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Paris on the cusp of the new decade, Idealist versus Philistine. The goateed young pasha (Jean-Claude Brialy) presides over his dissolute collections, objets d'art include toy soldiers and real revolvers along with the fauna and flora of the bohemian student scene. Enter the provincial cousin (Gérard Blain), "the plodding sort" of innocent, uneasy amid bourgeois sharpies and parasites and buffoons. Balzac from the gruff bookstore owner (cf. Boudu sauvé des eaux) and Wagner at the soirée, Gestapo regalia and all, then infatuation for the worldly gazelle (Juliette Mayniel). Love is a lost ideal in this sealed-off environment, jaded sophisticates yearn for purity even as they squash it. The diffident poet is no match for his urbane double, Brialy ("living proof that studying is an utter waste of time") aces his exams and scoops up the heroine while Blain pretends to shrug ("I'll wait my turn"). Reversing the setting and characters of Le Beau Serge, Claude Chabrol discovers the acerbic stylization that he would for the rest of his career polish and sharpen. (A concerned padre in the previous film, Claude Cerval is here reborn as a Mephistophelian leech.) The Nouvelle Vague triangle is erected on manifold ambiguities: The innocent's priggishness contrasts with the scoundrel's tormented emotion, the doleful woman caught between them suffers the cynic's nostalgia for romance. The ruthlessness of the filming is recognizably keyed to the Aldrich of The Big Knife, circular panning shots burnish the screen while frosted glass dividers splinter it. Chekhov's gun will not only be fired but also turned into a literally loaded mechanism of Fate, a languid intensity that accelerates toward a devastating negation. "Young people! If only all our problems were so trivial." La Dolce Vita is just around the corner, Malle in Le Feu Follet reflects the spiral. Cinematography by Henri Decaë. With Guy Decomble, Geneviève Cluny, Michèle Méritz, Corrado Guarducci, Stéphane Audran, Paul Bisciglia, and Françoise Vatel. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |