Wednesday, April 12, 2017
102 - . . . And God Created Woman, 1956, France. Dir. Roger Vadim.
Saint Tropez. City by the Sea. The Mediterranean. The French Riviera. The Jet Set. The water is bluer than the sky.
Why do you not live there?
When are you going to go?
In our run of French films, this one jumps out at us as being particularly modern. It seems as though it were made decades later, and not just years (and in some cases earlier!), than the ones we have just seen.
With its mambo-punctuated jazz score by Paul Misraki, its rich Eastmancolor hues, its grand CinemaScope aspect ratio (2.35:1), its opening shots of the village and the sea, and its early-adopter entry into the sexual revolution, it feels like a big international studio picture--like what would come a few years later with Blake Edwards' MGM comedy epic The Pink Panther (1963), or like the first James Bond film Dr. No (1962).
We open on a view of the village looking down to the sea. The water is bluer than my eyes. The birds are chirping. A roadster comes sporting up the road.
Curd Jurgens gets out. He himself will appear twenty-one years later in a Bond film, as Karl Stromberg in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977). And he started working twenty-one years earlier, in 1935 in Germany.
He enters the garden. Or shall we say, The Garden.
Juliete, played by Brigitte Bardot, lies sunning herself behind a sheet on the clothesline. Dressed for Eden.
Mr. Carradine, you have a devil of a nerve. / I brought the apple. / Which apple? / The forbidden fruit.
He offers to give her a car. A red convertible. It is a toy. She giggles.
She starts singing, "I'm a gold-digger."
Yes.
Madame Morin comes out of the house. She is played by Jane Marken. This is our third time, and third decade, to see her. We saw her in Jean Renoir's A Day in the Country (1936) (058, February 27) and Marcel Carne's masterpiece Children of Paradise (1945) (077, March 18).
She is not pleased with Juliete's behavior. She reveals that Juliete was an orphan, that she took her out of the orphanage, that Juliete works for her (in the bookstore!), and that she does not intend to allow Juliete to bring dishonor upon her house.
Juliete throws on a dress and goes inside. M. Morin, the man of the house, has been inside, in his wheelchair, watching out the window.
M. Carradine apologizes. Mme. Morin insists it is not his fault. He offers to make up for it. She says the honor of this house is not for sale.
Inside she berates Juliete. Says she does not care what people in town say about her. What names they call her. Juliete asks if it makes any difference. Mme. Morin says No. Juliete asks, Then why should I care?
Sounds reasonable.
Juliete rides her bicycle to work.
M. Carradine rides his roadster into town.
He owns a bar.
He plans to build a casino. A resort. A hotel. With restaurants and shops and clubs.
He needs to buy up some land.
Near the pinewoods.
When you want to buy and develop land near the pinewoods, you have to keep it on the down-low.
For the nosy neighbors may not want you to do it.
The land is owned by the Tardieu brothers. Mme. Tardieu's three sons. Antoine and Michel and Christian.
Antoine is holding out. He will not sell the land.
He lives in Toulon. He is coming to St. Tropez to visit. M. Carradine will talk to him. He will convince him to sell the land.
Antoine is arriving by bus. Juliete is outside on her bicycle. Someone inside the bus calls out to him.
"Antoine, check out that girl. Her a** is a song."
As she stops and leans her assets against her bicycle seat. The bus driver stops. What's wrong. / My tire is flat. / I couldn't tell. He takes the bike around back. She boards. She pets a puppy.
Antoine makes his move. No. Juliete makes hers. She is the initiator. She falls into him when the bus driver reboards. She falls into him when the bus moves.
Antoine!
She already knows him. Already loves him. He takes her for granted. She does not want him to take her for granted.
He arrives at his piece of land. His little shipyard. Where his brothers Michel and Christian work to repair a boat. Michel tells him that Eric Carradine wants to buy the land.
Michel loves Juliete.
Everyone goes to the club that evening. Goes to dance the mambo.
Juliete goes to Antoine. Turns down a man. Pulls Antoine away from his date. Dances with him.
Michel looks on. He is not deterred. Antoine brother is tall. Antoine is handsome. Antoine is a leader.
But Michel has something Antoine does not.
Will power.
He does not take Juliete for granted. He wants her.
A showdown is coming.
As Antoine dances with Juliete, he asks if she will let him come over that night. He promises to take her to Toulon with him the next day.
In the ladies' room she overhears him talking in the men's room, bragging to another man that he will have her one time and stand her up tomorrow morning at the bus.
She is crushed.
She walks away from him. Goes to Eric Carradine's boat. Tries to get the older man to make a move. He sees what is happening. He does not make a move.
She goes back out. Antoine makes a move.
She says No. Meet me at the bus tomorrow.
The next day the bus, with Antoine on it, does not stop but passes her by.
A showdown is coming.
Carradine wants the land.
Antoine wants to keep the land.
Michel wants Juliete.
Antoine wants Michel to ignore Juliete.
Antoine believes he will keep both.
Without having to try too hard.
The mambo drums will only beat louder.
As the storms come.
As the boat crashes against the waves.
Catches fire. Burns.
As two of them are washed ashore. But which two?
As blood ties are tested.
As the gun goes off.
In this village by the sea.
* * * * *
Jean-Louis Trintignant plays Michel, the middle brother, the one who wants Juliete the most.
Jean-Louis Trintignant is known recently for his role as Georges in the 2012 Michael Haneke hit Amour, also starring Emannuelle Riva and the omnipresent Isabelle Huppert.
We know Emannuelle Riva as the French actress who goes to Japan in Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) (100, April 10), the woman who is seeking understanding in Leon Morin, Priest (1961) (012, January 12), and as the mother with dementia in Three Colors: Blue (1993) (017, January 17). She died on January 17 of this year, 2017.
We know Trintignant as the judge who eavesdrops in Three Colors: Red (1994) (019, January 19).
Here is Trintignant 38 years earlier looking nothing like his character in Three Colors: Red, and having none of the same characteristics.
Here he is 26 years old, a lightweight, knocked around by his big brother, trying to learn how to be confident with women. In Three Colors: Red he is 64 and plays a tired man, a man who has lived a life of confidence and is only now questioning it.
This colorful, musical, lyrical film is not only entertaining but also says something about human relations and the way to a woman's heart.
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