Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (
Picnic on the Grass). Knives said some insightful things about this film. The late Renoirs often tend to be a bit experimental and indulgent, which means they don’t entirely work. The same is true here; you can find a lot that’s silly and a little too off-the-wall in this extremely light, summery
divertissement that satirizes a debate of Science vs. Nature (happiness is submission to the order of nature, says one character acting as the director’s mouthpiece). But the virtues here really win me over. For one thing, the film is a hymn to nature and amidst the sex romp the director creates tableaux set in the Provence of his childhood and his father’s paintings (with a title that a few noted Impressionist paintings share). (I wouldn’t be surprised if Allen’s
A Midsummer’s Sex Comedy was not only inspired by Bergman’s
Smiles on a Summer Night, but also by this film.)
The spirit of the whole thing is quite delightful and again we have that mix of theatricality and realism that is a distinctively Renoir touch.
Boudu sauvé des eaux (
Boudu Saved from Drowning). I’m struck again how Renoir’s social cinema is fully humane and the satire never vitriolic; the bourgeois M. Lestingois may have his vices but he’s full of endearing qualities as well. Perhaps in a parallel paradox, Renoir’s camera is spontaneous and imperfect and yet imbued with art and intelligence. There’s something mythic about the Boudu character, a Pan-like nature divinity, a principle of chaos and destructive vitality that’s sent to upset the life of his “benefactors”. (In the marriage scene
dénouement, he’s announced as “Priape (Priapus) Boudu”, which gives weight to such a reading.)
In the Criterion DVD, there’s a wonderfully stimulating and illuminating extra featuring Éric Rohmer and critic Jean Douchet discussing the film. They make a strong case for the “cosmic aspect” of this film, and Renoir’s oeuvre in general, specifically of the notion of both an order within the universe, and a principle of destruction and disorder, of perpetual transformation, which is life, but which also does not negate that order. (The river symbolizes both these things and reappears frequently in Renoir’s films.)
The many exterior scenes in the Bois de Boulogne, then along the Seine, are immensely enchanting. The film wanders along, breathes and is full of life; it’s a true poem.
Toni. This has quite a unique quality to it among Renoir’s films of the period. It has a very rough quality compared to the major films that came before it (
Boudu,
Madame Bovary). That contributes, along with other elements like the preponderance of outdoor sequences, the presence of some non-actors, an occasional documentary feel, in making it a precursor to Italian neo-realism. But we’re still in Renoir territory, with a melodramatic story filled with oh-so-human characters and a strong sense of social reality. Imperfect, but has a lot of charm.
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La Chinoise. With its strong theatricality, this feels very different in tone and style from Godard’s preceding films, at once more “flat” but also more playful. The constantly inventive and witty mise-en-scène makes all of those Marxist-Leninist and Maoist declamations among the primary color-designed sets entertaining, even as the film provides a thought-provoking study of that particular social microcosm of French university students at Nanterre at the dawn of ’68 enthralled with the Cultural Revolution. When the film is about to switch from the theory to the praxis part, however, there’s a strong scene where the idealistic and naïve Véronique meets up with real-life philosopher/activist Francis Jeanson, and their stimulating and ultimately almost moving conversation about the effective means of creating a revolution brings a welcome change of tone and a dimension of greater depth.
Sauve qui peut (la vie) (
Every Man for Himself). Compared to the 60s films, I find the 80s films often more diffuse narratively, and even when understood on that level, harder to make out what they’re about. On a more immediate level, Denise, Paul and Isabelle are three people trying to survive and/or find satisfaction with life, with their relationship to work being at the forefront. But then there all kinds of other things going on: the difficulties relating intimately to one another (which often involves physical violence*), those frequents shot of traffic (people, vehicles, trains), the nature vs. city contrasts which bring in a new, slightly mystical quality that gets developed further in subsequent films (the film’s score by Yared helps contribute in this respect), the strange, recurrent family incest allusions, quirky tricks Godard plays with the spectator’s expectations regarding the diegetic vs. non-diegetic music. (*Godard scholars have written about the focus on bodies in the later 80s films as a sign of resistance to the industrial economic organization of social and cultural activity, and perhaps that starts here already. Witness the sex-chain scene where a rich industrialist tries to mechanize and bring into rhythmic obedience those bodies).
It’s hard to find cohesion among these different elements – this isn’t a fault I’m finding with the film, just an observation. For me it’s a fairly striking, strong piece, although I find the latter part involving Isabelle’s story a little less interesting, and the ending is a bit unfinished and dissatisfying relative to what the film seems to promise earlier.