Jeanne Moreau

  • The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964)

    The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2020) There are two ways of making a movie about an inanimate object, and The Yellow Rolls-Royce has picked the worst one. The best way is to depict the object as a character that has a beginning and an end, with several related trials along the way—it gets purchased, used, damaged, repaired, liked, lost, etc. The second way is far looser and consists in loosely stringing a few unconnected stories that all happen to feature the object. The Yellow Rolls-Royce would have been a lovely excuse for a multi-decade story about a car. Unfortunately, it ends up being the common thread between unconnected stories, taking us from the English aristocracy to a vacationing mobster and his moll, to revolutionaries in Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia. There is very little connective tissue nor progression between the three stories, which appears to be excuses to get as many stars in the film. To be fair, the cast is quite good: Rex Harrison and Jeanne Moreau get the ball rolling, as the Yellow Rolls-Royce is purchased by a pompous English aristocrat as a birthday gift for his wife. George C. Scott, Shirley MacLaine and Alain Delon push the ball even further in Venice, as romantic shenanigans complicate a summer holiday. Finally, the film hits its stride alongside Ingrid Bergman and Omar Sharif as she, a rich American widow, helps him, a resistance fighter, cross a national border and fight the Nazis. The Yellow Rolls-Royce can be worth a look if you’re a fan of these actors, or if you choose to focus on the third story and the very beginning of the first. Otherwise, it does feel like a disappointing mishandling of a potent premise. Too bad—I’m sure there’s still a heck of a movie to be told about the life of a car.

  • Ascenseur pour l’échafaud [Elevator to the Gallows] (1958)

    Ascenseur pour l’échafaud [Elevator to the Gallows] (1958)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2020) French critics may have named the genre, but film noir is, in my mind, a clearly American art form. Still, writer-director Louis Malle’s Ascenseur pour l’échafaud shows how close French cinema ever got to the heart of noir in several decades of affectionate homages. We can see here the bridge from noir to Nouvelle Vague, strong narrative links to Godard’s À bout de souffle, and playful stylishness. The plot is roman de gare stuff, with the protagonist murdering his boss (who’s also his lover’s husband) and seeing everyone’s lives spinning out of control in the best fatalistic tradition of the genre, leading all the way to an implacable conclusion. What the plot won’t tell you, however, is Malle’s sense of cool in directing this picture (his first!), the impressive performance offered by Jeanne Moreau, Miles Davis’ score, and the great black-and-white cinematography used to depict those crucial few days of the narrative. Ascenseur pour l’échafaud is not a perfect film, and its striking elements were later perfected by similar movies by French directors (all of whom, apparently, did a noir homage at some point or another), but it’s still reasonably entertaining to watch and emblematic of where French cinema was headed by the late 1950s.

  • Jules et Jim (1962)

    Jules et Jim (1962)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Criterion Streaming, September 2019) Those who hold long-seated stereotypes about the French Nouvelle Vague as a talky genre in which characters chat ad nauseam about love and life are likely to walk away from Jules et Jim with their entire worldview confirmed. Much of the story is about a tragic romantic triangle set before, during and after World War I, anchored by a woman (Jeanne Moreau) and the titular Jules and Jim—one French, the other German. While the film is very, very talky and melodramatic, it’s also fluid and unexpectedly funny at times—writer-director François Truffaut blends several film techniques and interesting dialogue to make this a far more entertaining experience than the genre stereotypes and downer ending would suggest. There’s some interest in seeing how the sweep of history can affect some intimate relationships, and how the tension between the three characters constantly pushes and pulls at them. Truffaut is one of my favourite New Wave directors for a reason—Aside from my muted reaction to Les 400 coups, he’s usually able to find something interesting in nearly anything he touches, and Jules et Jim would be a far lesser film without his specific touch.

  • Le procès [The Trial] (1962)

    Le procès [The Trial] (1962)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2019) I generally enjoyed watching much of Le procès, but it’s clear that I’m not smart enough to understand this film. Coming from writer-director Orson Welles’s middle-years phase, it’s an adaptation of Franz Kafka’s The Trial, and it plays up the disorienting nature of the original text. As a man is accused of some unspecified offence, his attempts to understand the charges and defend himself are constantly rebuffed by an uncaring system that barely seems human. The story is not meant to be understood—it’s meant to be felt, and Welles gets to work in splendidly visual fashion, putting his characters in vast cavernous spaces, confronting them with early computers and nightmarish bureaucracy. From a purely cinematographic standpoint, there’s a lot to like here. The casting is also nothing short of amazing, in between names such as Anthony Perkins, Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider, Michael Lonsdale and Orson Welles himself. Where the film intentionally falls apart is in making sense of it all. It’s not supposed to, and yet at times it feels like anything for anything’s sake. Many shots are arresting; some of the absurdity is funny; but eventually, Le procès hits a point where the whole thing feels too long and undercooked. Nonetheless, it clearly remains an Orson Welles film, and one where he really gets to work his magic.

  • La Notte [The Night] (1961)

    La Notte [The Night] (1961)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Kanopy Streaming, November 2018) I’m not particularly receptive to the kind of downbeat intimate drama that is Michelangelo Antonioni’s La Notte, but two things in the film kept me from being completely uninterested: The depiction of Milan, resurging from the post-war years in that charming 1960s energy, and Marcello Mastroianni being always cool (as a writer!) even when playing Don Draper’s early inspiration. Jeanne Moreau is also wonderful, even if her character is in the midst of a full-fledged marital crisis with a fairly obvious destination. Otherwise, well, this is the portrait of a marriage in full disintegration, which isn’t the most cheerful of topics. The premise is made even worse by Antonioni’s typically contemplative style: there is only one exit for the characters (divorce) and the viewers (waiting until the end credits) as well. What must have been a breath of fresh air in 1961 compared to the Hollywood Golden Age has been made and remade endless times since then, so modern viewers may not find anything as fresh as then-contemporary audiences. Dull, slow-moving and depressing, La Notte is a very specific kind of film for a very specific kind of viewer.