Spiel der Erinnerung

One of the great classics of 1930's French cinema and one of cinema's great ;memory' pictures, "Un Carnet de Bal" has, sadly, fallen out of fashion in these more cynical times despite its being a surprisingly hard-nosed and often bleak movie. The plot revolves around recently widowed Christine as she tracks down the men she danced with from an old dance programme of twenty years before, (when she was sweet sixteen). Of course, each of them has changed drastically, almost to the point where they are no longer recognizable; in fact two are already dead and as Christine explores her past some harsh truths emerge.

Marie Bell is a luminous Christine, the great Francoise Rosay is magnificent as the mother of a boy who may have killed himself for love and a whole host of great French actors of the period play the survivors and potential suitors. There are flawless performances from Harry Baur, Pierre Blanchar, Fernandel, Louis Jouvet, Raimu and Pierre Richard-Willm. It also represents the high point in Julien Duvivier's career and was at one time considered among the greatest films ever made. It cries out for rediscovery.

Marie Bell is "Christine". She is recently widowed and going through her possessions when she discovers a dance card from her past. On it are the names of various men she knew - to varying degrees - back when she was a debutante attending a ball. She decides to track these men down and the film follows her as she tries to evaluate whether or not she married the right man, encountering each and considering where her (and their) future may have led had events played out differently. It also becomes apparent that these men, too, have found their lives impacted on by their relationship at the time with her. Some of their stories are tragic, some satisfying, some entertaining: we have a hen-pecked local mayor, a recluse, a priest, an hairdresser - who might not have proved to be her cup of tea, anyway. What "Christine" gradually comes to realise is that regret and wishful thinking are a two way street, and the poignancy of her journey is well encapsulated at the end when she meets a young man, much the same age as she was when her card was being filled. Bell is really effective here, she plays the role with nuance and an endearing charisma especially as she begins to realise the reciprocal effects of the characters' behaviour when they were all around sixteen years old. The dialogue is also quite well written with a degree of humour, frankness and realism that helped ensure director Julien Duvivier could sustain what might otherwise have been rather a long, and episodic, 2½ hours. This is an engaging lifetime retrospective that takes it's time and, I suspect, will leave us all with our own choice of whom she ought to have married (if anyone of them).

J'adore Ce film! But "Christine"? Where did that come from? I've only ever known it as Un Carnet DE Bal, with Valse Gris permanently etched into my mind.

I saw it first around 1941 when I was 14, during the war, at the long lamented Academy cinema on London's Oxford Street. It turned up there periodically, along with La Femme Du Boulanger, Le Jour SE Leve, The Strange Case of David Gray (a renamed Vampyr), La Fin Du Jour, and some other prewar classics. Great stuff for a schoolboy! Previously I've had it on a censored Korean DVD (the Marseilles sequence had been removed) but now,happily,it's available complete as a gloriously restored Bluray. Gaumont,you have our huge thanks!

It's a magnificent film, a bit wordy perhaps here and there but they're good French words. It's a lasting achievement by a superb cast and crew at the top of their game.

And with great respect let's give thought to Harry Baur and Robert Lynen (Duvivier's Poil de Carotte), both murdered by the Nazis during the occupation.

While watching this I was reminded me of the song Once I Was by Jeff Buckley, with that haunting line "Sometimes I wonder, just for a while, will you ever remember me?" The film begs the question, what if you could meet the people you dated or loved when you were younger, before the numerous possible paths your life could take had been narrowed down by time to the one you eventually chose? It's sentimental and yet also disillusioning, perfect fodder for the poetic realism of Julien Duvivier.

A recent widow (Marie Bell) is going through her possessions when she discovers the dance card from a ball she attended when she was 16, twenty years before. She thinks back fondly on the romantic setting of the dance, idealized in her mind, as well as the men who had hearts in their eyes for her. "Men have loved me," she says to her friend. "At least, so they said. He loved me, loved me not, loved me. They declared their love in between waltzes. I can still hear them. 'As long as I live.'" It's funny how these kinds of moments stay with us forever in life, and that the heart never forgets.

