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The Vercors novella appears as a clandestine item in the pre-credits preamble, thus the literary veneer and underground soul of Jean-Pierre Melville's feature debut. "I have great respect for those who love their country." Winter of '41, sitting room as stage and confessional (high-angled smile of angelic statuette, low-angled flames of flickering fireplace). A Nazi lieutenant (Howard Vernon) is billetted in the house, the elderly owner (Jean-Marie Robain) and his niece (Nicole Stéphane) engage in passive rebellion by refusing to talk to or even acknowledge him. The officer is cadaverous but sensitive, an avowed Francophile, a limping "fantôme." He regales his impassive hosts with wide-ranging monologues, from his identification with the fairy-tale Beast to his naïve belief that war will gloriously bridge French and German cultures. "Here, what's needed is the mind, subtle and poetic thought." Occupation and Resistance, continuous verbiage plus striking photographic elements—a composition early on has boiling pots in the foreground, uncle and niece at opposite sides of a kitchen table in the middleground, and the apologetic invader peering through a frosty window in the background. A whip-pan transitions suddenly from tight interior to long shot of Chartres Cathedral in an open field, the camera tilts up and pans right to take in the barrel of a tank and rattles with each explosion. (Melville pointedly reworks the Teutonic visage sliding into a view of the Arc de Triomphe in L'Armée des Ombres.) The ticking clock and the resurrected harmonium, the silhouetted profile and the burning gaze. Dolorous enlightenment, completed in the battlefield. "Il est beau qu'un soldat désobéisse à des ordres criminels." Bresson follows suit with Journal d'un Curé de Campagne, and there are benefits for Astruc (Une Vie) and Dreyer (Gertrud). Cinematography by Henri Decaë. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |