Melting Pot Cinema Part VII - The Films of a Post-War France Part 1

In the 1950s, French cinema commercially speaking was the healthiest in European cinema. Production was maintained at a relatively high rate in comparison to other filmmaking countries.
Towards the end of the decade, television would become the new 'distraction' The French were seemingly more obsessed with cars and going on holiday (much like Mr Hulot) Ticket sales would plummet as a result, and there would be a loss of overall sales by a whopping fifty percent.

The average french theatre-goer seemed to only be interested in the thrillers of the time, which were transparently influenced by that of American cinema. Naughty sex romps, period pieces and vehicles for Martine Carol and Jean Gabin were the call of the day. But what perhaps changed it around, where cinema in France would see it's renaissance to come, was the vast number of young intellectuals that observed film, as they would say, a Cezanne on a gallery wall. One such film that would pique was Robert Bresson's Un condamne a Mort S'est echappe ou La vent souffle ou il veut ( A Man Escaped, 1956). And this would mean it was time again for many happy returns at the Box office as a result.

            The Beauty of Rene Clair's  The Beauties of the Night

Les Belles de Nuit ( The Beauties of the Night, 1952) Gerard Philipe  was one of France's premier leading stars until his premature demise in 1959. In Les Belles, Philipe portrays a music instructor who frequently dreams of desirable women in varying historical epochs. In Les Grand Maneuvres ( Summer Maneuvers, 1955) Philipe plays a Lothario in a provincial garrison town who pursues a divorcee ( Michele Morgan) for a wager and discovers that he has become bessoted with her in what was a bitter-sweet comedy of errors.

                         The Farmer in le 'dell

Tout l'Or du Monde ( All the Gold in the World, 1961) centers on a local farmer who vehemently refuses to sell his property to a vulturous real estate agent, who plans on transforming the village into a holiday camp. This film would be lauded for the performance of Bourvil, cast as a father and his two sons. But Clair was clearly less at ease with rustics, than with his precious Parisians.

     A scene from the war comedy Les Fetes Galantes; the poor reception of this film would sadly                                          
                     put the  kibosh on the career of the brilliant Rene Clair.

Les Fetes Galantes ( The Lace Wars, 1965) was a Franco-Romanian co-production filmed in Romania and featuring Jean Pierre Cassel. Clair had wanted for some time to produce a film about the stupidity of war - he set this in the eighteenth century to avoid the kind of organized massacre he felt characterized his own century. This film was by no means a success, and in fact would seal his fate, as his career ended as a repercussion of how poorly received it would be.

In 1960, Clair would be the first film artist to be elected to the French Academy ( Cocteau had gained his place mainly for his literary works). He died in 1981.

The pre-war aesthetic of 'poetic realism' carried on in post-war films like Marcel Carne's Les Portes de la Nuit ( Gates of the Night, 1946) but after the dreamy Julliete, ou la Clef des Songes ( Juliette, or the Key of Dreams, 1950) Carne, who co-created with scenarist Jacques Prevert, had been the architect of this style, and ultimately would find himself driven into a career of crass commercialism

                                  Jacques Becker and Jean Gabin having a chin-wag

During the Occupation, there would be a trio of directors that would come to prominence ; Henri-Georges Clouzot, Rene Clement and Jacques Becker. The Fifties saw the consolidation of their talents. If Becker, the most original, is mostly unremembered today, it is doubtless, due to the slightly disconcerting diversity of his work, that almost all of it, would hit a minor key. He was also a humble magician, a creator, unconcerned with pandering for the sake of popularity and making grand statements, and it was this attribute that endeared him to young directors, one such, in the name of Francois Truffaut later in the decade.



The work of Jacques Becker (1906-60) is marked by an impeccable, though never oppressive sense of detail and an utterly astute rendering of time, as well as place. His greatest work left behind was Casque d'Or (Golden Marie, 1952) a fateful love story/period piece set in turn-of-the-century Paree. It was illuminated by the electric performance of Simone Signoret