Die goldene Karosse

Jean Renoir's colorful English language comedy is not the masterpiece prevailing critical opinion would have you believe ("riotously textural!" raved the Village Voice), but it is a pleasant and entertaining novelty. A spirited Anna Magnani leads a troupe of Italian actors to a Spanish colony in 18th century Peru, where the appreciative Viceroy rewards her talent (and beauty) with the gift of a golden coach, setting off a small political and romantic scandal. It plays for the most part not unlike a literate stage farce, and Renoir emphasizes the theatricality of the story by directing (and shooting) it like theatre, with deliberate, flat compositions and distracting color costumes; the action even begins on a legitimate stage, the walls of which 'disappear' as soon as Renoir's camera dollies into it. The (at the time) newly struck 1992 print, presented by Martin Scorsese, shows obvious evidence of restoration only in the curious epilogue, which brings the story back to its original stage setting, and appears to have been poorly reconstructed on video.

It is the film of Anna Magnani. and that is far to be a surprise. because it represents not only charming reconstruction of Commedia dell' Arte but the chance to admire a precise way to build the seduction of a woman discovering herself. it is a Jean Renoir film and his mark is obvious in each scene. it is the film of a great show and bitter commedy. but , if you see it with more profound interest, you have the chance to discover a profound exploration of art, society and significant things. and that transforms it in one of usefull films escaping from the circle of specific genre. because, in essence it is a wise parable about the clash between life and art.

To this reviewer's reckoning, one has to inure the fact that French auteur Jean Renoir's latter track record smacks of resting on his tremendous laurels, THE GOLDEN COACH, the first of his post-Hollywood musical comedies trilogy, will be followed by FRENCH CANCAN (1955) and ELENA AND HER MEN (1956), headlines Anna Magnani as the pillar of an Italian Commedia dell'arte troupe, setting its foot in a 18th century colonial Peru.

Ms. Magnani is Camilla, whose romantic embroilment with 3 different male suitors: Ferdinand (Lamont), the Spanish viceroy, Ramon (Rioli), an indigenous toreador and her longtime Italian beau Felipe (Campbell), will be immediately thrown into a whirlpool of romp and pomp, with the titular golden coach as a token of love from the noble viceroy, which can be put into practical use to save his pending deposition if Camilla feels up to do it.

First things first, amped up by Vivaldi's repertoire, gingered up by Magnani and her troupe shrouded in sheer Technicolor splendor and variegated costumes, not to mention the deadpan aristocratic panoply and comic skits impromptu, THE GOLDEN COACH is so eye-pleasing and ear-soothing that, for one second, one might assume it is a masterpiece in the making, to certain extent, that expectation is partially validated by Renoir's effortless facility to beautifully refine the stodgy with freewheeling ease and the Midas touch, a compassionate, pyrotechnic Magnani, who defies any moral obligation and jaundiced ageism to attest that for a woman in the mellow years, her Camilla is second to none in commanding her own life path and expressing her own feelings, and she has many options at hand: retreating to a simpler, quieter life with Felipe, becoming a celebrity couple among locals with Ramon, aiding with Fedinand in his silk-stocking intrigues, or just resuming her stock role of Columbina with the troupe, it is her call and hers only.

A Cinecittà production bursts into its full-blown lavishness of its visual complexion and texture, THE GOLDEN COACH is a vintage farce hampered by its folly-driven staginess and erstwhile flippancy, unwieldy in its glittering sheen but still a very different kettle of fish from any other vanity projects, for one thing, Renoir is quite au fait with men's sophomoric foibles and a believer in a woman's elemental beneficence.

... or La Carrozza d'Oro, or Le Carrosse d'Or. Take your pick: the film has an early flavour of the "Euro-pudding", with a mixed (and sometimes mixed-up) Anglo-Italian cast. It was shot principally in English, which meant an extra layer of strain for La Magnani, whose manic, over-the-top performance can't quite hide the somewhat anaemic storyline.

Luckily, her overacting fits well enough with the character's context and the decidedly light and bawdy mood of the whole piece: she's a professional Commedia del Arte 'actor' touring a 16th Century Latin America which decadent Spaniards hold in their venal grip. The great Italian star drags behind her a motley crew of fellow-Italians who match her quiver for quiver in the wild hand-gesturing repertoire and performs convincingly the stage stunts that were the Commedia's stock in trade. Magnani's antics also serve as a welcome distraction from leading man Paul Campbell's comatose acting. This American non-entity gives "wooden" a bad name. Whilst La Magnani keeps running through her vast back-catalogue of facial expressions, he only ever seems able to muster two, at best. Was Renoir asleep when this guy auditioned?

Anyway, none of that matters, because this is a film that is as much art-directed as it is directed. Huge respect is owed to designers Mario Chiari and Gianni Poldori for sets that manage to be both lavishly theatrical and convincingly lived in. Maria de Matteïs and Ginevra Pasolini match their male colleagues' panache and inventiveness with a dazzling range of costumes that combine with the lush colour palette of the sets to deliver an exquisitely sensuous fantasia of this distant time and place. Rarely was the glorious three-strip Technicolor process used with such erotic abandon and sheer vitality.

Thank God for this too, because it's not as if the lame script, with its flat-footed storyline and schematic comedy was anything to write home about. There is no doubting Renoir's genuine desire to pay tribute to the Commedia genre, and his loving attention to the detail of early theatrical craft draws you in. After all, wasn't this popular form of street theatre an early precursor to the great art perfected later on the big screen by the likes of Lubitsch or Renoir himself?

In the end, I feel an indulgent love for this film, a late entry into the great French master's career and -like French Cancan - a little bit 'so what?'. Not only could I get drowned again and again in its sensuous celebration of Technicolor as life and drama, but there is also a core quality that has to do with how Renoir renders the spiritual essence of the Commedia company: throughout the film, these displaced paupers and underfed globe-trotters display total servitude and total freedom in equal measure. These are the two opposites of their fraught but impassioned lives and the source of the manic energy they need for the performance that will buy them the day's only meal. As a filmmaker who frequently struggled to achieve his vision against the strictures of the commercial film industry, Renoir seems to know intimately what those characters' lives were about.

This tale of an Italian commedia dell'arte troupe just landed in eighteenth-century Peru is an enjoyable time spent with Renoir and his company of players. It is similar in many ways to Renoir's masterpiece, The Rules of the Game (La règle du jeu) from 1939: the members of a large cast fall in and out of love with one another, with the inevitable jealousies, disappointments, and ecstasies. Renoir's sensibility also remains steadfastly eighteenth-century, as expressed in the quotation of a vaudeville song from the Marriage of Figaro in the titles before The Rules of the Game: 'Sensitive hearts, faithful hearts, who blame fickle Cupid, stop your cruel complaints. Is it a crime to change lovers? If Cupid has wings, is it not to flit about?' Renoir's feel for music is as clear in the Golden Coach as it was in Rules. Excerpts from Vivaldi form the soundtrack, and as familiar as they may sound to us in the twenty-first century, it was surely a more daring choice in 1952, when these pieces were only entering the mainstream. And how many films have a sight-gag with a serpent (the instrument, not the snake)?

Unfortunately, comparing the two films also shows that in revisiting these themes Renoir is not as inspired the second time around. Perhaps the difference is Renoir anxiously watching his world on the precipice in 1939 and gratefully seeing that something survived in 1952. The film is beautifully shot in Technicolor by Claude Renoir (Jean's nephew, who also shot Barbarella and The Spy Who Loved Me!) and the actors are uniformly good, especially Anna Magnani. If the Golden Coach isn't a masterpiece, it's still 109 minutes of pleasure for the eye, the ear, and the spirit from a master of his craft.