Romy, Michel, Yves et Claude Sautet

I have only now caught up with the films of Claude Sautet (who died in 2000). His 1969 LES CHOSES DE LA VIE (THE THINGS OF LIFE) was a big hit in London in 1970 but has not been available for years, but now it is going to be a movie I will return to, as I will to CESAR & ROSALIE from '72, and I have now just seen the 1971 cop thriller MAX AND THE JUNKMEN. Sautet in all did 5 films with Romy Schneider in the '70s, her great era in France - it is fascinating seeing how she blooms in his films, she just looks so radiant, beautiful and relaxed as obviously star and director have such rapport - so along with Dietrich with Von Sternberg, Sophia with De Sica, Monica Vitti with Antonioni, Anna Karina with Godard, we have Romy with Sautet.

The films too are fascinating - I will have to catch up with his other 2 with Romy: MADO and A SIMPLE STORY [and his other films like UN COEUR EN HIVER]. I was reminded of Claude Lelouch at times, as there are lots of cars and driving, and that good life where the characters' milieu is that comfortable bourgeois life taking place in desirable mansions and seaside homes.



LES CHOSES DE LA VIE is all driving in fact, as Michel Piccoli is having a fatal crash as he remembers moments of his life. The crash itself is amazing with terrific editing and Piccoli slowly comes to and realises he is lying in a field. We see how he left his happy marriage to Lea Massari and his son whom he had just re-connected with when he visited the family home for some papers, and indeed had agreed to go on holiday with his son which meant postponing going away with Romy, whom he loves but she senses he cannot commit or sign the papers that need completing. Lots of middle-aged angst then on the choices one makes and has one done the right thing, but it is freshly handled here. That score is Phillipe Sarde is perfect too.
40 years later what stands out now is how they smoke all the time - Piccoli lights up one cigarette after another, "I smoke too much" he says at one stage; one feels that the cigarettes will get him if the crash doesn't! One can see why it was such a hit, and, cigarettes apart, it still works now.



CESAR & ROSALIE is a total joy, you may be laughing and also have a tear in your eye by the end. [They smoke too on the poster...]. One does not want to reveal too much of the plot, as it is best to see it unfold for yourself. Yves Montand is Cesar, the self-made man, a wealthy scrap dealer, jovial on the outside but wants things his own way and will not be beaten, even if a car overtakes him. Rosalie is the divorcee he is happily living with, then another man she loved David (Sami Frey) now a successful cartoonist returns from America and quietly tries to win Rosalie back. Cesar realises what is happening and tells David to back off and invents stories that Rosalie is pregant and going to marry him, which only succeeds in driving Rosalie and David together. In a rage, Cesar wrecks David's apartment and art works, Rosalie relatiates by taking David to Cesar's office and taking money from the safe and they move away to a seaside town with her little daughter. Some time passes, and then Cesar turns up, he has bought her childhood seaside home and they all spend the summer there with her parents and extended family. It seems they are going to be a threesome but Rosalie is an independent woman and one day she moves away (to Grenoble) leaving Cesar and David who become good friends ..... and then one day Rosalie returns. What is going to happen now? Montand is marvellous here, Schneider never looked more beautiful or animated, it is just so engrossing. It is essentially a frivolous romantic movie with twists and turns, as scripted by Sautet regular Jean-Loup Dabadie, and scored again by Philippe Sarde. Isabelle Huppert has a small role.



A change of pace with MAX AND THE JUNKMEN (Max et les Ferrailleurs) as we are in Chabrol or Duvivier or Melville territory. Michel Piccoli is Max, a Paris detective who used to be a judge but got tired of letting guilty criminals go free for lack of evidence and he is independently wealthy. The film takes it time, Romy does not appear until half an hour in as the prostitute girlfriend of a scrapyard dealer who is an old acquaintance of Max. Romy skillfully captures Lily, this German streetwalker whom Max becomes fascinated by. He buys her time but does not want her body (yet) and begins to hatch a plan to catch some criminals in the act. He sets himself up as a banker in a new apartment where he meets Lily, who is dissatisfield with her own life and that her junkyard lover Abel. Abel and his cronies are soon hatching the plan to rob the bank, which Max has told Lily about, so all they need is the day when the big money is in, while the police surround the area waiting to pounce. And so it happens - the robbery takes place .... fascinating stuff then, but who has trapped who.



