Sait-on jamais...

I have been waiting to see this movie again for fifty years, and now I find that it was shown at MOMA in 2008. I was originally drawn to No Sun in Venice by the Modern Jazz Quartet's score, and the memory of the funeral scene on the Grand Canal as the black gondola's glided by with the procession to the MJQ piece entitled CORTEGE is a haunting one.

The music album is widely available on CD and DVD (though I am still playing the LP), but it goes so wonderfully with the gorgeous photography that it is a shame that the movie has never been released in the United States on VCR or DVD. Perhaps someone will discover and revive it as so many lesser movies of that era are so widely available.

The film opens with a cartoon, as another reviewer has stated, and the camera pulls back to reveal a movie theater. One of the theater goers (the main character) leaves, and once outside, begins to cross a bridge in Venice, at which point, the music ("The Golden Striker") starts, with a compelling sense of drama. Unfortunately, that's about the only dramatic moment. The plot is trite and predictable, and the music carries the film. It seems not to be available on DVD, and no wonder: the MJQ's score is the only interesting thing, so you might just as well get the album, which, after 54 years, remains compelling. I still have the vinyl platter in its original cover, but am delighted to have downloaded it from Amazon.

Imagine Juliete (BB ,"Et Dieu Créa La Femme")chooses to follow her millionaire (Curd Jurgens).She becomes a kept woman living with a shady German (an ex-Nazi)who could be her father and is wooed by a good-looking man (Christian Marquand ,who courts her in "Et Dieu...." ).There the comparison ends,for Françoise Arnoul is an old school actress,often directed by Henry Decoin ("La Chatte " which features a memorable hot erotic questioning) or Henri Verneuil.

I've never been a fan of the new wave,let alone Vadim (in the cast and credits ,his first name does not appear,which is very rare),but I must say that "Sait -On Jamais? " (the question is uttered by Marquand at the beginning of the film ;as it is short,watch out!)has stood the test of time better than most of his flicks which ,seen today ,often sink into ridicule .

This must be the atmosphere .The screenplay is poorly written and the viewer does not really care for this 2 million coup .

The cinematography (by Armand Thirard) uses the wide screen and Eastmancolor with talent : Venice has perhaps never been filmed so nicely (except maybe in Roeg's "don't look back" ),and the interiors of the Venetian palaces have something venomous (note the presence of Daniel Emilfork ,the most sinister-looking French actor,as a servant )

The movie also shows that Vadim could have been a true film noir director,had he not succumbed to the N.W vices (loose screenplays,cult of youth ,navel-gazing,cheap eroticism):

-the murder of O.E. Hasse ,with Hossein's tears falling on his cheeks ,in an unusual inventive scene .

-the macabre procession on the blue-green waters of Venice canals ,which may have inspired Nicholas Roeg.

On the other hand ,the Boing Boing cartoon which opens the movie ,unless it forebodes the characters 'impossibility to communicate - after all,there are Germans,French and Italians),is mostly filler .

This is not only a film with a good jazz score, and neither is it the rubbish that it is made out to be. Roger Vadim made some very good films, and this is one of them. Caught between a French cinema despised by the Nouvelle Vague he inadvertently made the first footprint of the ' new ' cinema by making ' Et Dieu Crea La Femme ' with Brigitte Bardot. It made Bardot into an icon praised no less than by Simone Beauvoir, and the film by its free wheeling and outdoor settings was something very new in a mostly studio bound French cinema. After this excellent film ( to me anyway ) he made ' Sait-On Jamais ' turned of course into the more audience attractive title of ' When the Devil Drives ' and it was duly given an adults only certificate in the UK. I have no idea if the censors of the time got their scissors out as I have only seen it in French and I have a good DVD of it brought out by Rene Chateau, so the complaints that it was not brought out on DVD are not valid. Viewers should search more and not depend only on the English and Americans to find it. The filming is excellent and so is Francoise Arnoul, almost as equal to the French as Bardot. Set in Venice it is a fine thriller and has no pretentions to be other than that. The cartoon which starts the film before any credits was something the Nouvelle Vague should have envied, and the film is full of innovative scenes. I have no liking in the main for Robert Hossein's films, but as an actor he had presence and Christian Marquand equally made fine films. One thing I am sure of ; both the USA and UK should have brought out more of Vadim's films and taken him more seriously.

I have always been a fan of MJQ and listened to their recording of the music for the film both on LP and CD. I was too young to see the film when it was shown in my native Sweden in the 50s, but it was covered on the radio and in the press. But I saw Odds against Tomorrow with a soundtrack by MJQ a few years later. Therefore, I did not hesitate to buy this French-produced DVD, even though it lacked subtitles. Unfortunately, I have to say that the music arrangement is so bad that the music is barely audible.

My French skills are not enough for me to be able to judge the plot of the film, so my low rating only applies to the deplorable soundtrack. It is an insult to four of jazz music's great innovative masters, John Lewis, Milt Jackson, Percy Heath and Connie Kay.