091 - La Ronde, 1950, France. Dir. Max Ophuls.

Saturday, April 1, 2017

091 - La Ronde, 1950, France. Dir. Max Ophuls.

This film is as light and breezy as a French silk pie.

Or a tiramisu.

Light.  Delicate.  Complex.  Nuanced.  Tasty. 

With the title La Ronde (the round, a circle dance), this film contains more circles than the Coen Brothers.

If that is possible.

The earth turns on its axis.  Love makes it rounds.  Time turns.  Lives turn.  We will come full circle in the end.

The cyclorama.  The carousel.  The crank.  The gears.  The dance.  Round hats.  Top hats.  Spiral staircases.  Rings.  Glasses.  Cups.  Plates.  Wheels.  French curves. 

When watching this film, you may wonder whether it was made by a film director or by a magician.

Max Ophuls loves camera movement.  He loves highly stylized, highly choreographed long takes.  And he moves the camera in ways that seem unique to him.

It is as though the camera is suspended in mid-air.  As though it can move on any axis, in any direction, at any speed, at any time.

He is working in 1950, in an era of jibs and dollies, but he produces the kinds of results that make you think he is working with an indoor silent drone.  One that could carry a quarter-ton Mitchell camera on it without flinching.  One that would never lose battery power or altitude.

The camera moves are not done for their own sakes, as they might be done in a movie today, to draw attention to themselves.  They are done in service of the film.  They seem effortless.  Poetic.  And again, magical.

Then suddenly he will cut to a Dutch angle.  Canted.  Tilted.  Cockeyed.  A low angle.  Looking up.  On a slant.  This happens when we see the narrator.  Or when we see through the eyes of a particular character.  A point of view.

The production design is gorgeous.  It was nominated for an Oscar.  It won a BAFTA.  It is a beautiful film to look at.

And Ophuls does something else that seems unique to him.  He does not merely move the camera through an open room.  He fills the rooms with railings and greenery and furniture.   The actors move down one lane while the camera moves down another, looking through objects, in deep focus, giving greater dimensionality.

The film is also meta, self-referential, self-aware, before that practice became overdone.  Here it is done creatively, artfully.  It is alive with possibility.

We begin on the waterfront, with Anton Walbrook as the Raconteur addressing us directly.  Who is he?  The writer?  The ringmaster?  The emcee?  He says he is the image of your desires.

He will appear to us between scenes as the master magician behind all of the scenes.  Then he will appear within the scenes as a character, in disguise.  The other characters will be surprised to see him.  They will not recognize him.  But he will always know something about them.  Indeed, he created them!

In one scene he will even censor the scene itself.  As the scene plays out, we will cut to him in the editing room.  He will splice the film in front of us.  He will play the scene again, and it will have a different outcome this time from the first one.
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He talks.  He sings.  He tells us that the story will move.  Will turn.

He walks up the steps from the waterfront onto the theatre stage.  With footlights.  Curtains.  A spotlight.

He steps off of the theatre stage onto the sound stage.  A film set.  With lights.  Camera.  And . . .

The carousel.

He talks.  He sings.  He starts the carousel.  It turns.

It contains a wide array of items upon which a potential rider may sit.  A horse, yes.  But a child's swing.  A step-ladder.

A step-ladder?

We are about to go on a round dance of love, a daisy-chain.  These carousel seats may be symbolic of the strange situations in which lovers find themselves.

As the carousel turns, it delivers our first character.  A woman.  A woman of the night.

Like Eve, she enters the set unsure of where she is, or who she is, or what she wants.  The Ringmaster tells her.  Like a master director, he takes her to her location, explains her scene, and initiates the action.

He steps away and the soldiers begin passing.  She approaches the one written for her, told to her, destined for her to approach.

Something else magical happens for us.

We realize that we are watching a young Simone Signoret and a young Serge Reggiani acting in a scene together.  We saw her in Diabolique (1955), which will be made five years after this one.  We saw him in Le Doulos (1963), which will be made thirteen years later.  And we saw both of them in Army of Shadows (1970), made twenty years later.  Here they are closer to the beginning of their careers (although both here in their twenties have already made around twenty movies). 

The scenes will all connect.  She will go for him in this scene.  He will go for someone else in the next scene.  That woman will go for someone else in the next scene.  That man will go for someone else in the next scene.  Until it comes back to the first person.

As you watch La Ronde, you may recognize a premise similar to the one in the 1998 David Hare play The Blue Room.  Nicole Kidman brought attention to this play when she performed it in London.  We used to perform it in acting school.  The Blue Room contains the same daisy chain of hook-ups, with ten scenes, with ten characters, five characters of each sex, performed by only two actors, each one playing five characters.

Both The Blue Room and our film La Ronde were based on Arthur Schnitzler's Austrian play known commonly as La Ronde.  It is the same premise.

Max Ophuls was born in Germany, near the French border, and made films in both Germany and France.  Under the German occupation of France, he left for America and made four films in Hollywood.  Then he returned to France and made French films again.

And he makes this one to be about as delicious as it can be.

It is charming.

It is delightful

It comes full circle.

Will the circle be unbroken?

Time to dance the roundelay.