|
The hybrid of theater and cinema is at once announced, the rising curtain gives way to close-up (father indoors with diving mask) and overhead angle (mother slumped on bathroom sink). "La roulotte" is the term for the hermetic constellation of the bourgeois household, "incroyable" is the byword. The lipsticked ogress (Yvonne de Bray) presides from her sickbed, her husband (Marcel André) can't possibly compete with her possessive doting on their son (Jean Marais), her baby once and forever. The father has a mistress (Josette Day) who binds books instead of reading them, she's now engaged to the son. "We are classic characters," that includes the aunt (Gabrielle Dorziat) who cultivates a vengeful streak along with her "sense of order." "The Fates are amused." Obsession and sacrifice, private games and monstres sacrés, the full Jean Cocteau panoply. The Old Order's incestuous clinging, a divided image with Marais' jabbering jaw at the top of the frame and de Bray's alarmed eyeballs at the bottom. Soiled linens, clogged bathtubs, the fancy table that comes loose when leaned on. On the other side is the tidy skylight with a spiral staircase, battlefields all. A fine surreal language, Papa has no luck with his underwater rifle but succeeds with the masquerade that separates the youngsters, "the only invention of mine that's ever worked." Maman removes herself most dramatically once the blonde opponent enters her lair, the stunted boy grows up at last. Ornate suffocation beautifully sustained, a magnetic camera on a tenebrous hothouse. "I don't know if it's a tragedy or a vaudeville, but it's a masterwork." "A monstrous masterwork," closely emulated by A Streetcar Named Desire and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Fists in the Pocket. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |