Stavisky...

Unusually for Alain Resnais he has opted for the superficial here and by his own admission has gone for 'theatricality'. It cannot fail to look good with Sacha Vierny behind the camera and Jacques Saulnier as designer but beneath the glitz, the glamour and Stephen Sondheim's trite score, we are left with a vapid and empty exercise. Should 'style over substance' appeal then this is definitely your tasse de thé.

The director was reluctant to entitle this piece 'The Stavisky Affair' as this would presumably have obliged him to show the far-reaching consequences, both political and economic, that resulted from Stavisky's massive stock swindle. He has however chosen to insert a bizarre sub-plot involving the exiled Leon Trotsky which contributes nothing whatsoever dramatically and merely serves to advertise Monsieur Resnais' leftist credentials.

Stavisky himself was a sociopathic, narcissistic con-man, the type that proliferates in the murky world of Finance, but is here played by Jean-Paul Belmondo, always mindful of his image, as a gentleman thief. He is very, very good in the role but Jorge Semprún's script renders him little more than a cipher. The same might apply to the other insubstantial and shadowy characters, played by Francois Périer, Michel Lonsdale, a beautifully costumed Anny Duperey and a singularly creepy Claude Rich.

The most fully drawn character is Baron Jean Raoul, not least because he is portrayed by the splendid Charles Boyer who simply saunters away with the film. This represesents a dawn in the careers of Gérard Depardieu and Nils Arestrup but alas a sunset in that of Monsieur Boyer. The passing of this immaculate, consummate artiste marked the end of an era.

For the first hour or more you keep stumbling - the movie s surface looks like a period romp, helped by Sondheim s elegantly quizzical score, but the narrative is fragmented and frustratingly hard to follow. But as it takes shape (with Resnais pulling a Vertigo by tipping us off on Stavisky s fall about two thirds of the way in) you realize the subtlety of his design - his earlier formal and temporal experiments are incorporated almost seamlessly here into a lush cinematic package. Resnais spends little time on the usual raw material of the genre: the fragility of Stavisky s position becomes apparent almost immediately, and Resnais shows how the myth of the gentleman thief always had to be a sham - emotionally, sociologically and politically. Power is always contingent on the cooperation of others, and thus always endangered. As endangered, indeed, as our confidence in our sense of time and space - in the closing stretch Resnais moves superbly between events before and after Stavisky s death: the man (a spectre; a figure of several manufactured identities) recedes as the overall design takes precedence. The final image though is purely elegiac and nostalgic; perhaps for the art as well as for the man.

This film is individual enough that it's easy to overlook it's being one of a series of similar stories: The Way We Live Now (based on a real figure), The Great Gatsby, Madoff. Unlike the first and last, but somewhat like Gatsby, this film makes the central character likeable, largely by emphasizing the ambiant anti-Semitism that surrounds him (and of course by casting Belmondo in the role). This theme gives more meaning to the curious character of a German Jewish woman, who plays no obvious role in Stavisky's life, but who might be viewed as his direct opposite in a number of ways, not least her proudly proclaiming her origins. The story itself is fairly episodic, showing specific situations and outcomes, but without really making them interact in a way that drives them forward. They just take their expected place in the sequence. The main reasons to watch this film are the actors, including not only an aging Charles Boyer and a young Depardieu, but a host of actors whose careers only grew from there. Certainly, if you're a fan of beautiful cars and beautiful women in beautiful clothes, especially in the Thirties, the visual beauty of this film is also a major reason to watch it.

Belmondo plays a swindler in early thirties France... His greatest creation is a new identity for himself. Completely amoral/immoral, he plays all ends against the middle.... in fact he is a Jew in France in order to swindle... and his existence is contrasted with (the Jewish) Trotsky who comes to France for political asylum... and a young Jewish actress in France to escape the Nazis.

In the end, everyone is betrayed, but the complicated story makes it extremely difficult to follow.

While it was going on, however, it was beautiful to watch and listen to.

To see a good print of this film in a proper movie theatre (as we were finally able to do last year at the all-too-rare Resnais retorspective at the Egyptian in Hollywood) is like ascending to friggin heaven for the true film fan. With the myriad of attention that's been paid over the years to 'gangster/conman' flicks, how many people know that the most modern and technically advanced of all 'narrative' film directors had already made in 1974 the greatest and most transcendently poetic masterpiece connected with that 'establishment flouting' genre? Not that many, and none of the Resnais screenings at the Cinemateque were even remotely the sell-outs they should've been.

Resnais makes films that stand up to and get better with countless repeat viewings but filmgoers for some reason have decided that any film that they don't fully 'get' in one friggin viewing is somehow flawed or lacking in composition! It never occurs to them to say that about a piece of music or even a silly pop song; they will listen to that over and over again--but a movie? Hell no! One pop-corn chomping two hour span is all their precious attentions can be taxed to give, and any film that doesn't seek to manipulate them is quickly dismissed as 'difficult' or 'art-school' cinema. That's too bad, because Resnais' films are only difficult for those not accustomed to deconditioning themselves from the manipulative commercial cinema around them; they are meant to be slightly imperfect on purpose, so that audiences can participate and complete the picture to a certain degree subjectively. Once you realize that these films are labyrinths of wonder and beauty that more than repay any amount of attention you put into them, watching a Resnais film becomes a thoroughly natural process, nothing 'difficult' about it. But you have to take that step out of passivity and readjust your perspective a bit (reading Kreidle's excellent book on Resnais is a great place to start readjusting your perspective).

Belmondo must be commended for putting his star power and his own money into financing this film with Resnais as his chosen director. He sure made the right choice! Much more than "Breathless" and even "Pierrot Le Fou", "Stavisky" is a timeless and absolutely exquisite film that basically hasn't aged one bit, and it serves as probably the ultimate display piece for Belmondo's superb gift and magnetic personality. It's the best 'F.Scott Fitzgerald''1920s' type looking film ever made. It blows away any other film in the beauty and shading of its shots, the lushness of muted, shadowy colors in its look, and along with Storaro's work in the "The Conformist" (which is a shallower film than it in the narrative sense), Vierny's cinematography is the most awe-inspiringly authentic and yet transcendently romantic looking 'period' look ever achieved on film. In addition to Belmondo, "Stavisky" features the great Charles Boyer in one of his greatest performances ever, forever immortalized in a work of cinematic art as truly deserving of his talents as "The Earrings of Madame de..." or "Algiers." The only complaint I have about this film is with regards to Sondheim's score. It's good when it stays in the background, but unfortunately it often becomes intrusive and in a 'cheap modern', second-hand-Stravinsky-meets-broadway way that's really annoying. Resnais would've been better off, even with a restrained Ennio Morricone score than this type of bogus music. Other than that one minor tolerable annoyance "Stavisky" is an awe-inspiring masterpiece.