Why didn’t Jean Cocteau direct this adaptation of his novel? We hear Cocteau’s voiceover throughout. The shading and framing of the early overhead shot of schoolboys engaged in a snowball fight suggests we are glimpsing this outdoor scene through a gigantic keyhole, and this of course reminds us of Cocteau’s Blood of a Poet (1930)—as does the boy’s injury in the snow. Paul, played by Cocteau’s own young lover, is taken down, actually, by a rock wrapped up in snow; the weapon that sends Paul to bed for a while is hurled by an arrogant classmate Paul is sweet on. But the latter boy is an absolute terror—an unbridled id from which Jean Renoir may have drawn for his Hyde-figure, Opale, in The Testament of Dr. Cordelier (1959). This boy, Dargelos, is played by an actress, who reappears (less convincingly!) playing a girl, Agathe. All this, obviously, is very much more Cocteau than Jean-Pierre Melville, who did direct—poetically at times, but never with the panache and relish that Cocteau might have brought to the endeavor.
The film is most famous for the closeness of its central sister-brother relationship. Elisabeth and Paul share a bedroom and, perhaps, a soul; but the pair are quarrelsome enough to seem like normal siblings. The incestuous component doubtless refers to the other “forbidden love,” homosexuality, which implicates Paul, the actor playing Paul, Cocteau and Melville. This component springs into play when model Agathe enters the scene, damaging the fragile balance of the siblings, and piquing Elisabeth’s jealousy. Or, to put the matter another way: Elisabeth’s jealousy creates the element of incest retroactively. Regardless, the outcome is disastrous.
Nicole Stéphane is vivid as Elisabeth. The Vivaldi and Bach on the soundtrack are even more intrusive than Agathe.
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