Une si jolie petite plage

It seems be the lead character of this bitter film. A film about past. Remembering the play by Albert Camus. All seems a blank confession. A man. A place. The tension. And an ally . And the rain . Far by every escape.

The text we read at the beginning indicates the direction of the film; we are asked to sympathize with and not to condemn the orphans and abandoned children brought up in state-run facilities. We are told that these children often grew up to become the "elite" of society. The Gabin character in Carne's Le jour se leve also grew up on the "assistance publique," but he is a fighter for justice, unlike the passive, tormented Pierre. Yves Allegret has filmed Gerard Philipe as a sort of Christ-figure walking through the muddy streets of this third-rate resort town. There is a scene with Madeleine Robinson cuddling Philipe that is very much like the Pieta.

Jean Servais as the slimy Fred has some effective scenes; he reminds us of Jules Berry driving Gabin to murder in Le jour. If the script had focussed more on the conflict between Pierre, the killer of the club singer and Fred, the dead woman's old boyfriend, instead of devoting reams of script pages to the social and political aspects of homeless children (no matter how moving their plight may be) the noir tradition would have been much better served.

I'll finish by praising the actors: Servais is great, Jane Marken as the proprietress of the hotel is a model of petit-bourgeois intolerance, Carette's salesman is boring and right. Only Gerard Philipe fails to give a rounded performance because the script won't let him.

The film begins splendidly, with Gerard Philipe arriving by bus to an out-of-the-way and out-of-season seaside town where it always rains and the beach is always empty. He checks into the little inn there claiming to be a student looking for some peace and quiet for his nerves, but clearly he has a big secret he is hiding, and an elderly resident of the inn seems to recognize him, too.

All this is established admirably, and the mystery and atmosphere it generates is first rate. Unfortunately, once we start to learn more of his story, the mystery falls away and the rest of the film is just interminable shots of Philipe wandering around in the rain and occasionally crying for no reason we can see. None of the other characters have any depth or believability to them, and many of their actions don't seem to make sense. Random generic statements about orphans throughout bog the story down and never add up to anything clear or meaningful. One gets the feeling the creators didn't get any further than the premise before starting making the film and then just gave up putting any more work into keeping the ball rolling.

So the second half of the film is undeniably a failure, but up till that point it's really very good indeed, and a great example of the kind of film noir that only the French could make.

In the summer it's a handsome if undistinguished summer resort. It's winter now, and it rains all the time. Only one hotel is open, and it caters to consumptives. Gérard Philipe shows up and rents a room. He says he is a student. As the movie proceeds it becomes clear that he has been here before; he was the boy who did all the unwelcome chores and was beaten by the owner. The woman he ran away with, a famous singer, has been murdered. It's like HOTEL DU NORD, run by a sour Jane Marken.

What comes after poetic realism fails? What movie can you make when there is no G*d, no fate driving lives, because he is an old man, dying of tuberculosis? What happens, as one character remarks, there is no love, so you should take advantage of it? You get film noir, of course, but film noir is about crime and evil. How do you make a movie about love when there is no such thing, when Madeleine Robinson wants to help, when Philipe wants to help, but no one can help? This despairing movie examines that question, and it does so very well in its own, bleak way.

It's 1948,the French "nouvelle vague" is yet to come,and nevertheless "une si jolie petite plage" seems to announce the era. Gerard Philippe's character might be the missing link between Carné's desperate characters of the thirties ("le jour se lève","Quai des brumes")and the mistreated rebels of the late fifties/early sixties(Truffaut's Antoine Doinel ,Franju's "la tête contre les murs" hero). The landscape has rarely been so depressing that in this Allégret's masterwork;like Poe's "Usher house",it seems to influence the characters,to rub off on the hero .These desolate shores never seem to see the sun,the inn itself is hostile .For the hero,this is the end of the road,he has become a murderer,and having lost all his illusions,he comes back to this eating-house where he used to work as a child (he was an orphan)As the rain which keeps falling down,bad luck is here to stay:a young boy ,an orphan too,is working now in this miserable place and the hero urges him not to accept this miserable life with no future in sight,but in vain.The servant (Madeleine Robinson) tries to do the same for the young man whom she loves.All in vain.In the last pictures,a breathtaking tracking out takes us faraway from this doomed place as if the director himself wanted to escape such a darkness.Gérard Philippe used to regard this film noir as one of his very best.