Der schöne Octave

Wonderful film I'd never heard of before by the great French director Julien Duvivier, based on the Emile Zola novel Pot-Bouille, which I'd also never heard of.

A handsome young man comes to 19th Century Paris and begins seducing a broad cross-section of the womenfolk of his new neighborhood while scheming to succeed as a salesman in two rival fabric stores.

The film put me in mind of the great films of Max Ophuls - "Le Plaisir", "La Ronde" and "The Earrings of Madame de..." - and it has the same delight in, and acceptance of, the mysteries of love and romance.

The cast are all faultless, but Gérard Philipe in the lead (never better) and the magnificent Danielle Dumont, as the tightly-buttoned owner of one of said stores, easily outshine them all. They add depth and nuance to a story that could have been broad comedy in lesser hands, simply through glances and body language, their thoughts and feelings flickering across their faces. A treat.

"Pot-Bouille is not a film d'auteur. On the contrary. It is quite clearly a literary work written by one person and filmed by someone diametrically the opposite. Nevertheless, Jeanson's ferocity and verve, multiplied by Duvivier's obstinate gentleness, result in something pleasant and unusual." - François Truffaut, Cahiers du Cinéma, Dec., 1957.

DUVIVIER,AUTAN-LARA,DECOIN ,etc... where some of the film-directors of "french quality" film-making of the fifties,who where criticized and supplanted by the "New-Wave",with TRUFFAUT,GODARD,etc... To-night ,in one of those charming little old theatres of the latin quarter in Paris ,I've just seen POT-BOUILLE (Julien Duvivier 1957). I found it a quite acceptable sample of that period of the French production.Appropriate casting,good actor's direction,excellent lighting,costumes and setting without flaw!! Excellent craftsmanship,from people who mastered their job within the studio system. Of course it has the theatrical side of a studio job,with very professional people ,but it is never out of purpose,it is with the aim of serving a story without annoying the audience. And What a story !the famous novel of EMILE ZOLA :POT-BOUILLE. The adaptation for the screen,keeps close to the subject : show the backstage life of the parisian lower-middle class of shop-keepers,in the textile trade ,in the late 19th century.Outward respectability,inward sordidness,and money strategies.Outward respectable married couples,inward war,deceiving ,adultery.In showing the life of the inhabitants of one building ,the social antagonisms between the masters and the servants is not forgotten ,reminding us of the society of the have and have not, of the paris of the time,for whose crude pictures Zola will remain famous.Nothing to see with the English title :lovers of Paris !!! POT-BOUILLE meaning something like :let'us wash our dirty linen within the family. Don't conclude from this that the film is black and sordid. It has the rhythm and the witty dialogues of a comedy. It's worth seeing but rare on screen .

In addition to Honore de BALZAC, Emile ZOLA also made life in Paris, the world capital of the 19th century, the subject of his novels. Well-known characters also appear again and again. In the novel THE FINE HOUSE (or THE DOMESTIC STOVE) it is the young Octave Mouret who ends up in Paris from the provinces.

In Julien DUVIVIER's film, the busy Octave is played by the jack-of-all-trades Gerard PHILIPE (1922-1959). He lives in an apartment building and works in Madame Hedouin's (Danielle DARRIEUX) laundry shop. In the oh-so-fine apartment building, it's like a cooking pot (hence POT BOUILLE) in which everything is thrown together. Gossip, hypocrisy and lots of affairs! First of all, the good Octave, which can't let anything burn. His true love is for the cool Madame Hedouin. Octave also turns out to be a great business talent, which will play an important role in the sequel THE LADIES' PARADISE. Then it's about the emergence of the large department stores, which were to begin their triumphal march around the world from Paris.

Fun cinema from France, shot in the Billancourt studios! The later ACADEMY AWARD nominee Anouk AIMEE, Jacques DUBY and Dany CARREL also appear in other roles, and she also shows off a few breast flashes. Only French cinema offered something like this in the 1950s.

It's a pity people think Duvivier is a "fifties qualité France " director ,like the precedent user .Actually he was already here in the twenties and he reached summits in the thirties with such gems as "la belle équipe" "carnet DE Ball" "pépé Le moko" or "la fin Du jour".That is not to say that it was downhill afterwards.Some of his finest works came later as marvelous film noirs such as "panique" and "voici Le temps Des assassins" bear witness.

"Pot Bouille" is precisely the "voici Le temps Des assassins" follow-up.After such an impressive work ,everything would be necessarily a letdown.And alas such is the case here.Duvivier's skill for desperate films noirs is not well applied on a Zola adaptation:"Pot Bouille" ,the 10th volume in the Rougon-Macquart saga ,is more a chronicle than a linear story.A lot of subplots interfere ,some of which have been -perhaps wisely ,because of the censorship of the era- passed over in silence:for instance,the maid who delivers her baby unbeknown st to the Bourgeois in the house is nowhere to be found in this adaptation.

Duvivier needs a compact screenplay,and his bite is most of the time inefficient here.There are some good things though :Jane Marken ,as the bourgeois matronly woman,who desperately tries to get her daughters a beau marriage shines in every scene she's in.But Gérard Philippe is not well cast as Mouret,being not cynical enough;besides the happy end is not faithful to Zola :Mouret was to be the main hero of his following novel "au bonheur Des dames" ;but in "pot bouille" he does not occupy the central place,because of the huge amount of characters.Duvivier's approach is too polite ,too clean to deal with Zola successfully.