La ronde

Updates the 1950 masterpiece to Paris in 1914, shot in rich colour with evocative music, dance and song. A witty script from Jean Anouilh travels through the emotions lightly and, this being France, has slightly weightier moments of literature and philosophy.

Since the men are close to being caricature lovers from a sex farce, which some of the time this is, the film belongs to the women. And what a wonderful collection of beautiful, sexy, so often poignant women! Top billing probably has to go to a gorgeous Jane Fonda, then the lover of the director and later his wife, as a young bourgeois wife. But several others play her close: Anna Karina as the housemaid Rose, Catherine Spaak as the mystery girl, Francine Bergé as the actress Maximilienne, and Marie Dubois as the soft-hearted Breton tart. All good roles, taken with gusto and a joy to watch.

I too saw the dubbed version when it was playing at the Apollo, a theater on 42nd Street that showed European films that had very limited release. La Ronde or Circle of Love is a visually beautiful film and the scene where Fonda, as the wife, goes to meet her lover in his apartment which has a bird in a cage and Fonda is wearing a hat with a large bird on it is still etched on my memory! Years later I got a VHS of the French version which is a real treasure. Now it is officially out on DVD in Vadim's French version. The cast is a who's who of the 60s French cinema, as was the Ophuls film was (with Signoret, Simone, Daniel Gelan, et al). Chain of Desire is a contemporary remake, and I just saw a play in Chicago by Joe DiPietro with all male cast playing gay characters called F**king Men, really inspired by rather than a re-do. There was an offBroadway production in the late 50's and the actress/director played all the women's parts!

The version I saw was dubbed which didn't help matters any. Not Vadim's best stuff, but the women are beautiful. Anna Karina is touching and naive, a young Jane Fonda is gorgeous and amusing, and many others. Francoise Dorleac was supposed to have a small part in this, but I didn't see her. Vadim did much better work with Brigitte Bardot.

A 3 out of 10. Best performance = Jane Fonda. She was never lovelier than this time period. The men are all buffoons or chauvinist pigs, but the girls make it barely watchable. As I said, the original, in French, may be more enjoyable. Jane Fonda has her "own" voice, but she may be the only one in the dubbed version.

Beautiful visually I watched this out of curiosity and Jean Anouilh could have done better with the dialogue. Fonda whose French is good even with an American accent does her best and is better with Maurice Ronet than the irritating Jean-Claude Brialy. There is a lot of philosophy in the boudoir and the film advances with a pedestrian pace. Jean Sorel stole the film for me as the Count, and those looking for any sense of so-called adult sexuality should look elsewhere. In 1964 the film may have been amusing but for an audience today it it would be nothing more than a line-up of the key actors of the time. A few noted for the Nouvelle Vague are there such as Anna Karina and Brialy, and I wonder why they accepted their roles. Vadim can be very good, especially in his early Bardot films but I am not convinced his heart was in this one. And Max Ophuls must have been a ghost in the background having a good laugh at this failure and knowing that he had created a masterpiece and controversy in his version of 1951.

Second adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's play "Reigen", first filmed by director Max Ophüls in 1950 as "La Ronde", gets the Roger Vadim treatment, which is to say it is most certainly a sumptuous display but one with nothing happening beyond the pretty window dressing. Time and place have been changed from the original version--we are now in 1913 Paris instead of 1900 Vienna--but the story is the same: a prostitute offers herself to soldier who resembles the only man she ever loved; the soldier goes on to seduce a housemaid, who in turn makes love with the son of her employer. Vadim and scenarist Jean Anouilh have eliminated the Raconteur (a fatal mistake), and so we are set adrift amidst well-upholstered sets and superbly dressed and coiffed ladies, lost among the vapid players, dull romantic talk and teasing glimpses of flesh. Jane Fonda lets her bare back steal her bed scenes. The dazzling opening credits sequence and Michel Magne's lovely background score are assets, as is Henri Decaë's rich color cinematography. *1/2 from ****