René Clair and Cahiers du Cinema

This is from pages 392-393 0f “Le Mystère René Clair” by Pierre Billard published by Plon in 1998. the translation is mine.
.
.
In fact, the conflict between René Clair and Les Cahiers du Cinema had already begun in the issue number 37 (July 1954) in the form of an anecdote precisely signed "François Truffaut". He had remarked in his "Short Private Journal of Cinema" that he had seen The Flame of New Orleans again, "You never laugh and rarely smile. The work strikes one in the first place by its dryness, the complete absence of zest... René Clair, for ten years, has cut himself the figure of the official entertainer. He shoots films for old ladies go twice a week to the cinema in their old chauffer-driven Delahaye, one of these two time to see the latest masterpiece of Sir Lawrence Olivier. For Sir René Clair, I think that the young prefer our friend Hulot and that is well." Truffaut proceeds further into caricature, revealing the "youthful prejudice" that critic will be assailed for. He adds that not one Clair film is equal in drolery to Jean Renoir's Tire-au-Flanc. The response could be that the drolery of Tire-au-Flanc owes much more, alas, to Mouezy-Eon than to Renoir and the most important invention of the film draws its source in the "poetic comedy" of the dancer Pomies who was directly inspired by René Clair. But, maybe, it is rather late to revive this polemic. All the more so because this quotation was not cited to open a heavy dossier of attacks committed by that revue of young cinema against René Clair. But, on the contrary, to contest the legend according to which, he had been a privileged target and the victim of the "terrorism" of the politique des auteurs introduced at Cahiers du Cinema with François Truffaut as pointman. Truffaut's great offensive against French cinema had been launched in the article A Certain Tendency of French Cinema in issue number 31 (January 1954). The name René Clair is not cited there and the two main targets are scenarists and "psychological realism", two elements which do not concern Clair. In issue number 53 (December 1955), the review of Les Grandes Manoeuvres by Jean-José Richer is titled, "A window is needed..." But, whether if, open or closed, Richer does not know the answer for the editorial staff never succeeds in reaching an harmony of opinion. Issue 71 (May 1957) is a special issue dedicated to the situation of French cinema. In its lexicon of directors, Clair received a exceptionally positive note. “A complete film auteur who, form the silent era has brought...intelligence, finesse, humor, and an intellectualism a bit dry but smiling and in good taste....In whatever manner that his career continues, he has created a cinematographic universe which is his own, a universe rigorous and not shorn of fantasy, thanks to which he remains one of the greatest film-makers.” What more could be asked? However, six members of the editorial staff debate fervidly the problems of French cinema. A discussion about Clouzot and Bresson, about Vadim and Delannoy, about Ophuls and Becker, about Clément, about Renoir, about Cocteau, and about many others: not once is Clair’s name spoken.It is necessary to wait until issue 76 (November 1957) to find an exhaustive appraisal Of René Clair in Cahiers du Cinema. To wit, a courteous, serious, thought-out, and most harsh review of Porte des Lilas by Eric Rohmer. Cahiers had taken a stand, but outside the polemic, within the framework a a normal exercise of criticism. They fall back into ambiguity upon the release of the next film. Cahiers does not publish a review of that film but returned the next month with an article by Carl Dreyer. In point, appearing in issue number 162 (January 1962), one finds an ensemble of old writings by the Danish filmmaker, among which is an article, dating from 1936, in which he puts René Clair in the dock for betraying his art by directing The Ghost Goes West. This trial in not the most straightforward, but, in any case, it is a long way from a frontal attack. The first great period of Cahiers du Cinema leaves us this balance sheet, certainly negative, but stripped of all relentlessness and from which François Truffaut virtually absents himself.

René Clair shows the difference between American and Eurpoean film.

Often times on Internet film boards, posters ask what is the difference between American film and European film. I think this story, from the French director René Clair - who spent World War II in Hollywood - which contrast Cecil B De Mille's film The Story of Doctor Wassell with the film about Corydon Wassell that Clair planned, explains the difference. It is taken from Clair's "Cinema yesterday and today. Translated by Stanley Appelbaum. Edited, and with an introd. and annotations, by R. C. Dale." from Dover Publications in 1972 pages 194-195

"Around 1942, during the darkest months of the war, which the United States had just entered, President Roosevelt one evening made famous the name of a modest hero. During one of his “fireside chats”, as his occasional radio speeches were called. He told the story of Dr. Wassell. This brave doctor (a navy doctor, I think) had saved a number of women and children, leading them through some jungle, in the face of various perils, to a place of safety.

"No sooner had the President ended his talk than C.B. [De Mille] had found the subject for his next production. And in the days that followed, perhaps the very next day, the newspapers announced that The Story of Doctor Wassell was going to be reenacted on the screen. A contract was signed with the doctor, who soon arrived in California. He was welcomed to the studio with all possible ceremony, then at lunch was seated on C.B.’s right. On that occasion, no doubt, he met the male star who was to portray him in the studio jungle beneath the sun of spotlights. Hollywood was not afraid to reconstitute war scenes at home and, since a number of actors were in the service, it was precisely those men whose health or age or some other reason kept them from combat, who were fought over to take the role of heroes.

"The good doctor surely had many opportunities to savor the irony of this parallel between fiction and reality. While the screenplay was being worked out – a long process in which he took part – I think he was surprised more than once by the addition of some sentimental or dramatic incidents with which the professionals saw fit to enliven the simple narrative of his adventure that he had given. I can picture the scene: “But that never happened!” “Leave it to us. We know what the public wants.” Probably after a few sessions not much attention was paid to his opinions.

"It seems that not much more attention was being paid to him personally. In the commissary he did not remain for long on the right hand of the Master. As the weeks went by, his table setting became gradually more distant from this place of honor. And one day when C.B. was entertaining important guests, I saw Dr. Wassell lunching at a small table along with a secretary.

"The last time I caught sight of him was during the shooting of the film which was to glorify his exploits on countless screens. The working day had just ended. Actors, bit players, technicians and assistants were leaving the studios, getting into their cars and departing in all directions to the cheerful hum of their motors, while, all alone at the corner of the street, the glorious doctor was waiting for the bus.

"This sight gave me the idea for a film which would tell the true adventure of Dr. Wassell – his mishaps among the artificial flora and made-up fauna of the cinema. I submitted the project to the high authorities of Paramount, but I was given to understand that war in Hollywood was not a laughing matter.

from René Clair's "Cinema yesterday and today. Translated by Stanley Appelbaum. Edited, and with an introd. and annotations, by R. C. Dale." from Dover Publications in 1972 pages 194-195

Cahiers "young turks" and French Quality directors -- May '57

In the May 1957 "Situation of French Cinema" special issue of Cahiers du Cinema, an article featured sixty French directors with a capsule chronology, a filmography and a thumbnail critique for each one. What follows is my translation of the critiques of twelve directors who are the “usual suspects” of “French Quality” cinema. These thumbnails were written by Charles Bitsch, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Donoil-Valcroze, Claude de Givray, Jean-Luc Godard, Robert Lachenay, Louis Marcorelles and Luc Moullet. They were not, however, individually credited. The presence of “Robert Lachenay” in this group, probably signals the participation of François Truffaut.


Once again, these thumbnail critiques were originally published in the May 1957 special "Situation of French Cinema" issue of "Cahiers du Cinema" and translated by me.

Yves Allegret

“Dédée d'Anvers“, “Une si jolie petite plage“, “Manèges” and “Les Orgueilleux” form a coherent whole with a progression towards a mastery of a style and a world-vision, questionable though it be. This “noir” suite lays bear injustice and social hypocrisy, greed, the corruptive power of money, the loneliness of those who do not play the game and the impossibility of love. Praiseworthy concerns, but mingled in with an indulgence for the villainy shown. No matter, the undertaking was viable, strewn with robust scenes, taken from uncompromising ethnological documents on man who is referred to as civilized but who is in the twentieth century savage. Then came three failures. Even should this remain the state of things, Yves Allégret deserves a paragraph in the history of cinema, but no more than that.

Claude Autant-Lara

For many producers, he is the surest of the prominent directors. This blessing constrains him to subjects less demanding and less personal than he might want (but he pressed “Marguerite de la nuit”, one of his poorer films), Censorship has also played him some dirty tricks. For these two reasons, the ensemble of his work, careful, intelligent, and skilful does not avoid a certain classicism which poorly fits this auteur - passionate, mettlesome, explosive, quarrelsome and “committed”, but also esthetic and sentimental. For this reason, one must wonder if, with the march of time, “Diable au corps” and “Le Blé en herbe” will still scandalize the right-thinking. Our wager: these films will pass for romantic - which perhaps they are - and which certainly “Le Rouge et le Noir” is, despite that the accent is placed there on social rather than psychological drama. By contrast, “La Traversée de Paris“, represents in his body of work, the ideal convergence of the ambitions of the auteur and public success. If the fashion of judging the world that is encountered there is more out of the 1930s - an epoque in which the judgment of an Autant-Lara or an Aurenche is fixed - than of 1957, if thus this fashion of judgment was then more revealing than today, it is less that Autant-Lara has preserved the spirit of his youth for which he should be reproached than to the time-lags and contradictions of production. He is attracted to stories of adolescent love but his “children who love” remain, in general, rather theoretic. And that is why the bitter and always revolting style of Lara is better accommodated by a pitiless analysis of disagreeable characters such as those of “La Traversée de Paris”.

Carlo-Rim

As “Carlo” does rhyme with “bravo”, let us regret not being able to applaud his work. “L’ Armoire volante”, in taking us to cloud nine, was not a “signed Levitan”. The sketch film “La Gourmandise” left us dreaming of enchanting tomorrows: one must feel disenchanted. If René Clair’s fault is not allowing himself to be guided by his instinct, Carlo Rim, by contrast, would gain by more self-analysis and better self-control: the crudities would be prevented from becoming vulgarities, the bawdiness from becoming obscenity, and the jokes from becoming oafish. His comic style makes him a cabaret artist-filmmaker who came too late to mise-en-scene. As with Franju and Roquier, the pre-war climate would have been more propitious to the fostering of his talent. The young cinephiles prefer “Admiral” Carbonnaux to this Montmartrois, Carlo Rim.

Marcel Carné

Gamboling not without some awkwardness in a private world of the most formal poetry (“Les Visiteurs du soir“, ”Juliette ou La clef des
songes“) but asserting a consistent taste for recreating the atmosphere of an epoque ( “Drôle de drame“, and “Les Enfants du paradis” which so enchanted the anglo-saxon spectators). Carné is quite himself only as a populist. He has frequented all the little bistros of the Republic, of the Faubourg Saint-Martin or of Boulogne-Billancourt, the dance halls and the furnished townhouses. His Parisien films have the “back-to-work” sourness of the day after a holiday when it is necessary to return to one’s labors. He remains quite strictly tied to a social period -- the Popular Front. Carné lived his golden age as the nucleus of one of the most perfect teams of French cinema -- Prevert, Trauner, Jaubert and Gabin. Friends quarrel intensely and do good work together. Today Carné must defend by himself a prestigious reputation, but he is still the capable artisan whom we knew before 1939. Mad lover of impeccable work, tending towards a formalism a little too dried out that he perhaps inherited from his master, Jacques Feyder.

André Cayatte

After nine average films where only the skillfulness of “Le Chanteur inconnu” stands the test of time, he made the last of the great Jacques Prevert films “Les Amants de Vérone”, a work confused and often irritating but more often moving in its tragic and poetic expression of Fate. Would he be the new Carné? No, his reputation and celebrity since, and (including “Justice est faite”) rests on four “thesis” (whatever that means) films: distinguished, demanding, skillful and often courageous but which, legal pleas rather than works of art, defy esthetic judgment and the “crtitique of beautés”. He defends his ideas as one defends one’s clients, speaking to the gallery. Here, a series of techniques and gestures which might have a polemic value but which are not relevant to the art of film. “Oeil pour Oeil”, shot entirely on location and without any thesis will be awfully revealing. Will we finally know who Cayatte is when, as all authentic creators, he speaks, first off, for himself.

René Clair

A complete film auteur who, from the silent era has brought to French cinema intelligence, finesse, humor, and an intellectualism a bit dry but smiling and in good taste. He was very nearly hobbled by the “talkie” but he quickly understood that his style, inherited from the French “primitives” could easily adapt to this additional frill. “Quatorze Juillet” marks a high point. What follows appears more labored, but “quality” remains. His four post-war films demonstrate an evolution but betray a certain difficulty in finding subjects and end with “Les Grandes manoeuvres“, a finely chiseled and melancholy work. “Porte des Lilas” is announced as a more unusual film with finer turns. In whatever manner that his career continues, he has created a cinematographic universe which is his own, a universe rigorous and not shorn of fantasy, thanks to which he remains one of the greatest film-makers.

René Clément

To call him the greatest French director would be a gratuitous compliment, if one did not imply that Renoir or Bresson are greater because they are more “film auteurs”. In as much as he as proven in “Monsieur Ripois” that his talent could flourish without the help of Aurenche and Bost and as he is now, with Irvin Shaw, the author of the adaptation of “Un barrage Contre la Pacifique” whose mastery and quality we can reasonably presume. More than everything else and beyond their scenarists, all Clément’s films - including his only failure “Le Château de Verre” - manifest a continuous philosophy which is well the doing of their realisateur. His characters are all prisoners of historical or geographical conditions or, more simply, of themselves and it is their desperate battle to break through the bars and vanquish their solitude, battles, doomed to failure or derision, which he paints for us with a meticulous and lucid realism which broaches at once both cruelty and lyricism. He is more than the obstinate architect of proud buildings constructed in tailored stone, more than a majestic director of actors, more than the master of a rigorous style, he is also -- in the proportion that one can measure living artists -- the “film genius”.

Henri-Georges Clouzot

At the age of seven, he wrote a play whose protagonist rid himself of his wife by putting nails in her soup. The story of his life reveals him to be stubborn, clear-sighted, concerned to express the “hard face” of existence. This is a “film auteur”. “I do not believe,” he says, “in a director who is not his own writer.“ He loves his metier. “I am most of all physical, but my greatest pleasure in directing a film, is the shooting, the editing.” He depicts situations with no concern for the judgments of society, but he puts himself in danger of taking the bite from his films by targeting too great a number of spectators. “I work for the Gaumont-Palace,” he proclaims. But we know so well that his concerns, his obsessions -- perversion, true cruelty -- are not compatible with the wants of the great public. Thus, how Clouzot is careful of self-censorship. Furthermore, he knows where he is going and why, in his gallery of monsters, he puts great emphasis on the revolting, the sadistic, the subversive, the executioner. By subtraction, he, little-by-little, reveals, with the sharpness of a photgraphic negative, the dazzling image of pure innocence and of selfless friendship.

Henri Decoin

A little out-of-fashion with his silk scarf in his open-collar shirt. But what of it! Directors who are indulged by history shoot what they want, when they want, where they want. And since long ago, Henri Decoin is one among them. He shoots anything, anywhere, with anyone, but not anyway, however. Decoin spurs integrity all way to reflection on the subjects offered to him. He never hesitates to take risks and goes back to square one, even, after a successful film. Light-hearted, some twenty years ago, when his heart beat for Danielle Darrieux, his name now weighs heavily in the arguments of producers. For Henri knows how, without panache, to adapt himself to all genres, all styles. Why reproach him for this facility? It permits him to be the darling child of the distributors. What says it better?

Jean Delannoy

More than festival awards, his films have most often known success with the public, and, as much evidence confirms it, have “touched” the spectators. A paradoxical situation, since, what critics in general have mostly reproached him -- who has given us this definition “cinema is a movement of the heart” -- for the coldness of his narration and the dryness of his direction, despite a sureness of technique and a copious sense of craft. Academicism, a superficial exploitation of great literary works or social problems, say the most severe. Is this only bias? Well, a critic as perceptive and little inclined to vehemence as Pierre Lephoron came to this conclusion which we will make our own: “One would have to believe that the director of 'Marie-Antoinette Reine de France' tends toward an art that he is incapable of attaining, that his ambitions, as noble as they are, lead him and his finished work astray.”

Julien Duvivier

Some will tell you that today’s Duvivier is not worthy of yesterday’s Duvivier and judge “L’ Affaire Maurizius“ by wailing for “Pépé le Moko”. One might respond by burning “Un Carnet de Bal” in the name of “Sous le Ciel de Paris”. In fact, Duvivier’s career is like a temperature chart with spiked highs and vertiginous slumps that, when led back to a happy medium witnesses an enviable warmth. If it it is rare that his films make rapt, it is rarer that his films make bored. His taste for a certain style of the baroque, culminating with “La Fête à Henriette” make him the often guileful, sometimes aggravating champion of the unexpected. Constructed in stucco rather than cut in marble, his structures are not those that last, but perishables are not the least of foodstuffs.

Jean Grémillon

Since 1953, Jean Grémillon has not directed a feature film. However, “Remorques”, “Lumière d'été” and “Le 6 juin à l'aube” suffice to assure him renown. But, from one who, after the Liberation was considered the most complete French director we had hoped for better and, above all that he would give to our screen the kind of social conscience that it has always lacked. His culture and his moderation would undoubtedly permit him to fill this delicate role. But the imperatives of production decided otherwise and Grémillon’s character did the rest. These half-solutions didn’t suit him which his last three films illustrate, although “L’ Amour d'une Femme” deserved a better reception.


Once again, these thumbnail critiques were originally published in the May 1957 special "Situation of French Cinema" issue of "Cahiers du Cinema" and translated by me.