Le plaisir

Max Ophuls is rightly regarded as a major filmmaker and this is a major work. If you'd heard of his fluid camera-work but hadn't seen a film bearing his signature this film would illustrate perfectly what people mean by his fluid camera-work. In 1952 the portmanteau film was hardly new; in England we had seen both Quartet and Trio (a joke in the early fifties had two hippies walking down Broadway and passing in turn cinemas where these titles were playing: One says 'Man, we better dig this crazy combo, it's fading fast') followed by Encore, all featuring short stories by Somerset Maugham but it's fair to say that all three lacked the visual style and sheer sumptuousness that Ophuls brings to DeMaupassant. Framed by The Mask and The Model the piece de resistance is The House of Madame Tellier, a four-reel examination of the role of the bordel in the provincial town - when they close for a day the whole sub-social life of the town is disturbed. If the lion's share of the plaudits go to the middle segment the others have more than their own individual moments and staples of French cinema like Jean Gabin, Danielle Darrieux and Simone Simon get to strut their stuff and pay their dues. A visual delight.

Is it possible to take one of the best tales in French literature and make a film even better out of it? Yes, it is. The tale is Maupassant's "La maison Tellier", the film-maker is Max Ophuls, the film is "Le Plaisir". In fact, the movie is divided into three episodes, corresponding to three Maupassant's tales. In the two short introducing and final stories we actually find the bitter, acid, misanthropical sarcasm typical of Maupassant's style, though softened by Ophuls' sympathy for human unhappiness.

What really stuns the viewer is the central episode, the sumptuous narration of "La maison Tellier". The story is the same in the book and in the film. A bunch of prostitutes from "La maison Tellier", the brothel of a French province town, takes a day off to go to a First Communion celebration in the countryside. But what a difference of mood. The fact is that Maupassant detested and despised people, while Ophuls manifestly loves them and is always ready to forgive their faults and pettiness. Therefore the writer's aggressive satire is replaced by the director's gentle sense of humor. The brothel is closed, and we shortly realize that the balance of the town, the whole social order is upset. Some sailors start a brawl, and that looks rather expectable. But even peaceful middle-class respectable citizens, long-time friends, begin to quarrel bitterly. "La maison Tellier" is the key of social stability!

Then the church-scene, a perfect blend of sweet fun and profound human feeling. Overwhelmed by the intense emotion of the First Communion Mass, the prostitutes burst in tears, and they carry all the villagers with them. I guess to have noticed a delightful nuance by Ophuls. The "beautiful Jewish girl" whom, according to the director (a Jewish himself), no brothel can afford to miss (!), at first tries to restrain herself. She's not Christian, she's not supposed to be moved! But, of course, she soon starts to weep... Great emotion, great art! And the women merged in the high grass, picking flowers... it's late, they risk to miss their train... but no! It's so a gorgeous day, let's go and pick some flowers! How poetic, how beautiful... what a fantastic scene! Needless to say, as soon as the women are back, peace, order, friendship are restored in the town.

The above comments can give a partial idea of the director's extraordinary treatment of the story. But it's important to remark that just the visual beauties and the camera work by the genius Ophuls are largely enough to place "Le plaisir" among the best works in the history of cinema. Let me just mention the first scene, when we peep inside the brothel together with the outside eye of the camera, which jumps from a window to another like a little bird. That is the most brilliant cinematic idea I can remember. A perfect film forces a perfect job by the cast. And in fact the acting is magnificent.

"Le plaisir" is a profound study of human beings, of their joys and sorrows, an instance of superlative good taste in treating a risky theme, a triumph of clever cinematic technique. A peak of the art of cinema.

Max Ophuls converts three stories by Guy de Maupassant to the screen, and links them via a narration by Peter Ustinov.

Ophuls is one of those directors whose works I admire rather than enjoy. Sometimes I think that's his intention. His taste for formalism, whether it be a Schnitzler play he wishes to film, or his insistence on loading on every camera trick he can think of, as here, seems designed to call for comment by the attentive and cinematic viewer.... one might almost say 'voyeur.'

