Une vie

Celebrated (and controversial) film historian/critic David Thomson considers Alexandre Astruc's "The Camera-Stylo (The camera as pen)" theory as being the most important one to have emerged over the years; it is understandable, therefore, that he champions UNE VIE – Astruc's 1958 adaptation of a Guy De Maupassant novel – as being as singularly important an achievement as Charles Laughton's THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (1955) or that I learned of the film's very existence in my teens via Thomson's thought-provoking tome "A Biographical Dictionary Of The Cinema" (conversely, "Leonard Maltin's Film Guide" dismisses it with a ** rating under its U.S. title of END OF DESIRE)! Like William Wyler's definitive 1939 adaptation of Emily Bronte's WUTHERING HEIGHTS, Astruc reportedly filmed only the first half of the novel so it may also not be accidental that UNE VIE shares with that earlier film a mistreated tragic heroine (a superbly delicate central performance from Maria Schell), brooding romanticism (Christian Marquand's husband is a self-loathing brute who betrays his wife with every woman who crosses his path) and a vivid depiction of landscape (exquisitely captured by Claude Renoir's luminous cinematography). The story per se could not be simpler as it details the tribulations that the waif-like Schell suffers at the hands of Marquand soon after their wedding: inhabiting an isolated country house, he first takes up with Schell's lifelong companion (Pascale Petit) in a nearby room, eventually impregnating the latter and looking on impassively as she gives birth in the forbidding snow!; later on, upon a chance encounter at a fair with his newly-married best friend (Ivan Desny), he strikes up a passionate relationship with the latter's own tantalizing wife (Antonella Lualdi) and with whom he shares a night-time clandestine barnyard encounter as Schell's visiting mother expires after falling down the stairs! Ultimately, the unrepentant lovers are literally driven to their death – thrown off a cliff in a mobile wooden bath-house by the furious Desny – despite Schell's own vain attempts to alert them of the impending calamity. Still, the ending is a hopeful one as the heroine regains a measure of dignity and happiness in the company of her own natural son and that of Petit and her daughter who come back to live with her in the same country house. I cannot finish off this review without mentioning Roman Vlad's remarkable music which impeccably underscores the film's intense and delicate mood swings.

The use of colors in this movie is quite impressive. I think the colors are truly beautiful, and I feel the use of colors here is somehow different from other movies, but I can't quite tell exactly how it is different. I'm also impressed by another hard-to-describe aspect of this movie: the comfortable distance between the audience and the characters. I find myself enjoy watching this movie many times, though I'm not really interested in the story and these kinds of characters. Why do I enjoy watching it while feeling uninvolved in it? It is because I feel very comfortable watching it. I feel as if there is an emotional space of a very appropriate size separating me from the characters. I don't feel the characters' feelings are too far away from me that I lose interest in them, and nor do I feel the movie pushes the characters' feelings so overwhelmingly close to me that I feel uncomfortable. I don't really know how the director can make me feel like this, and I wonder whether he intentionally created that pleasant distance.

After BAFTA AWARD nominee Maria SCHELL (1926-2005) received an honorable mention at the Cannes Film Festival in 1954 for her performance in DIE LETZTE BRÜCKE / THE LAST BRIDGE, all cinema doors were open to her in France. She had to suffer in her roles there just as much as she did in German-language cinema, but in France she was allowed to hold back a little when she cried. The novel UNE VIE / A LIFE by Guy de MAUPASSANT provided the template for this film.

The young Jeanne (SCHELL) lives on her parents' estate in Normandy. One day she meets the dashing Julien (Christian MARQUAND) and falls in love with him. The wedding bells will soon ring. But Jeanne has to realize that Julien was only interested in the lavish dowry. He also impregnates her maid (Pascale PETIT). But the final catastrophe occurs when Julien begins an affair with the beautiful wife (Antonella LUALDI) of a neighboring count (Ivan DESNY)...

Staged in a concentrated manner and in beautiful images, SCHELL does what she does best in film: suffer, suffer, suffer. But similar to GERVAISE, the suffering is really terrible and dramatic and not as artificially tragic as in her German-language films. In France, the "Seelchen / little soul" of the German-language post-war film became a world star who was able to embody a genuine inner life. After this appearance, Maria SCHELL was ready for Hollywood, where she was allowed to play Grushenka in THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOW based upon the novel by Dostoyevsky.

...you're born to be hurt.That's one of Maupassant's recurrent topic. Astruc only adapted the first half of the novel,which is probably this great writer's finest work along with his famous short stories which influenced a lot of people (Dudley Nichols found inspiration for "stagecoach" in "Boule de Suif")

There is a splendid cinematography ,where Claude Renoir's camera works wonders in a green ,too green Normandy."Une vie' tells the tale of a woman,Jeanne, (Schell) married with a man who treats her like a dog,cheating on her with every woman around.And this woman could not divorce,because it was the nineteenth century.

The second part of the novel is Jeanne's son's story and it's as tragic as the first one.But Astruc chose to end his movie before.

Alexandre Astruc ,though he came to the fore with the new wave was not part of them.His estheticism sometimes recalls the great patriarches:Jean Renoir (une partie de campagne) and Max Ophuls (le plaisir),but his style is harsher without any lyric outpouring.His style was called the camera-stylo (pen camera).