Love Story (1943)
Love Story / Douce (1943)
DVD5 (from VHS) (VIDEO_TS) | PAL 4:3 (720x576) | 01:43:57 | 4,38 Gb
Audio: French AC3 2.0 @ 224 Kbps | Subs: English, None
Genre: Drama | France
DVD5 (from VHS) (VIDEO_TS) | PAL 4:3 (720x576) | 01:43:57 | 4,38 Gb
Audio: French AC3 2.0 @ 224 Kbps | Subs: English, None
Genre: Drama | France
Paris, 1887. Douce, a young woman of 17 years, lives with her invalid father, Engelbert de Bonafé, and her domineering grandmother, la comtesse de Bonafé. She is in love with her father’s steward, Fabien, and plans to elope with him. However, Fabien loves Douce’s private tutor and companion, Irène. It was through him that Irène found her current position and he expects her to repay him by starting a new life with him in North America. Irène has higher aspirations, however, and when Engelbert de Bonafé reveals his intentions to marry her, she rejects Fabien. Realising her moment has come, Douce reveals her love to Fabien and tells him she is prepared to give up everything for him. The two lovers plan to set sail for a new life together, but their happiness proves to be short-lived…
IMDB
One of the film directors to earn distinction whilst France was under Nazi Occupation was Claude Autant-Lara, a former set and costume designer who, after a long and difficult apprenticeship, finally found recognition with a string of high class melodrama in the 1940s. Although Autant-Lara’s reputation was tarnished by certain critics in the 1950s and 60s, much of his work exemplifies the best of the quality tradition in French cinema. Of the films that Autant-Lara made during the Occupation, the one that has stood the test of time best is Douce, the director’s most perfectly crafted film and his most virulent critique of the haute bourgeoisie. Although the story is set in the 19th Century, the film is obviously intended as an attack on the social divisions that prevailed in France in the 1940s, divisions which were somewhat exacerbated by the Occupation.
Love Story (1943)
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Not only was Autant-Lara one of the most accomplished filmmakers of his generation, consistently delivering films of exceptional visual and emotional power, he was also one of the most subversive. In many of his films, he forcefully conveys his deep-seated antipathy for the supposed bulwarks of French society. Douce is a good illustrations of this - a no holds barred assault on class distinction. The film opens with a sequence which makes the Church (another of the director’s bêtes noires) complicit in the bourgeois notion that the classes should be kept apart. In the scene that follow, the class roles are reversed (Irène initially appears to be Douce’s social superior), although this turns out to be a ploy (to establish that Irène is a social climber and identify Douce as someone who plans to marry beneath her). After this sleight of hand, the class barriers come slamming down and we know exactly to which social stratum the characters belong. It is as if there is a fundamental law of nature that prevents the different castes from mixing. Given that Autant-Lara was ill-disposed towards the Occupation (he refused to work for Continental, the German run company that dominated French cinema at the time), it is tempting to read into the film a subtle condemnation of the Nazis’ obsession with racial purity.
Love Story (1943)
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Perhaps the most important character in Douce is the grand house within which most of the action takes place. This setting doesn’t only reveal the material gulf that exists between the two classes that inhabit it, the masters and their servants, it also provides a stifling sense of confinement, a sense of the immutability of one’s own place in society. The characters are defined less by what they say and more by how they relate to this setting, the camera angles revealing the shifting hierarchy within the household. In several shots, the characters are seen through doors or windows, and so it becomes clear that what we thought was their home is in fact a prison, one that becomes increasingly claustrophobic as the social divide become more evident. There are no free individuals in this world - everyone is a prisoner, a stereotype who must adhere to the social conventions or else pay the price (death or banishment). Again, the fact that Douce was made under the Occupation may have given this impression a greater resonance.
