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The inauguration of Disneyland is not lost on Georges Franju, who casts a beady eye on France's own commodified repackaging of cultural heritage. "Glorious man, take care of your tomb." Robed like a wizard, the dying patriarch (Pierre Brasseur) pads around the lavish manor, reaches under a doll's skirt to turn it on (cf. Siegel's The Lineup), sinks into his throne. No inheritance for the greedy family members, who move into the medieval castle and transform it into a son et lumière spectacle for tourists, not a good idea. The lake must be drained, armors and jousts become canned sounds for the floor show, raspy murmurs waft out of loudspeakers. When an ancient legend is recounted on empty spaces before a gawking audience, is it technology at the service of phantoms or vice-versa? Into the scheme wanders a mysterious murderer, like the dead raven dropped amidst dinner finery. "We're not in the Dark Ages anymore!" The deadpan model is Magritte, starting with the levitating first view of the palace and continuing to Jean-Louis Trintignant's quick change of costume behind an obelisk. And Then There Were None for the framework and Orphée for the mirror doors, plus William Castle for the electrocuting floodlights. A double-edged Franju extravaganza, an attack on the vulgarization of the past that nevertheless brings out the medium's most virtuosic apparatus and closes on a jaunty step at a funeral march. Coppola reshuffles it for Dementia 13. With Pascale Audret, Marianne Koch, Philippe Leroy, Dany Saval, Jean Babilée, Georges Rollin, Gérard Buhr, and Jean Ozenne. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |