La habitación verde

"La chambre verte" is one of the most strange, if not the strangest work of Truffaut. An adaptation of the novel "The beast and the jungle" by Henry James, it deals with one of the most uncomfortable topics for a film; death. Or, actually, what happens to those that are left alive, when a person from their intimate environment dies.

Julien Davenne, the hero (played by Truffaut himself), is obsessed with death, since the loss of his dear wife, Julie. While everyone tells him to forget her, and move on, he finds it disrespectful to her memory to do so. Instead, he decides to build a chapel, where he will honour his "dead". People he had once known, family, friends that perished in the war. There is even a photo of an unknown German soldier, whom Davenne had killed during the fightings of World War One. To Davenne, death makes no discriminations, he takes everyone, and it's the duty of the living to remember the dead, otherwise, they'll be forgotten.

Having no one as family, except for a child, unable to speak, communicating with him only with signs, and his caretaker, an old lady, Davenne shares his opinions and worries with a young woman (Nathalie Baye). She is shocked by what she hears, at first, but later comes to understand the motives behind Davenne's way of thinking.

Which are those motives? In my opinion, Truffaut tried to present with this film a portrait of the French Lost Generation. Those, who would have been young enough to go fight in World War One. Few of them returned, since France had some of the highest casualties in that war. The war to end all wars. It didn't end them, but it ended relationships, friendships, families. In the film, Davenne laments that his now deceased wife waited for his return from the front for four years. Unfortunately, she didn't get to enjoy their being together for long. Death got her first.

After the First World War, the world was shocked by the disaster, and the death the conflict had brought. And, so, art became obsessed with death. The artists of this Lost Generation rejected the conservatism of their predecessors, it being an element of a pre-war era of carelessness. In their works, they portrayed the death of those seen in the front, or other topics, in an abstract manner. In that way, they wanted to show the madness of war.

What does all this have to do with the film? Davenne is also a member of this generation. One of the lucky ones, that didn't die. But, for him, Julie's loss is kind of a spiritual death. He is as fixated with the concept of death as those artists. Through his chapel,first located in the titular green room in his house, he makes his own attempt at dealing with this stream of deaths the war brought. For him, everyone death deserves to be remembered. But, for a society wanting to move on, this behaviour is abnormal. Why would one want to remain in the past, in a past so traumatic? Truffaut gave his answer through the film.

History, as saddening as this is, would justify Davenne. Because, for all the fun and prosperity that France and the world experienced in the Roaring twenties - in France, tellingly known as "Les années folles" , the crazy years- the next decade's end would bring with it the most catastrophic war human history has ever witnessed. And, then, no one could escape thinking about death. It would simply be everywhere.

Francois Truffaut's wife died years ago, and he has since kept a shrine to her, a green room where he keeps her belongings, where he speaks to her. When he encounters Nathalie Baye, who seems to have a similar feeling about the dead, he can choose to be a man among the living, or build a chapel to the dead, to be completed with his own death.

Truffaut's adaptation of Henry James' "The Altar of the Dead" is a sere, underplayed movie about people who have given up on life in the aftermath of the First World War, and seek am excuse in the idealization of the dead. It's madness, but an attractively passive form of madness. Unfortunately, Truffaut, as great a director as he was, was not the actor to bring off this role.

I, too, have reached a stage in life when I know more dead people than living ones. I don't talk to them; they never shut up long enough to let me get in a word edgewise. But even these ghosts know that life is for the living.

Francois Truffaut certainly spread his net widely when sourcing filmic material and has here drawn inspiration from two short stories and a novella by Henry James. There is something of the biographical in most of Truffaut's oeuvre but this is indisputably his most intensely personal and heartfelt.

The death of his contemporaries, notably his mentor André Bazin and film archivist Henri Langlois, made him all too aware of his own mortality and he has cast himself as Julien Davanne, a writer of obituaries, whose obsession is to create a chapel of remembrance for his late, beloved wife and others who have touched his life. This brings him into contact with Cecilia who is mourning a man who was once a friend of Julien's but who had since betrayed him........

Despite its depressingly morbid subject matter this is a film that once seen, is not easily forgotten and the suitably gloomy atmosphere is courtesy of Néstor Almendros' muted cinematography. Truffaut had also felt the loss of one of France's greatest film composers, Maurice Jaubert, who perished in the early days of WWII and his use of Jaubert's music is inspired, especially in the chapel scenes. The eagle eyed will no doubt spot the photograph of Oskar Werner in the guise of a German soldier. He and Truffaut had worked together twice and ironically, were both fated to die the same year.

Julien's scenes with the mute boy Georges are reminiscent of those between Dr. Itard and Victor, the wild boy of Aveyron in 'L'Enfant Sauvage' and reveal that Julien is capable of showing compassion for the living as well as for the dead.

The question that arises in both films is whether Truffaut made the right decision in casting himself as the leading character. Personally I feel that although Truffaut got away with it in the earlier film he does not fare as well in this. He is suitably forbidding and distant but there is such a thing as dramatic license and the role ideally required an actor of greater range. Truffaut himself was later to acknowledge this. He certainly got it right however when casting Nathalie Baye whose performance as Cecilia is simply stupendous and touches the heart.

Although critically well received the film was commercially catastrophic which not only affected the director's health but caused him to lose financial backing from the French arm of United Artists.

Based upon the principle that 'everyone has their dead' Truffaut felt that the film would strike a chord with audiences but he had sorely underestimated the capacity of most humans to overcome their grief and failed to recognise that for the majority, 'Life belongs to the living'.

Eleven years after the end of World War I, in a small village in the East of France, the journalist Julien Davenne (François Truffaut) still grieves the death of his beloved wife Julie ten years ago. He worships Julie in a green room in his house decorated with her pictures and belongings. When he meets auctioneer's assistant Cecilia Mandel (Nathalie Baye) in an auction house, they see that they have in common the obsession for death and become close to each other. When a fire destroys his green room, Julien convinces the bishop to restore the local chapel and prepare it as a sanctuary for Julie and his dead friends to preserve their memories, while Cecilia falls in love for him, but Julien is dead inside.

"La Chambre Verte" is the darkest of the Truffault's movies that I have seen. The melancholic romance has a beautiful cinematography; has great performances with Truffault in the role of Julien Davenne, a man that writes obituaries in the dying newspaper Le Globe and most of his friends have already died, and the gorgeous Nathalie Baye as an old acquaintance that falls in love for him. But the story is extremely unpleasant and somber and I did not like it. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "O Quarto Verde" ("The Green Room")

Julien Davenne has suffered trauma, it still haunts him, he's perpetually a mourner, after losing his wife Julie, he still loves her oh so truly, leaves him trapped inside a tomb, can't turn the corner. Cecilia attempts to make a bond, there's connection, and slowly he does respond, after fire burns his tribute, to his perpetual love salute, she becomes someone, of which he is quite fond - but not for long.

It's not the most riveting period drama you've ever come across although, like The Story of Adele H, it shows how people with serious mental illness behaved when there was little or no support, or indeed appreciation for, in this case, PTSD. Nathalie Baye is gorgeous and elegant, and as such, shows just how much Julien Davenne has lost his marbles, but at least she gets to light his candle.