Diary of a Chambermaid (Luis Buñuel, 1964)

Jeanne Moreau and Michel Piccoli in Diary of a Chambermaid

Cast: Jeanne Moreau, Georges Géret, Daniel Ivernel, Françoise Lugagne, Muni, Jean Ozenne, Michel Piccoli. Screenplay: Luis Buñuel, Jean-Claude Carrière, based on a novel by Octave Mirbeau. Cinematography: Roger Fellous. Production design: Georges Wakhévitch. Film editing: Louisette Hautecoeur.

Jeanne Moreau's aura of knowingness serves as a filter through which we view the Monteil household in Luis Buñuel's sharp-edged satire on wealth and privilege.

Martin Roumagnac (Georges Lacombe, 1946)

Watched 10/6/2018

Marlene Dietrich and Jean Gabin in Martin Roumagnac

Blanche Ferrand: Marlene Dietrich
Martin Roumagnac: Jean Gabin
Blanche's Uncle: Jean d'Yd
The Schoolteacher: Daniel Gélin
The Defense Attorney: Jean Darcante
Jeanne Roumagnac: Margo Lion
Laubry: Marcel Herrand

Director: Georges Lacombe
Screenplay: Pierre Véry, Georges Lacombe
Based on a novel by Pierre-René Wolf
Cinematography: Roger Hubert
Production design: Georges Wakhévitch
Film editing: Germaine Artus
Music: Marcel Mirouze

This overheated and forgettable melodrama should have been better, given that Marlene Dietrich and Jean Gabin were lovers and were both making their postwar returns to European filmmaking. It's watchable but mainly for Dietrich, who was trying to overcome her old image as a Hollywood diva and allows herself to be filmed in natural light for once, and for a mad courtroom scene featuring a defense lawyer who behaves like a Daumier caricature. Gabin grumps about in a role that would have been better if he and Dietrich had the kind of on-screen chemistry that they supposedly had off-screen.

La Marseillaise (Jean Renoir, 1938)

Louis XVI: Pierre Renoir
La Rochefoucauld: William Aguet
Marie Antoinette: Lise Delamare
Roederer: Louis Jouvet
Bomier: Edmond Ardisson
Arnaud: Andrex
Javel: Paul Dullac
Louison: Nadia Sibirskaïa

Director: Jean Renoir
Screenplay: Jean Renoir, Carl Koch, N. Martel-Dreyfus
Cinematography: Jean-Paul Alphen, Jean Bourgoin, Alain Douarinou, Jean Louis, Jean-Marie Maillols
Production design: Léon Barsacq, Georges Wakhévitch
Music: Joseph Kosma, Henry Sauveplane

Just the film for Bastille Day. If ever a movie deserved the oxymoronic label of "intimate epic," it would have to be Jean Renoir's La Marseillaise, a story of the French Revolution from the fall of the Bastille to the victory over the Prussians at Valmy. It's not the part of the revolution we're used to seeing, as it ends before the Reign of Terror, with its tumbrils and guillotines. Instead, it's a collection of vignettes high and low, from the king and queen blithely expecting the trouble to blow over to the foot soldiers who marched from Marseille to Paris to depose them. The director's brother, Pierre, is a wonderful Louis XVI, not quite the caricature that Robert Morley made him in Hollywood's Marie Antoinette (W.S. Van Dyke), which was made the same year, but nevertheless more than a little out of touch: As the Tuileries is being stormed, Pierre Renoir's Louis is perturbed that he can't finish his dinner and that his wig is slightly askew. Lise Delamare's Marie Antoinette is somewhat more clued in, but her frosty hauteur suggests that she is fully capable of uttering the apocryphal "Let them eat cake." Much of the film, however, focuses on the soldiers who, after capturing the forts at Marseille, march toward Paris, and especially on Bomier, a mason who joins the regiment after putting things in order for his mother (whose tears are a familiar cinematic clue to Bomier's fate). Bomier tells his companions Arnaud and Javel that the marching song that gives the film its title is no good and will soon be forgotten, but by the time they reach Paris, he is joining in the chorus. Renoir made La Marseillaise between two greater films, Grand Illusion (1937) and La Bête Humaine (1938), partly as a leftist political statement at a time when the forces of the right were triumphing on every side of France. He got his financial backing for the project from trade unions, but the film was a disaster at the box office and disappeared for a long time. It feels a little more formulaic in its characterization than Renoir's best films are and, given our knowledge of what's to come, the ending could never be quite as upbeat as Renoir seems to want it to be, but it's still the work of a master filmmaker.

Watched on Filmstruck Criterion Channel

The Beggar's Opera (Peter Brook, 1953)

The Beggar's Opera, Act V, by William Hogarth, c. 1728

I watch TV with the closed captions on, partly from age-related hearing loss, but also because it helps me savor dialogue better. Sometimes, however, I find that the caption writers go hilariously astray, especially if they're transcribing what they think they hear instead of following a script. In this case, I was amused to find that references to Newgate, the old London prison that is the scene of much of The Beggar's Opera, were being recorded as "Nougat." John Gay's 1728 ballad opera is said to have been inspired by a suggestion of Jonathan Swift that someone should compose "a Newgate pastoral among the thieves and whores there." Peter Brook's film, his first as a movie director, isn't exactly a "nougat pastoral," but it's a pleasant enough confection, with Technicolor cinematography by Guy Green and production design and handsome costuming by Georges Wakhévitch that give the film a Hogarthian ambiance. Best of all, it has Laurence Olivier, Hugh Griffith, Dorothy Tutin, Stanley Holloway, and Athene Seyler in the cast. Gay's songs, originally set to familiar folk song tunes, have been remusicalized by Arthur Bliss, with some additional lyrics by Christopher Fry, who also wrote the screenplay with Denis Cannan. Most of the singing was dubbed, with the exceptions of Olivier and Holloway: The latter nicely displays a basso buffo style and Olivier has a pleasant if sometimes slightly stressed baritone. The film was a flop, unfortunately, and isn't much seen today, but it's worth checking out when it comes around again to TCM.