Romy was very prolific around this time and I have seen some others of hers from this era recently, ranging from dreadful (MY LOVER MY SON, BLOOMFIELD) to ok (QUI?) [as per reviews at Romy label] but the Sautet films are in a class of their own.



Soon: Ozon, Techine, Assayas et les autres, plus several Catherine Deneuve titles; also more Romy's LE PASSANTE DE SANS SOUCI, CLOUZOT'S INFERNO, a German 3 pack THE MOST IMPORTANT THING: LOVE, LE VIEU FUSIL and INFERNAL TRIO, plus re-looks at BOCCACCIO 70 and 10.30 PM SUMMER.

Aimez-vous Brahms?

A new selection of Movies We Love! starting with the 1961 sudser GOODBYE AGAIN (others to include BLACK NARCISSUS, JOHNNY GUITAR, A LETTER TO 3 WIVES, ALL ABOUT EVE, NORTH TO ALASKA, LEGEND OF THE LOST, DONA HERLINDA AND HER SON, A BIGGER SPLASH, THE HISTORY OF ADELE H, WILD RIVER and ooh several others...)
GOODBYE AGAIN is a nice entry to those early '60s sudsers like IMITATION OF LIFE, THE BEST OF EVERYTHING, A SUMMER PLACE, BACK STREET, ADA etc. this is a rather low-key one though in black and white, and again we zoom around Paris in the early 60s with rich spoilt Tony Perkins, and his rich bitch mother Jessie Royce Landis (a good role for Jessie here).

It is Ingrid Bergman's show though as 40ish Paula, a successful interior decorator, hired by Jessie and getting involved with her son Tony. Paula has been carrying on for 5 years with businessman Yves Montand who is certainly having his cake and eating it, often letting Paula down at the last minute when he picks up a new 'Maisie' (he calls them all Maisie...). Paula is used to this but longs for commitment. Tony is going to provide it in spades as he follows, woos, flatters and finally gets Paula, which of course in turn makes Montand jealous. There are nicely judged moments along the way as our stars eat, drink, dance and drive around Paris by day and night. Perkins' little boy act gets a bit tiresome actually - he has a nice drunk scene in a nightclub with singer Diahann Carroll, and interesting to see British actress Alison Legatt (the spinster sister in THIS HAPPY BREED) sharing his office where Perkins pretends to work.


Francoise Sagan's novel is nicely adapted here, though the end is amusing now - Paula sends Perkins away saying she is "too old" [Ingrid too old at 40!], when Montand decides to marry her - as his single life isn't quite so satisfying without her to return to. But once married he reverts to his old ways with a new Maisie, leaving Paula on her own again, rubbing night lotion into her face. A nice touch too is when she is driving and crying so she turns on the windscreen wipers as she thinks it is raining.

The older female does not fare too well in these Sagan stories: Kerr in BONJOUR TRISTESSE, Joan Fontaine in A CERTAIN SMILE or Bergman as Paula here. Litvak was good with actresses, viz his films with Davis, De Havilland, Kerr (THE JOURNEY) and Bergman previously in ANASTASIA. This is a nicely satisfying soap - Perkins after PSYCHO had a good run in Europe with some super ladies: Ingrid here, Mercouri (PHAEDRA), Orson's THE TRIAL with Moreau and Romy, with Loren again in FIVE MILES TO MIDNIGHT in '62 and Bardot in THE RAVISHING IDIOT.

A discovery !: La Loi (The Law), 1959

Where has LA LOI or THE LAW or LA LEGGE been for the last 50 years? How come it never played anywhere here in London since then - not on tv or on the arthouse circuit or even at the National Film Theatre? It is for me a major discovery and a great addition to that superior year 1959, and in fact plays like a new film with that great cast in their prime from 50 years ago. It is almost unclassifiable but leaves one joyous and exhilirated, not least for Jules Dassin's direction. The setting is tremendous too, that small Italian town is so real as everyone seems to live around and overlooking the main square. There is one stunning shot of Mastroianni with the night-time square in the background in deep focus that could be from some classic like LA DOLCE VITA (his next film). So, it is a stunning film and now in a new 2-disk dvd edition, for which many thanks.

