[CRITICAL] A CARNET DE BAL (1937)

Julien Duvivier is a filmmaker who knows how to surround himself to carry out his projects, we have seen it with The Lovely Team. His leadership of the monstres sacrés of French cinema, Jean Gabin in the lead, is pushed here to the extreme in a kind of movie that lends itself perfectly : the film sketches. In fact, A CARNET DE BAL is often considered the first film in sketches of the history. A format that allows the developer to spread out a casting mind-blowing, with a magnitude that is rarely seen in French cinema. The risk, though real, was yet indulging in this display ; an error carefully avoided by the control of a stage director and decidedly fascinating.

Then, of course, and it is almost inevitable, all the sketches are not as successful as each other. But the thread put in place by Julien Duvivier allows to obtain a required consistency and a pace that is well built, from a premise that is very simple : a widow looks back at his former partners that she had known when he was a teenager at a prom, and seeks to know what they are doing now. This widow, as portrayed by Mary Bell, represents the inevitability and sadness that characterize the films of Julien Duvivier. And the director to stage a gallery of characters marked by the life, the psyche disturbed but always likeable, in several different stories featuring celebrities involved and always been very well directed by Duvivier.

Served by a story of a dark stuffy reserving a sad fate to the old illusions of the youth of the characters, Fernandel, Harry Baur, Raimu, Pierre Blanchar, and other talents, would be worth to them only viewing. But this would be to forget the power of the film of Julien Duvivier. In his stories, first of all ; the disappointment and the failure sentimental are the words of a film, without concession, in the dark is decidedly marked until a final scene is sublime. Is it possible to adapt its staging in each situation, the producer passes a sequence to the classicism well thought out and taken with an oblique camera, reflecting the poor life of a character, always with the same success. A process that may seem too much in 2015, but that is posed as a proof of the modernity of the filmmaker if it recontextualizes them.

“The disillusionment and the failure sentimental are the words of a film, without concession, in the dark is decidedly marked.”

The special ambience of A CARNET DE BAL, his dialogues, ultra-cared for, heterogeneity thematic and deep intelligence are clearly a staple of the Festival of Light, and yet another slap from the hand of a director essential in the film landscape French. For a scenario with onions and an atmosphere of staggering beauty, Duvivier appropriates every genre with the greatest of ease. The mark of a great author, no doubt.

A CARNET DE BAL has been reviewed in the context of a retrospective of Julien Duvivier by the Light Festival 2015, in Lyon. It will be screened at the Pathé Bellecour, Tuesday, October 13 at 10: 45, in the Comoedia, Saturday, 17 October at 10: 30am, Mions, Tuesday, October 13, at 20h, and to The Ant, Wednesday, 14 October at 16: 30.