Le baron fantôme

Enchanting little film, with splendid monochromatic visuals, sets and locations, with refined art direction by Jacques Krauss. The fable has a touch of the Brontë sisters in its details, about a young woman who is in love with a woodsman since childhood. Both are servants and subjected to the romances of the rural bourgeoisie and the games of power between the church, the military, and a nobility in decay. The film plays with the viewer, especially in the last minutes, between tragedy and comedy, to lead us to a happy conclusion, but by the time the story becomes that frivolous you can easily take it, while it rapidly closes the different subplots. Jean Cocteau wrote the dialogue and played the phantom baron in his brief, funny appearances. Recommended, it deserves restoration.

Jean Cocteau co-writes the screenplay and plays the briefly seen title role, but his influence is all over the place. After a creepy beginning heavy on the German Expressionism, it settles into a leisurely Bronte-style romantic cauldron, with a quadrangle of post-Napoleon Era youths in a French village battling class distinctions that get in the way of their romantic yearnings, which, interestingly, seem largely based on whoever is the most inaccessible. Subplot involves an old local kook who may or may not be Louis XVI's missing heir, and hovering over everything is the mystery of that crazy old nobleman who disappeared in the dilapidated local castle, where there may be a hidden treasure. The answer comes in a moment of jaw-dropping comic horror, but is almost an anti-climactic footnote in this story that is far from being resolved. Even further along is a stunning somnambulist sequence that has to be seen to be believed. Oddly enough, every loose end of this scattered tale is tied together by the happy conclusion. Certainly a piece of cinema from the distant past, but unlike anything you've ever seen from the English speaking world. I'd be stretching it to call this classic cinema, but it's visually exquisite and if you're in the mood for something unusual, it's a treat.

The film has a prologue that might have strayed in from an RKO horror movie: a storm, a dilapidated castle, a coach and horses, a sinister cat, a terrified butler, and an evil-looking baron (played by Jean Cocteau) who mysteriously vanishes.

The mood then changes swiftly as we jump ahead 10 years and are introduced to the principal characters: Elfy, the daughter of the castle's new owner; her friend, Anne; the woodsman, Hervé; and the young army officer who is coming around courting. The romantic intrigues of these four are played out against the background of the ruined castle and the mystery of the baron's disappearance.

At the heart of the film is the relationship between the troubled Hervé (Alain Cuny) and Jany Holt's bookish Anne. Neither has acknowledged their feelings when Hervé, who sleepwalks, comes into Anne's bedroom and carries her through the moonlit castle grounds, her long nightdress catching on the branches and trailing through the damp grass. It's a subtly erotic and beautifully cinematic moment, recalling the abduction scene in Caligari, but with the twist here that the girl is awake and loving every minute of it.

In scenes like this, and the discovery of the baron's secret (which I won't reveal), Poligny shows a masterful talent for the fantasy genre. The film's weakness is that it has too few such moments, and too many minor characters who serve no more than an incidental comedic purpose. Fortunately, the performances of Holt (sincere, passionate and vulnerable) and Cuny (brooding and intense, as in the previous year's Les Visiteurs du soir) keep the film from floating off into lightweight comedy.

Co-written by Cocteau and filmed during the Nazi Occupation, Le Baron fantôme was one of the more inventive responses to the directive to avoid topical subjects.

This is a Gothic curiosity written by Jean Cocteau, who plays the spooky baron himself, eventually turning into a mummy. His sister comes there with two minor girls, being broke and trying to find a new home, why they settle in the spooky castle, a place like fetched directly out of Edgar Allan Poe. The girls make friends with a loical peasant boy, who eventually grows up into Alain Cuny, always a most fascinating actor, especially for his performances in "Les visiteurs du soir" and the colour version of the fifties with Gina Lollobrigida and Athnony Quinn in "Notre Dame de Paris"("The Hunchback of Notre Dame" in a very French version,) where Alain Cuny plays Claude Frollo, the mad priest. Here he is a most sympathetic character winning more sympathy all the way, until his real identity is revealed, and then there is a party. It is very expressionistic, reminding of the best days of German expressionism, and the story is not too bad - it even finds a happy ending with everyone most content. It's the Gothic scenes however that make the film worth watching, especially the extremely suggestive somnambulant scene, which is quite outstanding in cinema history, for its poetry, beauty and extreme romanticism. The film is a curiosity and invaluable as such, fitting into the pattern of other Cocteau films like "The Beauty and the Beast" and "L'aigle à deux têtes" and is extremely atmospheric - while you could do without the comedy element.

"Le Baron Fantôme" ,as its follow-up in Serge De Poligny's canon,"La Fiancée Des Ténèbres" ,belongs to the escape movies ,a genre which gave several classics in occupied France:"Les Visiteurs Du Soir" "L'Eternel Retour" "La Nuit Fantastique" "Le Loup Des Malveneur".....

"Le Baron" has a better screenplay than "La Fiancée" ;both blend Gothic ghost stories,fairy tales and melodrama ,but ,perhaps because of the little help from Cocteau,the story is more coherent .

But the biggest influences are to be found in "Peter Ibetson" (children in love who learn how it is painful growing up) and even in "Wuthering heights" (Hervé bears more than a distant resemblance to Heathcliff).The nobles/commoners antagonism recalls scenes of "Douce" ,Autant-Lara's masterpiece of the era ,released the same year ,with the same actress (Odette Joyeux).Sometimes it looks like a rosy version of "Douce" .

A baron (check the title) disappeared one night and when his sister (Gabrielle Dorziat)and her daughter (Odette Joyeux) arrive to the castle (the lady is broke),they find nobody home ,except for an old servant. Ten years after,the girl has turned into a gorgeous young maid . Anne (Jany Holt),her childhood friend ,is still considered a servant by the old dowager.Anne and Hervé (Alain Cuny,the star of "les Visiteurs Du Soir" ) know they were born to see other people live and to stay in the shadow.If Hervé is a wild but tender rebel ,Anne is the defiant one.Jany Holt gives a very subtle performance ,by far the best of the four young leads.The viewer often asks himself whether she is an unfortunate victim of an unfair society or if she is evil.A subplot (which strongly reminds me of Jacques Prévert) involves a "prince" who would be the Dauphin (Louis The Sixteenth's son) after his escape from the Prison Du Temple (at the time nobody knew the truth which was revealed recently).His mansion is decorated with famous paintings (notably "Marie-Antoinette Et Ses Enfants" ).

When they wrote the screenplay of "Pleins Feux Sur L'Assassin" (1962,Georges Franju),Boileau-Narcejac were certainly remembering " Le Baron Fantôme" .