Perhaps that's Ophuls' intention: to make the audience think they're not watching a story, but spying on reality. Me, when I think it's a great story and great actors, as here, I would use the minimum artistry to tell the story; why paint the beautiful lily or gild refined gold? When the first story begins with a traveling take that lasts minutes, I wonder how much longer it's going to go on, rather than enjoying the event. When he shifts repeatedly to Dutch angles, I wonder what is so odd about the perspective, and when he shoots people in a house through windows, again, I wonder what's the point.

Perhaps it is a longing for the baroque. Or perhaps it's an inferiority complex, to show people who go on about the theater that cinema is an art, too, and anything you can do, we can do better!

Me, my taste is a lot more visceral than Ophuls. He's great, mind you. It's just that I appreciate him with my head and not my heart.

Three tales from Guy de Maupassant are presented: The Mask, The Tellier House, and The Model, all of which were published in 'The Necklace and Other Tales' in 2003, and are probably in many other such collections of his short stories. The film adaptation is beautifully shot, includes some fine star power (Simone Simon, Jean Gabin, and Danielle Darrieux), and for the most part faithful to the stories, though there is some unfortunate softening. I have to say, the selection is not the greatest, as the first and last stories are just average works, and they're also both less than eight pages long. Even for an author who is known for being a master of brevity, the translation to the screen for the bookends of this set feels unsatisfyingly not well fleshed out (and the middle story ends up taking about 60 of the overall 97 minutes).

Ostensibly the three were selected to match a theme, which is the pursuit of pleasure. We do see that in these vignettes, and most notably, we see this pursuit ending in being denied. One man wears a mask when he gets older so he can go out dancing with the young girls (but collapses), others brawl because a bordello is closed on a Saturday night, and another desperately tries to get near one of the prostitutes that come out to see his daughter get her first communion. The foibles of men are on full display, and it's all a little pathetic. Perhaps this is nowhere more true than in getting married for reasons that don't relate to temperament or harmony, and suffering a lifetime of coldness as a result, which is the subject of the last tale.

Maupassant was the ultimate realist, not flinching from writing what life and love were really like, and the tone of the film is thus generally consistent with his work. Unfortunately in that middle effort, The Tellier House, there are some alterations. When the prostitutes are in the church in the story, they begin to cry, causing a wave of tears to ripple through the crowd. In the book, it's a sanctimonious and confused priest who believes that's it's a sign of God among them, but Maupassant is clearly making the situation absurd - both for the sentimental weeping and this reaction. In the film, it's the narrator - meant to be Maupassant himself - who draws the divine inference. It throws the tone of the scene off, is noticeably inconsistent with the rest of the story, and is certainly not in line with Maupassant's realism. Excised also is the bawdy song 'Granny,' that Rosa sings in the story, about an elderly lady remembering her past lovers, ruing the loss of her shapely legs and bygone charms, and admitting that she would masturbate alone in bed at 15. Ok, maybe that's not surprising for a film from 1952, even one out of France not subject to the puritanical production Code.

If director Max Ophüls had nailed that middle story, or included a better selection (of which there are many possible options), I would have enjoyed the film more. As it was, though, it's a solid effort and worth watching.

A trilogy of Guy de Maupassant stories, two short simple ones framing a long and impossibly rich one, and I don't know why everyone complains about the framing ones - everything is given exactly the weight that their narrative will support. An old man dressing up like a young dandy to relive the gavotting excesses of his youth, only to end in physical collapse, starts things off; and to close we have a beautiful young couple who go from romantic bliss to petty vindictiveness to resigned acceptance via an attempted suicide. This gives us a rather complex understanding of the meaning of 'pleasure', and the worst you can say is that one and three don't utterly embody pleasure the way number two does (although the swirling camera work in the dance scene comes damn close). The story of a troop of sex workers romping off to a country wedding is simplicity itself, but also incredibly rich - full of memorable human beings and interactions. Everyone sees happiness in the place that they're not, but this episode celebrates life wherever it finds it, and it's a joy to watch.