LA LOI is from an accaimed novel by Roger Vailland and Dassin's film was made in 1958 (one of the dvd extras is a documentary at the time with interviews with the stars on set). It powerfully captures life in this small town where the menfolk gather to pass the time in the square and of course discussing everyone else's affairs and lusting after the local bombshell Marietta - Gina Lollobrigida has a whale of a time here and is dazzlingly attractive as she erupts all over the place - being tied to a table and whipped by her mother, stealing a tourist's wallet, looking after the local most powerful man Don Cesare (Pierre Brasseur) and falling for new guy in town engineer Marcello Mastroianni. Yves Montand is also in top form (much more so than in his English speaking roles) as the local Mr Big, Matteo Brigante, who aspires to Don Cesare's power and he also wants to have Marietta - who turns the tables on him with his knife.... his son Francesco (Raf Mattioli) is pining for Lucrezia (Melina Mercouri) the unhappy wife of a local businessman - they have some marvellous scenes together and Melina is also a delight here.
It is the kind of film where one has no idea what is going to happen next - comedy or tragedy or more vignettes of small town life: the jealous police chief does not want his large wife to appear in public in a swimsuit but when she does she attracts all the male attention is just one one such moment. The men also play a cruel drinking game called The Law, where one of them is chosen as The Boss who is then able to insult and humiliate the others if he so chooses - Montand certainly does to Paola Stoppa. Finally events come to a climax as Francesco and Lucrezia try to leave town by bus and are stopped by his father, dying Don Cesare sorts out Marietta's problems and Montand's Brigante loses his power in a stunning climactic scene with Lucrezia, and Gina and Marcello are finally able to marry.

It is deliriously done and the kind of film one wants to watch all over again, which I did. Dassin orchestrates it all with a sure light hand from the men in the square and those doves, to that powerhouse cast in their '50s perfection. There is a mystery too: the attractive young Francesco is played by Raf Mattioli whom I had not seen before, a check on IMDB reveals that he died the next year 1960 aged 23 but no other information seems available - what on earth happened to him? - he had that perfect '59 look with the shirt tied in a knot. Dassin of course went on to that huge hit with Melina NEVER ON SUNDAY in 1960. This though is a marvellous long unseen movie with Gina, Marcello, Yves and Melina firing on all cylinders. It was called WHERE THE HOT WIND BLOWS in the USA, no doubt to lure in more customers than the arthouse crowd. Dassin's RIFIFI (the daddy of all heist movies) was also a major discovery a few years back (he even remade it as TOPKAPI in '64)!



It has reminded me of an afternoon I spent with Melina in 1968 at a protest rally in Trafalgar Square London to highlight poverty in Biafra [we thought we could make a difference then]. Melina was leading the march and was stunning in a long red dress with lots of gold chains, and I was 22 and at the top of the march with her as we walked along and spent time in the square. What a time that was.....

Those '50s literary adaptations ...

20th Century Fox turned out a Steinbeck adaptation in 1957 – the long unseen THE WAYWARD BUS – so rare in fact that neither their Jayne Mansfield or Joan Collins boxsets could include it – I think I read that the Steinbeck estate was not releasing it? Surely this was popular on its release, Steinbeck must have been big business after EAST OF EDEN? It is a perfect period piece in black and white and captures that ‘50s world of diners and buses perfectly. Rick Jason is the bus driver, married to diner owner Collins, Jayne is the stripper down on her luck, on the bus to her next engagement, as is travelling salesman Dan Dailey, also down on his luck. It is directed by one Victor Vicas (who?). Jayne is touching here and plays a real character for once and Joan acquits herself ok. An interesting coda though is that on the US dvd of A LETTER TO THREE WIVES there is a documentary on Linda Darnell which includes a test she did in ’57 for the Collins role, with Rick Jason (her co-star from THIS IS MY LOVE) – and she would have been perfect here as the slightly older blowsy wife who hits the bottle – but it was a new decade and Fox went with their new English import! - no wonder poor Linda hit the bottle....



