Le diable au corps (1947)
Devil in the Flesh (1947)
A Film by Claude Autant-Lara
DVD9 | ISO+MDS | PAL 4:3 (720x576) | 01:57:11 | 7,80 Gb
Audio: French AC3 2.0 @ 448 Kbps | Subs: English, French
Genre: Romance, Drama | 1 win | France
A Film by Claude Autant-Lara
DVD9 | ISO+MDS | PAL 4:3 (720x576) | 01:57:11 | 7,80 Gb
Audio: French AC3 2.0 @ 448 Kbps | Subs: English, French
Genre: Romance, Drama | 1 win | France
Released in France as Le Diable au Corps, The Devil in the Flesh stars Micheline Presle as a nurse at a French military hospital during World War I. Gerard Philipe costars as a high school student who carries a torch for the older Presle. Under pressure from her parents to marry, Presle begins an affair with the boy, but gives up on him when he proves to be far too immature and jealous for her tastes. After a deliberately inconsiderate act on Philipe's part, Presle opts for a loveless marriage with a soldier who is about to head for the front. When Philipe selfishly reenters her life, she resumes the affair, becoming pregnant by the boy. The end result of Philipe's callous behavior is tragedy for all concerned. The Devil in the Flesh is based on a semi-autobiographical novel by Raymond Radiguet, who died of typhoid fever at the age of 20.
IMDB
Claude Autant-Lara’s inspired adaptation of Raymond Radiguet’s scandalous 1923 book Le Diable au corps proved to be every bit as controversial as the novel itself. Despite his reputation as one of the standard bearers of the quality tradition in French cinema, Autant-Lara became something of an agent provocateur in the mid-1940s, his films often bringing him into conflict with the institutions (notably the Church) whilst painting a deeply unflattering picture of French society in general.
Le diable au corps (1947)
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This film’s stark and intimate portrayal of an illicit romance between a sexually precocious teenage boy and a married woman would have been enough to offend bourgeois sensibilities of the time, but Autant-Lara goes even further and uses the film to mock the nationalistic fervour that was sweeping his country in the immediate aftermath of WWII. The director could hardly have created more of a stir if he had made a film in which the Pope was portrayed as a money-grabbing Lucifer (although he came very close to doing just this in his subsequent L’Auberge rouge (1951)).
Le diable au corps (1947)
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Whilst Le Diable au corps no longer has the power to shock in the way it did on its initial release, it is obviously a daring film for its time. The love scenes are arguably the most explicit and sensual ever seen in a film up until this time and the spectacle of a married woman pursuing a torrid love affair with a teenage boy was certainly an unprecedented cinematic event. Rather than paint the affair in a sordid light, Autant-Lara and his screenwriters (the legendary team Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost) make it a thing of exquisite and tragic beauty – and this is probably what most incensed the film’s vociferous detractors.
Le diable au corps (1947)
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Controversial as the film was, it succeeded in establishing Gérard Philipe as one of the leading lights in French cinema. Although he is clearly older than the character he plays (he was in fact 24, the same age as his co-star Micheline Presle), Philipe is the perfect embodiment of Radiguet’s hero, a selfish romantic who feels completely out of place in the time he lives in. Philipe and Presle make such an effective screen couple that you wonder why they seldom worked together again. Their only subsequent appearance together was in the pretty inconsequential comedy Tous les chemins mènent à Rome (1949).
Le diable au corps (1947)
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Raymond Radiguet was just 19 when he wrote his novel Le Diable au corps. (He completed only one other novel, Le Bal du Comte d’Orgel, before he died from typhus, aged 20.) As a consequence, there is a touching naivety and raw honesty to Radiguet’s writing which Aurenche and Bost somehow manage to retain in their screenplay. The characters François and Marthe are seen to have a childlike innocence, each almost oblivious to the social taboos that they are ripping asunder through their illicit romance.
Le diable au corps (1947)
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Michel Kelber’s cinematography subtly emphasises this schism between the two central characters and the world they inhabit by creating a darkly oppressive mood that evokes the harshly repressive nature of contemporary bourgeois attitudes. A masterwork of its time, the film is one of French cinema’s finest evocations of the conflict between our natural impulses and the constraints imposed on us by society, the hideous irreconcilable conflict between desire and duty.James Travers, Films de France
Le diable au corps (1947)
Special Features (w/o subs):
- La victoire en grinçant : Autant-lara fait sa libération (46 mins)
- Le diable au corps censuré (3 mins)
Le diable au corps (1947)
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