577 - Sylvie and the Phantom, France, 1946. Dir. Claude-Autant Lara.

Friday, January 17, 2019

577 - Sylvie and the Phantom, France, 1946.  Dir. Claude-Autant Lara.

If a young man stumbles upon a secret entrance in the woods that leads into a tunnel behind a secret doorway inside a castle, well, it is only natural that he would enter and explore it.

So when Sylvie leads her students from inside the castle into the secret doorway, after telling them the legend of Alain de Francigny, the White Hunter, of course they stumble upon Frederick.

In the dark.

Dark because a draft has blown out the candelabra that Sylvie is carrying.

Because the late Alain de Francigny, the Phantom, and his dog Pyramus, who have just risen from inside the lain painting, might just have created the draft with his breathe.

Alain seems to have a special place in his heart for the granddaughter of the love of his life.

So he looks after her.

And, perhaps, he needs her to find love in order for himself finally to be free.

She is, after all, the only one left who believes in ghosts, even at her age, which essentially means she is the only one left who believes in him.

Obviously.  They are removing the painting of him and his dog from its esteemed place above the mantle in order to sell it.  In order to sell the castle.  And these old musty things must go.  And be forgotten.

Not forgotten by Sylvie.  She begins our movie telling a new generation his story.  Keeping his memory alive.

So when we see him, in his amazingly modern 1946 double exposure glow, we see the depth of the face, and the soul of a man of pathos.  Played by a man who will become a legend through his physicality, ironically, acting with his eyes, and his heart, and yes his posture, but in stillness, in watching, in loving while remaining silent and invisible, in longing, revealing a deep and sensitive soul, a man acting here in his first feature film, three years before writing, directing, and starring in his first feature film, Jour de Fete (1949), and yet already with star billing, and a pure treasure for this film.

Jacques Tati.

Jacques Tati, ladies and gentlemen, is the Ghost of Alain de Francigny.  You may watch this movie for that fact alone.

And yet you also get the joyous Odette Joyeux.  The brilliant actor Pierre Larquey, whom we just saw in The Marriage of Chiffon, as her faithful servant Jean.  And Julien Carette, the great one, the entertainer, whom we saw all the way back with Grande Illusion (1937), La Bete Humaine (1938), and The Rules of the Game (1939), and whom we just saw in Lettres d'Amour (1942).

Frederick our young explorer is just as scared of the children as they are of him.  They have an excuse--they think he is a ghost in the dark.  What is his excuse?

He makes eye contact with Sylvie.

And lightning strikes.

This lightning strike thing is a French phenomenon.  Which we will visit when we come to Jacques Becker's Casque d'Or (1952), which I have mentioned to you once before, in a footnote to Army of Shadows (1969).  I have a great friend whom I promised to write about this.  So write about it I will.  Where Americans might say "love at first sight," the French would say un coup de foudre, a shot of lightning.

That lightning shot strikes, in the candle dark, in the secret tunnel, in the presence of a class of children, and a ghost, between two strangers, as if they were the only two people alive left in an empty world.

And they will never be the same again.

For now Frederick flees in fear.

Leaving Sylvie not to know how he feels about her.

Another man will enter the castle and fall for Sylvie.  But this man is a thief.  Named Branch.  That is his Winter name.  His Spring name is Bud.  If only we knew his Summer and Autumn names.  But it is Winter.  So Branch it is.

Branch steals her cameo.  And Frederick, who has come back around and reentered at night, confronts him, and the two fight.

The Baron has hired an actor to play a ghost at the party the next night.  He called a talent agent, and they were to send over the actor.

The man they do send has played the Ghost of Hamlet on stage, and he takes his job very seriously.  He is a professional.  And proud.  He has brought the finest of sewn linen costumes and forty-five pounds of chains.

So when the Baron stumbles upon Frederick and Branch, and thinks the agency has sent two men instead of one, and when Hector introduces the real actor, leading the Baron to think the agency has sent three men instead of one, he puts all three of them to work, and, as you might imagine, that is when the drama, and the comedy, begins.

With the fourth ghost, the real one, looking on.

The Baron wants to cheer up Sylvie.

Frederick wants to love her.

In all the commotion that ensues, perhaps he may do so.

After all, this is France.

And why do you think we love French films?

Because French films love love.


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He died of grief on his master's grave.
Why?
Because he loved him.

Humans . . . have other things to do.  Get married, build houses, go to war.  They're too busy.

Dogs have nothing else to do but love.

Alain loved a lady who was not free.

If you're married, you're not free?
No.
I'm never getting married.

Never go in without a light.

You're Sylvia?  You have lovely eyes.
We both have an incurable illness.  We're no longer children.

Could you set fire to my logs?
I'll try, Countess.

My dog barks at men in uniform.
He has better taste than mine.

There's an echo.

Sylvia.  She's an angel.  She believes in mankind.

I hope to God his new owners will love him.

There's nothing left but the wall.

Sylvia is stuck in the dark ages.  At 16 she still believes in ghosts.

It's like he saw something.

Help yourselves children, for we are alive, and we are hungry.

The sleep of a girl is sweet, and deep.

You're in love.  Sorry, I didn't see the flowers.

How old are you?
Seventeen.
I'm 18, three years in reform school.  I fight better than you.
I'm not so sure.
How about now?

No one arrests lovers.