Love Story (1943)
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Although Douce excels in many areas (Philippe Agostini’s cinematography adds to both the beauty of the film’s visual composition and its intensely oppressive mood), its real power derives from the script. This was supplied by one of French cinema’s most successful writing teams, Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost, their second collaboration after the Fernandel comedy L’Héritier des Mondésir (1940). In lesser hands, Michel Davet’s novel could have ended up as a trite melodrama. Instead, Aurenche and Bost make it into a complex study in thwarted ambition and desire, with well-rounded characters whose motives are not immediately discernible and an intricate plot that easily holds our attention. The dramatic tension is periodically lightened by a generous helping of the writers’ famous dark humour - notice the cheeky references to Choderlos de Laclos’ Les Liaisons dangereuses and the not very subtle variation on the "Let them eat cake" saying. After this sterling effort, Aurenche and Bost would work with Autant-Lara on many of his subsequent films, including such memorable classics as Le Diable au corps (1947), L’Auberge rouge (1951), Le Rouge et le noir (1954) and La Traversée de Paris (1956).
Love Story (1943)
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Heading a distinguished cast is Odette Joyeux, who had previously starred in Autant-Lara’s Le Mariage de Chiffon (1942) and Lettres d’amour (1942). As the ill-fated Douce, Joyeux gives what is probably the finest performance in her short career, her gamine persona lending her a tragic vulnerability that makes her the film’s most sympathetic character. Providing a perfect contrast with Joyeux’s innocent and impulsive Douce is Madeleine Robinson’s calculating social climber Irène - both characters are convincingly played as victims of a cruel social structure that inhibits them and prevents them from fulfilling their dreams. Note that whilst Douce and Irène actively fight against the system that holds them in check, their male counterparts, the Count de Bonafé and his estate manager Fabien, look like passive bystanders, not merely powerless to change the status quo, but also seemingly reluctant to do so. It is interesting that in many of Autant-Lara’s films the female characters tend to be the strongest and more proactive, whilst the men are often weak or lacking in moral conviction. An extreme example of this in Douce is the elderly harridan Madame de Bonafé, superbly portrayed by Marguerite Moreno at her feistiest. Looking like Cerberus guarding the gates to the haute bourgeoisie, Moreno’s character is a patronising ogress that epitomises the cancerous social divide which Autant-Lara riled against in his films. The film’s pessimistic ending shows the folly of class prejudice but offers little hope that things will ever change for the better. Cerberus is too well-fed, égalité the one luxury the rich cannot afford.James Travers, Films de France
Love Story (1943)
This movie plays like a Chekov play. Unspoken emotions are amped to the top. Actions are performed without being revealed. And most importantly, nothing seems to happen. Plays can get away with nothing happening, but the milieu of cinema requires and demands action. This movie avoids it and manages to still work. By doing this, it takes the world of thirties to forties cinema where plot, story and action is king and introduces character as the harbinger of a movie to the big budget studio productions of France and thus the world. It is similar to the idea behind the French New Wave but Truffaut attacked this kind of movies and this director and particularly the writers of this movie, Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost, a legendary screen writing team as old farts or the old wave, thus the term the new wave.
Love Story (1943)
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The dialog in this movie is literate almost bibliotequeish to say the least, and it does take its time to warm or move your heart. As I said, it cons you into believing nothing is happening while we are watching the destruction of an old world; one of aristocrats, barons and the meritocracy. It is 1887 and Douce the daughter of the Bonafe patriarch who also lives with her grandma, the Bonafe matriarch in a studio-set created house that seems to have yanked right out of one of Poe's tales. It is a character in itself in the movie. Light does not come from outside in this house. Only the artificial lighting of the cinematographer castigates the gloom. The patriarch wishes to marry the servant teacher Irene who is of poor class. But she is betrothed to another of working class. I know, you've read, heard and seen this plot many times before but not as expertly done as this movie. In fact, if you are a fan of Wong-Kong-Kwai, you should love this movie. It reminded me of In the mood for love. It has all the trademark pacing, irony and exotic direction of his movies. Odette Joyeux is very good but the standout is Marguerite Moreno as the matriarch. Watch it to see how an era disappears with fumes, death, anger and a carol.IMDB Reviewer
Love Story (1943)
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