Au bonheur des dames

The final silent film from Duvivier (of Pepe le Moko fame) is an adaptation of an Emile Zola novel starring Dita Parlo (of L'Atalante and The Grand Illusion fame). I didn't even know Parlo made any other films! She's wonderful. She plays an orphan girl who shows up to Paris to live with and work for her uncle. Unfortunately, she finds him and his tailor shop destitute, failing under the encroaching department store across the street, Au bonheur des dames (translated as "Ladies' Paradise"). She's only too happy to get a job at the fabulous store, where she attracts the attention of several different men (and the jealousies of some of her female co-workers). Meanwhile, her family across the street is going to Hell. The visuals and direction are very good, as are the performances.

The story of mom and pop shops being run out of business by the behemoth Amazon, run by Jeff Bezos, er I mean Au Bonheur Des Dames (The Ladies' Paradise), run by Octave Mouret (Pierre de Guingand). As the pendulum in the real world has swung back towards robber barons and giant corporate entities, the concept behind the film is certainly still relevant, and with Duvivier in the director seat it also feels dynamic and almost modern, despite being a silent film.

Visually this film is stunning, with camera work that's alive, Expressionistic montage sequences, and fantastic levels of activity packed into shots in the busy streets, opulent department store, and construction sites. Dita Parlo is stunning in her cloche hat too, and so expressive with her eyes, including during a creepy scene where the bosses eye the models in their undergarments in their dressing room, and when she narrowly fends off an attempted rape from one of them.

The film gets a little unfocused with the melodrama of a love triangle (a clerk at the mom and pop shop engaged to the daughter there, but being tempted by one of the models at Au Bonheur Des Dames across the street. A much bigger sin was how it was bungled at the end, which I won't completely spoil, except to say the problem all along is it chalks up the human misery to "progress" and not "greed" or "ravenous capitalism." So instead of this aggressive department store undercutting the smaller stores around it being a real issue, ultimately leading to monopolies, an obscene wealth gap, and the unfair treatment of labor, the film essentially says we just need to get through the change and the future will be bright. To have the romance pivot as well was frankly nauseating. Let's just say I loved the film's poetry more than I loved its realism.

Duvivier's AU BONHEUR DES DAMES is a gorgeous surprise, since along with SUNRISE, METROPOLIS, and a few other of the masterpieces of the period, it taps into so many key movements and concerns of the 1920s. It's a faithful adaptation of Zola's novel by the same name, part of his sweeping "Rougon-Macquart" series that casts a panoramic look on 19th century French society. The story, banally put, is a proto- "You've Got Mail." But instead of the giant bookseller edging out the human-scale bookstore in the neighborhood, it's a small fabric merchant vs. the huge department store. (The department store was a new phenomenon in the mid-to-late 19th century.) Like SUNRISE, this movie shows the seduction of the fast pace of the modern city, mass consumption and revolution of our desires--and the insults that modernity hurls at older ways of thinking about community and "values" such as honesty, family, and propriety.

AU BONHEUR is now available on DVD, with a very good musical score. It is an exquisite example of what silent-era cinematic "Impressionism" was all about--including fantastic experiments with conveying sound, emotion, speed, and confusion through images and their editing. In sum, this is an important film and a beautiful one. Wacky ending, but let's not spoil it... With not only Dita Parlo (cf. Vigo's L'ATALANTE and Renoir's GRAND ILLUSION), but Nadia Sbirskaya (Renoir's CRIME OF M. LANGE).

This silent version of Zola's classic was impossible to see for a long time.Zola's heirs (concerning a novel from the 19Th century) were suing Duvivier's (video cassettes and DVDs) producer René Château ,reportedly.That may account for the disappearance of such other great Duvivier movies as "la fête à Henriette" or "Au Royaume des Cieux" (the latter was available on cassette a long time ago).

In the Rougon-Macquart saga ,"Au Bonheur des Dames" is far from being one of my favorites.The depictions are impressive,but the story is melodramatic ,particularly the ending .Duvivier has transposed the action to his time ,the early thirties.It's not a big problem,since the director introduces ,in the first sequences ,sandwich men and advertising leaflets coming down from the sky.And the neons as well.

That said,"Au Bonheur des Dames" displays a director who hadn't found himself yet.As every French cine buff knows,Duvivier was the film noir master,the poet of evil.He was also a past master when it came to depicting a place ,the Halles de Paris or Bastille Day.Actually,the true Duvivier would appear in his next effort "David Golder" (1931)

Best sequences: Genevieve 's fiancé ,telling the old shopkeeper Baudu how seedy his place is :the cobwebs ,the old furniture and the dilapidated walls speak louder than words;Baudu ,becoming mad as he hears the noises of the walls falling down; A giant worker with a pick destroying everything;and finally Denise's face ,in the last sequences ,who tends to to show that far from being an ingenue,she is a potential business woman and the story does not tell if she will show compassion for people who fall by the wayside.

Mouret's fête by the river will become a Duvivier's permanent feature too.Even at his nastiest,at his darkest,there will always be a cause for celebration: the Guinguettes in "La Belle Equipe" and "Voici le Temps des Assassins" ,the ball in "la fête à Henriette" or the fair in "Boulevard" .

But Duvivier was still searching for an identity at the time and there are weaknesses in his film:the relationship Denis/Mouret is as bland as that in Cayatte's talkie (1943).Blame it on the actor,Pierre de Guingand ,because Dita Parlo's talent is incontestable.Ditto for Armand Bour whose performance would be dwarfed by Michel Simon's (who else?)a decade later.

I will not make ,anyway,any comparison between the silent and the talkie.Today's audience will fatally favor the latter over the former. Every cine buff has got to see both and make up his mind.

NB.In Zola's saga ,"Au Bonheur des Dames" is the follow -up to "Pot-Bouille" (Octave Mouret is featured in both books).In 1957,Duvivier transferred to the screen that book,with only fair results .The movie was slagged off by Truffaut who (for once) was not wrong.Gerard Philippe was cast as Mouret.

Hollywood stories and films about women working as clerks in stores were done by the dozens in the 1930s; it was a staple of characterizations of the time period. However, this is not a Hollywood film; it is a French production, and one of the finest foreign films of that decade. Even the commonplace storyline is given a twist that was rarely seen in American films. A poor girl gets a job in a relative's small shop in Paris, but through a stroke of luck eventually lands a job in the biggest and most famous woman's store in Paris. Will the young woman abandon her values for those found in her new environment? Watch the film and find out for yourself.