast talking.
There is no "speed rapping" on that level in "Lettres D'amour", but the farcial mixups arrive one after the other, and the actors play it to the hilt. The main attraction is the directorial style of Autant-Lara. Man, what a great find! He shoots the movie in well-lit black and white (no Noir shadows here), and it looks as if you are attending a fantasy ball in France in the mid-19th century. Though there is deception, there are no real bad vibes, everyone is clever rather than cunning, and there is a subplot running throughout that pits the blue-collar people of the town, like the postmistress, against the wealthy folks. In the end, their differences are settled in a dance contest. But what about the Love Letters? Who wrote them? Do we ever find out?
That I can't tell ya. You'll just have to see for yourself. But hooray for Claude Autant-Lara! I encourage anyone interested in movies to check out French cinema, and not just the well known New Wave films of the late 50s through the 60s, but also the more conventional French movies of the 1940s, which were made more in the style of Golden Age Hollywood but with an enormous French Twist. See "Children Of Paradise" by Marcel Carne, for instance, or the films of Max Ophuls. These films are artworks that belong in a museum....
Well, I'll stop preaching now, but soon I'll resume preaching, because I have two more Autant-Lara films lined up for the next few days. :)
Hey Elizabeth, did you go to the Enslaved concert tonight? I saw a post yesterday that said you were going. If you did go, I hope you had a blast. I saw Enslaved back in October 2011 at The Troubador, when they headlined over Alcest (who I had gone to see), but Enslaved were great too. I am guessing you also went because of Wolves In The Throne Room, and maybe even mainly for them. So you had a good double bill, and that is awesome. Concerts rule! :)
I am stoked because I got a great seat for Todd Rundgren's Utopia, who I haven't seen since the late 1970s. Utopia is a whole 'nuther thing that is different from Todd Rundgren solo, but he is the main ingredient, and of course Todd is one of the greats in all of rock history. I am happy that some of my favorite artists are not only still Doing It as they hit 70 years of age, but are Doing It at the same high level that they've always done it. It's incredible really.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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