Le joli Mai - Der schöne Mai

I recently saw this at the Siskel Theater with no real expectations, and I think I can safely say that this film could quite possibly be the worst film I've ever seen. I was fortunate (unfortunate?) enough to have attended a screening which was presented by a documentary film maker who cited the brilliance of Marker's work in regards to how it captured Paris during a pivotal and emotional moment-- by portraying on the screen everyday citizens engaged in conversations ranging from the whimsical to more serious, you get a great picture of life in Paris during this time.

Nope. This movie is essentially Chris Marker jerking himself off in front of the camera for nearly two and a half hours. Between the self indulgent 'poems', the still shots which have no coherence, and the utter lack of an interviewing style other than Marker trying to undermine absolutely everything anyone says, it is clear from the outset Marker has no interest in anything other than showing how self important he is.

I enjoy challenging films and documentaries, do not get me wrong. This film, however, is an absolute mess. There is no coherence-- interviews have very little structure, which in many ways is interesting, however, when they serve little purpose other than for the interviewer to undermine his interviewees and impose his 'intelligence' you have a problem. When the interviews are haphazard and uninteresting, the editing rough, 'artistic' shots which serve no purpose other than to draw out the length of the film are prevalent, and an utter lack of rhyme or reason predominate throughout a film you have a serious problem.

There will probably be some people who enjoy this film, and that's okay. I, however, feel as though it was utter vomit.

Historical look at Paris in May, 1962. Chris Marker questions a variety of Parisians the month the Algerian War ended on a plethora of topics ranging from racism to dancing. Images are accompanied by commentary, providing statistics ("14 people died of suicide, 10 male, 4 female"), and philosophical musings ("maybe the truth is not only the end, but also the means"). Marker also employs humor when a scene of men discussing technology and leisure is juxtaposed with pictures of cats, while obviously undermining their rambling it also offers more possibilities for interpretation. The freewheeling camera work and insistent questioning create a cachet of curiosity.

Saddened by Chris Marker's recent passing, I felt a desire to watch one of his films. I loved Sans Soliel and La Jetee but had never watched Le Joli Mai, one of his most famous movies. Unfortunately, in America, Le Joli Mai is hard to come by. I was only able to track down a shorter version (about two hours) which was not of great quality and stingy on the subtitles. Despite these irritations, I mostly enjoyed my viewing experience. Marker has set out to capture a specific place at a specific time (Paris in May of 1962). He interviews the old and the young, stockbrokers and working men, couples in love and a woman in prison. Along the way, Marker treats us to his meditations on life, civic responsibility, and, of course, pictures of cats (Marker loves cats). I did not find any references to Vertigo (Marker's favorite film), but maybe I was not paying close enough attention.

The best interviews in Le Joli Mai focus on citizens who have experienced conflict. The communist priest was my favorite. I also found the interviews with an Algerian laborer and an African immigrant to be fascinating. The concluding interview with a woman (off camera) in prison grounded the film in reality. Marker is not interested in giving the viewer a picture postcard look at Paris. Rather, Marker digs deeper to show the viewer what tourists do not see and interview people tourists do not meet. It is also clear that the interviewer (Marker, I assume) is taken aback by the political apathy that some of his subjects express. However, the film never takes easy swipes or becomes an ego project the way some more recent documentaries have a tendency to. The funniest moment is when the interviewer tries to convince a salesman to go to the cinema and watch Last Year at Marienbad. Needless to say, the man is skeptical. His taste in film is very different to Marker's more intellectual preferences.

Le Joli Mai, at least in the shortened cut I saw, is not up there with Sans Soliel, but it does deserve to be more widely available in the United States. Perhaps now that Marker is dead, some distributor will take a chance on Le Joli Mai.

What is extraordinary about this documentary is that it is inspired by a belief that France in May 1962 had passed a watershed, and that that dating of the watershed has proved historically accurate. For the first time since 1914 (with the exception of a brief interval in the 20s), France in May 1962 was a country living at peace, no longer battling or preparing to battle Germany, no longer fighting to hold on to its colonial possessions in Africa, the Maghreb, or Indo-China. For the first time, then, the French people are free to really consider life beyond mere physical survival, to contemplate what "happiness" means.

After May 1962 the French (like the Germans and Italians) would devote fewer and fewer resources to the military, and more and more to the civilian infrastructure (not just in terms of physical structures, but also in terms of health care, culture, education, social welfare programs to integrate the socially most disadvantaged, etc.). Looking at images of French society and French people in 1962, one is struck by how shabby things appear. That the French have one of the highest standards of living in the world today, higher by most qualitative and quantitative indices than the US, is in no small measure due to the fact that the French have lived at peace for the past 43 years.

Something which cannot be said for the US (I'm writing this shortly after the New Orleans debacle), which begins to look more and more like the shabby country France was in 1962. Marker is, of course, interested in pressing home in his interviews the possibilities that now exist (now = 1962) for greater social solidarity and equality, for going beyond a definition of "happiness" solely in terms of the possession of consumer goods, for free time and "self-realization" (as we used to say in the '60s).

That was not to happen on anything like the scale he would have liked, but it's uncanny that these interviews give us a premonition of the French spring of '68, and the sense that took hold of the Western world for a brief moment that it was possible to press beyond capitalism and create a world in which scarcity would be overcome, all would have enough, and our time would not be given over to dreary necessity but would be truly our time.