This week at the Seoul Cinematheque I watched two films from their great CineVacances program: Francois Truffaut’s THE LAST METRO (1980) and Claude Chabrol’s THE STORY OF WOMEN (1988). The two have a great deal in common, most specifically the fact that they are both set in Nazi-occupied France during World War II. Also, both are directed by prominent members of the French New Wave, Francois Truffaut and Cluade Chabrol, and both are films made in the 1980s, many years after both World War II and after the New Wave itself had long passed. Looking back at the films from today’s perspective, one can position both films within the history of representations of the Resistance and within the directorial trajectories of both filmmakers.

Let’s start with Truffaut and THE LAST METRO. If one were to list the greatest directors in film history based on their first three features, Truffaut would definitely be near the top of the list. THE 400 BLOWS (1959), SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER (1960) and JULES AND JIM (1961) are all landmark films of the New Wave, cinematically inventive and emotionally resonant. After this early start, however, critics are divided on the rest of Truffaut’s career. For some, Truffaut matured and refined his style as he progressed and is considered by those critics as a true cinematic master. For others, Truffaut stopped being an innovative director and simply became a “quality” bourgeois filmmaker, ironically the kind of director he had initially railed against in his early years as a critic. I mostly agree with the later view. Most of the Truffaut I have seen after the first three films have been very underwhelming, including films many others cite as his best, such as DAY FOR NIGHT (1973). Plus, any sense of political urgency left Truffaut’s work completely as he progressed, making him in this and other ways the complete opposite of his New Wave colleague Jean-Luc Godard, who moved more away from aesthetics and towards political engagement. It should not surprise anyone that most mainstream critics in the West, such as Leonard Maltin and Roger Ebert, favor later Truffaut to later Godard. Indeed, up until his early death in 1984, Truffaut represented, along with Ingmar Bergman, the very idea of art cinema.

Watching THE LAST METRO, there is a sense of a cinematic intelligence at work, but all of the dynamism is gone. It maintains interest for the most part, but by the conclusion the energy really runs out. The story revolves around a theater whose director, the Jewish Lucas Steiner, has had to flee France, or so we first think. Actually, he is living in the theater cellar while his wife puts on the production of the new play. The plot centers on the rehearsal and opening of the play set against the Occupation backdrop, represented in the film by the anti-Semitic Nazi sympathizing theater critic Daxiat. To understand the film, some background on the history of France’s representation of the Occupation is necessary. Up until the Marcel Ophuls documentary THE SORROW AND THE PITY (1969), there existed in France what became known as the “Resistance” myth, the idea that most of the country were against the Occupation and actively fighting against it. After Ophuls ground-breaking work, this myth was challenged, and the fact of collaboration started to be discussed. THE LAST METRO is certainly a post-Resistance myth film, but it still adheres to some of the fantasy, especially in its view of the actor and Resistance fighter Granger 9played by Gerard Depardieu). Overall, the politics of the film are fairly reactionary despite the clear anti-Nazi sentiment. When the beautiful Marion (played by Catherine Deneuve) makes love to Granger because she no longer loves her Jewish husband Steiner (filmed “tastefully, of course, by Truffaut), it seems to be answering and alleviating an earlier Right-wing anxiety of Jews stealing the most beautiful Aryan women. Unlike the critical work done on the Occupation by early directors like Ophuls and later Alain Resnais (STAVISKY), Truffaut has fashioned a tale the respectable bourgeois Frenchman of 1980 desperately wanted to hear.

Claude Chabrol has had a very different career than Truffaut, even though they both would go on to work within the mainstream of the French industry. Chabrol started out as far less acclaimed than Truffaut or Godard, and like his colleague Eric Rohmer did not really become recognized until the late 1960s with such films as LES BICHES (1968), AN UNFAITHFUL WIFE (1969) and THIS BEAST MUST DIE (1970). Chabrol became known as the French Hitchcock, working in the thriller genre, and as a result has had many films remade by Hollywood (such as the films UNFAITHFUL and THE CROSSING GUARD). With THE STORY OF WOMEN, Chabrol takes on subject matter closer to that of a TV movie of the week soap opera: in Vichy France, a woman is arrested for performing illegal abortions and is eventually sentenced to death by guillotine. In lesser hands, this could have been a terrible, sentimental mess, but Chabrol smartly avoids this through his style and characterization, turning the story into a thriller. From the beginning, Chabrol’s direction hints ominously at the events to come, simply by showing a knife lying on a table. By using a noir style, Chabrol utterly transforms the story, avoiding all sentimentality. The lead character, Marie (played by Isabelle Huppert), is out of the femme fatale tradition, cheating on her husband and focusing on illegal activities for her own financial gain. She is a very unlikable character, but at the same time Chabrol never forgets the social context that produced her. When the inevitable ending comes, the outrage at the hypocrisy is deeper and stronger because it is not trying to produce easy tears. Chabrol also provides a clear critique of the collaboration of the French nation, including its government, with the Nazis, and how Marie and her feminine “low morals” became a convenient scapegoat for the re-masculinization of the decadent French nation. Unlike Truffaut, Chabrol is taking aim at this sick society instead of offering it easy forgiveness and reconciliation. A very strong and smart film with great direction from Chabrol, very much worth seeing. It is playing again on Sunday, August 15th at 19:00, Friday, August 20th at 17:00 and Tuesday, August 24th at 17:30.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.