After obtaining the addresses for eight of the ten men (the other two have deceased), she resolves to visit them, so what follows in the film is a series of vignettes. There are lots of memorable moments, so I thought I would capture some of them in quotes:

#1, the mother who has gone mad over her son's suicide, an eerie episode: "Children change so suddenly. You tuck them in one night. 'Good night, my child.' The next morning you feel like saying, 'Good morning, sir.'"

#2, the lawyer turned gangster (Louis Jouvet) who runs a girlie show that doubles as a prostitution ring: "We'd stroll through the country." "We'd stop by the bridge." "It's all water under that bridge now." "We'd wait for the dusk." "It never failed us." "We didn't speak." "Our minds were on other things. I'd kiss your neck, trembling." "I'd close my eyes and pretend I didn't see you." "We were foolish. It was charming." "We'd make plans." "More like dreams."

#3, the priest who had harbored love for her, but on the night of his piano concert (when he was nearly 40 and she was 16) he realized, crushingly, that it was unrequited: "In music one bares one's soul. Anyway, there was an andante - I turned around. She was sitting beside a nice, young man, and they were both laughing, about nothing in particular, like kids with their balloons. My music coursed through the hall like a river, but the two of them formed an island, untouched by the music. For her, I didn't exist."

Also: "Tell her I've always kept a place for her in my heart, a place that I can say without shame belongs to a young girl who could be far away, perhaps even dead."

#4, the man who has retired from the world to the snowy mountains, who seems at peace with life and offers to start up a new relationship with her, but she knows he has obligations to others in the community, and after he goes out following an avalanche, she leaves him, writing: "I'm not angry with you. You're incapable of being unfaithful. It's better this way. Be happy."

#5, the mayor who is marrying his maid the day she arrives, and whose son from his first marriage is a major disappointment. He had very high ambitions when young, and he says of not quite reaching his goals: "I set out on a long journey. Then the sun came out and I stopped midway."

#6, the doctor who performs cheap, illegal abortions and has degraded himself over the years and is in a miserable state, something emphasized by the severe Dutch angles Duvivier gives us and the noisy construction work during this vignette: "I'm ashamed hearing you speak about my youth. All those years of anxiety, hopes, dreams...I wish I could sum them up in one word, but I can't find it."

#7, the hairdresser (Fernandel) who named his daughter after her, but pretends he can't remember her name when he sees her. He was my favorite character, with adorable kids, fun 1930's equipment in his salon, and a thing for performing card tricks: "I was smart to stop loving you. ... You'd have loved me back, and we'd have gotten married, and what would have become of my poor wife?"

She actually gets a chance to go to a ball in the same location that he assures her hasn't changed over the years, which shows her that her memory has been idealized, a fantastic moment. In a young woman she meets there who is in a bit of a reverie over the experience, we also see the cycle repeating. The hairdresser then tells her this: "Music certainly brings back memories. Every word I said that night is coming back to me. Like when I said, 'I'll love you as long as I live.' ... You say dumb things on the dance floor."

At this point, she returns to her friend, saying, "Not a one lived up to his youth. I set out full of illusions, and came back full of regret. ... The past didn't live up to the promises of the future, and I lost my dance partners in the act of finding them." His wise reply is "There's no need for regrets. If not for this trip, you'd have led a farandole of specters the rest of your life. Now the chain is broken, and life starts anew."

I thought that's where the film should have ended, but the address for #8, Gerard, is located and so one more meeting is tacked on. Well, she actually discovers that Gerard has passed away too, which made 4 of the 10 dead, and another probably about to die, a pretty high percentage if you ask me. Anyway, she meets his son instead, and rather than end on a downer with one more "destined to never meet again," Duvivier leads us to what felt like an artificial, feel-good conclusion, which was I thought was a little unfortunate. All in all, however, a very enjoyable, touching film.

"Un Carnet de Bal" is a poem made movie. Like Christine, everybody had gone into his past, looking for the point of break, which decided one way, in order to rectify ours errors.

Finally, "Un Carnet de Bal" is a film for all the time.