César and Rosalie (Claude Sautet, 1972)

 

Cast: Romy Schneider, Yves Montand, Sami Frey, Bernard Le Coq, Eva Maria Meineke, Henri-Jacques Huet, Isabelle Huppert. Screenplay: Jean-Loup Dabadie, Claude Sautet, Claude Néron. Cinematography: Jean Boffety. Production design: Pierre Guffroy. Film editing: Jacqueline Tiédot. Music: Philippe Sarde.

There’s a reason why there’s no English word or phrase for ménage à trois. It may be a concept foreign to Anglo-American culture. Instead, we have “eternal triangle,” which implies hostility rather than affection. To be sure, César and Rosalie contains a considerable amount of hostility among César (Yves Montand), David (Sami Frey), and Rosalie (Romy Schneider), but in the end we are almost persuaded that they love one another, and even that they might make it work. Everything pivots around the woman, of course, very fetchingly played by Schneider. Rosalie has had many lovers, but perhaps none so different from each other as the bullish self-made man César and the reserved and sophisticated cartoon artist David. And yet they are both men, and they display common characteristics when it comes to women. When César has a poker night with his buddies, Rosalie is ordered about, fetching ice and beer and vodka for the guys. She flees this smoky gathering for David’s, where he’s meeting with other men about a publishing product. And sure enough, it’s not long before one of the men asks her to make coffee. David, to his credit, comes to her aid, and César, upset by her sudden disappearance, spends the evening searching for her. And so begins a series of oscillations between the two men until finally Rosalie reaches her limit, realizing that she can’t live peacefully with either of them – or with both of them. Or can she? The end leaves that question deliciously unresolved. This is a film with a great deal of charm and insight. Montand gives one of his best performances as the cigar-chomping, blustering guy who made his fortune in the scrap metal business, but Schneider and Frey in their quieter roles are equally fine.

Sweet Movie (Dusan Makavejev, 1974)

Anna Prucnal in Sweet Movie

Miss Monde 1984/Miss Canada: Carole Laure
Potemkin Sailor: Pierre Clémenti
Capt. Anna Planeta: Anna Prucnal
El Macho: Sami Frey
Mrs. Abplanalpe: Jane Mallett
Jeremiah Muscle: Roy Callender
Mr. Kapital: John Vernon
Mama Communa: Marpessa Dawn

Director: Dusan Makavejev
Screenplay: France Gallagher, Dusan Makavejev, Martin Malina
Cinematography: Pierre Lhomme
Production design: Jocelyn Joly
Film editing: Yann Dedet
Music: Manos Hatzidakis

In the 1933 decision that lifted the ban in the United States on James Joyce's Ulysses, Judge John M. Woolsey dismissed the charges of obscenity, though he found that "in many places the effect of Ulysses on the reader undoubtedly is somewhat emetic." I've never found anything to be "emetic" in Ulysses, certainly not on the level of some of the more queasy moments in Dusan Makavejev's Sweet Movie, which exploits every orifice known to be possessed by human beings, especially in the orgiastic scenes featuring Otto Muehl's commune. As for obscenity, that lies in the eye of the beholder. To my mind, Sweet Movie dallies on the brink of it in the scene in which Anna Prucnal's Captain Anna, scantily clad to say the least, makes what appear to be sexual come-ons to a group of boys aboard her boat called Survival. At moments like this I snap out of the trance of make-believe into which art lures us, and into a realization that the boys in the scene are pre-pubescent actors. There's a layer of child sexual abuse in staging such a scene that I can't quite rise above. Beyond that, however, Sweet Movie does precisely what Makavejev wants it to: It surprises, startles, shocks, overturning most of our expectations of what a movie can and/or should show us. It's valuable for that reason alone. Whether it illuminates or provokes thought in its even-handed assault on both capitalism and communism is another question. It has begun to feel dated, as many avant-garde satires tend to do. But it's also done with a great deal of verve and chutzpah, which never really grow old.