Martin Scorsese deems Jean Renoir’s La Marseillaise, about the French Revolution in its early phase, “one of the finest and richest historical films ever made.” It provides views of the unfolding events by both common folk and royals; the system in place thinks so little of an ordinary man’s life that if he should kill a pigeon, to protect his farm’s harvest, he should be executed to set an example. Only the titled possess hunting rights, and class boundaries must be observed. The farmer in question, known as Mountain Goat, though, escapes “justice.”
With this epic, Renoir aims for timeliness, given the threat that Hitler poses to Europe, including to the spirit and liberty of France. He is keeping alive the historical memory of momentous struggles, with the Prussian army, which invades France, predicting the impending invasion in Renoir’s own time.
We only hear about the 1789 storming of the Bastille, along with King Louis XVI, who is eating in bed, exhausted after a royal hunt; but we see the culmination of the people’s march to Paris, the thunderous taking of the Tuileries Palace, in 1792. Here is a profoundly moving passage—one into which the episodic film in toto pours. Contributing significantly to the passage’s impact is the completion of Edmond Ardisson’s fine performance as Bomier.
Although Renoir’s film is temperamentally very different, the extent to which it achieves a present tense with the past anticipates Roberto Rossellini’s histories beginning with The Rise to Power of Louis XIV (1966). Of course, Renoir gives us a rousing, robust people’s story, with all the variety and patriotic fervor that this implies. In its infancy, the song that will become France’s national anthem, “La Marseillaise,” correlates musically to the film’s stirring portrait of the people of France.
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THE ELUSIVE CORPORAL (Jean Renoir, 1962)
March 29, 2011By common critical procedure, Jean Renoir’s late-career Le caporal épinglé, because it is about two French soldiers who keep trying to escape a wartime German prison-camp, is complacently clubbed by comparison with Renoir’s La grande illusion a quarter-century earlier. In a sense, Renoir is inviting—daring—the comparison. From Jacques Perret’s 1947 autobiographical novel, Le caporal épinglé is set during the Second World War, while La grande illusion is set during the First. Parallel incidents further link the two films.
Le caporal épinglé is marvelous. Jean-Pierre Cassel, exquisitely shading the breeziness of his personality, claims the role of a lifetime as The Corporal, becoming the film’s throbbingly human and yet delicately ambiguous center. The Corporal is “elusive” not only because the Germans cannot ultimately hold him, confiscating his self-determination, but also because he withholds an interior life even from his fellow prisoners. What he refrains from disclosing presumably helps him to survive and prevail. He is a Parisian, after all, and “Papa,” at the last his fellow escapee, may be too blunt to perceive his comrade’s subtlety.
The fate of another French prisoner stings: bespectacled Ballochet (Claude Rich, excellent), whose opportunism offends but who, reclaiming his soul, attempts escape as a search for dignity. One of a number of superlative passages, this one is suspensefully reflected, inside the quarters of prisoners, in a comrade’s face: a devastating gauging of time amidst the sounds we hear from outside. Indeed, Renoir’s film generates immense concern for its heroic soldiers.
One of the legs of The Corporal’s escape is a train ride. In the compartment are an obnoxious little boy, whom his mother tries reining in, and an obnoxious German drunk. This darkly funny passage proves the need for serendipity.
Georges Leclerc contributes dreamy gray black-and-white cinematography.
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