Back to the wonderful world of the 20th Century Fox literary adaptation – usually produced by Jerry Wald and directed by someone like Martin Ritt. Two William Faulkner adaptations have long been near the top of my most wanted list and I finally got to see them last week: THE SOUND AND THE FURY and SANCTUARY. I may be at a disadvantage in not having read the books, but as films they are certainly interesting.

THE SOUND AND THE FURY must be one of the most perfect Deep South sagas of a dysfunctional family barely scraping by. The period detail is laid on with a trowel here and it is all oh so familiar. Very eclectic casting too: Joanne Woodward though is surely too mature for the wayward teenager Quentin (wouldn’t Fox’s other younger contract players like Tuesday Weld or Diane Varsi be more suitable?) Yul Brynner (with hair!) is a strange choice here as the stepson keeping the family together, but one forgets what a compelling presence he is with that distinctive voice; his mother who wants to stay in bed is Francoise Rosay and who else but Ethel Waters for the family servant, who is getting on in years. Add in young Stuart Whitman as Joanne’s rather persistant suitor. Then suddenly something electrifying happens: walking into frame carrying her suitcase is the reason I had wanted to see this for such a long time: Margaret Leighton [below] as Caddy, the mother who had abandoned Woodward as a baby and now wants to come home after years of being a kept woman. Leighton is Blanche Du Bois to the life and one can see she would have been as good as Vivien Leigh in the role. So in all, a fascinating mix of talents even if a rather turgid film. Maybe reading the book first would give one a better understanding of these people?



Also long unseen here, is Tony Richardson’s 1961 film of SANCTUARY which I had wanted to catch up with for Lee Remick’s performance as Temple Drake. Bradford Dillman plays her husband and Yves Montand (fresh from Marilyn Monroe and LET’S MAKE LOVE) as the bootlegger Candyman who rapes her. Blues singer Odetta is also in the cast. Remick is as fascinating as ever as the tease who takes to sex and booze, and that remote to us now 20s era of flappers and the Charleston is well conveyed. The story is bizarre though with the death of the baby – again, perhaps a reading of the book would be useful. An odd choice though for director Tony Richardson. Montand has a great 'look' with the hat and the cigarette, but back then the English language continued to defeat him. Remick though is the reason to see this, with lots of lingering close-ups of her.

Perhaps I should now go back and have another look at THE LONG HOT SUMMER or (if I could find it) HEMINGWAY’S ADVENTURES OF A YOUNG MAN?

Over at MGM they were doing literarly adaptations too – one of the rarest being their version of Jack Kerouac, as Arthur Freed produced their 1960 version of the beat world THE SUBTERRANEANS, which has also long been unobtainable here in the UK, and what a fascinating experience it is, being as hilariously awful as one would expect - when I included that poster on it a few weeks ago I did not imagine I would be seeing the movie quite so soon! Again, I have not read the Kerouac book. It starts with struggling writer George Peppard being kept by his uncomprehending mother Anne Seymour who works as a nurse – so he goes off and falls in with some beatniks – the very annoying Roddy McDowell and Janice Rule, with a young Jim Hutton in tow. Leslie Caron struggles to make sense of Mardou (who I understand was black in the novel), but after GIGI etc it seems a poor role for her, and what did Alan Freed see in the material to think it was worth producing?

It’s introduction after the credits paves the way for us to enter this strange new underworld: “This is the story of a new Bohemia – where the young gather to create and destroy. In all times, in all cities, for good or evil, the young Bohemians have been the makers of the future. They are foolish and they have genius. You will find them on the left bank in Paris, in London’s Soho, in Greenwich Village, and here in San Francisco in the area known as the North Beach”. Thus straight society was introduced to the world of the beats back in 1960!

This farrago is assembled by one Ranald MacDougall who also helmed Joan Crawford’s turn as QUEEN BEE and Gina Lollobrigida as the high class hooker in GO NAKED IN THE WORLD, also 1960. We get to see Andre Previn, Gerry Mulligan and Carmen McRae in the nightclub sequence where the (rather mature) beatniks hang out, and there are some nice San Francisco views. Perhaps with the coming release of HOWL there may be a revival of interest in the beat generation?