La chambre verte

Most reviews here are positive, and luckily so: this is a tremendous film. Thought provoking, even disturbing a bit. And wonderfully photographed by Maestro Nestor Almendros. The film simply looks stupendous !

What seems odd is that not one review here, against or for this film, mentions the mute child.

Is there significance to his part, other than to show that Julien Davenne cannot communicate with the world except in obituaries and in sign language ? It is hard to tell, but the role played by the blonde kid is quite poetic, and maybe for that reason alone an asset for this 'La Chambre Verte', which is as wonderful as it is unsettling.

"La chambre verte" is one of the most strange, if not the strangest work of Truffaut. An adaptation of the novel "The beast and the jungle" by Henry James, it deals with one of the most uncomfortable topics for a film; death. Or, actually, what happens to those that are left alive, when a person from their intimate environment dies.

Julien Davenne, the hero (played by Truffaut himself), is obsessed with death, since the loss of his dear wife, Julie. While everyone tells him to forget her, and move on, he finds it disrespectful to her memory to do so. Instead, he decides to build a chapel, where he will honour his "dead". People he had once known, family, friends that perished in the war. There is even a photo of an unknown German soldier, whom Davenne had killed during the fightings of World War One. To Davenne, death makes no discriminations, he takes everyone, and it's the duty of the living to remember the dead, otherwise, they'll be forgotten.

Having no one as family, except for a child, unable to speak, communicating with him only with signs, and his caretaker, an old lady, Davenne shares his opinions and worries with a young woman (Nathalie Baye). She is shocked by what she hears, at first, but later comes to understand the motives behind Davenne's way of thinking.

Which are those motives? In my opinion, Truffaut tried to present with this film a portrait of the French Lost Generation. Those, who would have been young enough to go fight in World War One. Few of them returned, since France had some of the highest casualties in that war. The war to end all wars. It didn't end them, but it ended relationships, friendships, families. In the film, Davenne laments that his now deceased wife waited for his return from the front for four years. Unfortunately, she didn't get to enjoy their being together for long. Death got her first.

After the First World War, the world was shocked by the disaster, and the death the conflict had brought. And, so, art became obsessed with death. The artists of this Lost Generation rejected the conservatism of their predecessors, it being an element of a pre-war era of carelessness. In their works, they portrayed the death of those seen in the front, or other topics, in an abstract manner. In that way, they wanted to show the madness of war.

What does all this have to do with the film? Davenne is also a member of this generation. One of the lucky ones, that didn't die. But, for him, Julie's loss is kind of a spiritual death. He is as fixated with the concept of death as those artists. Through his chapel,first located in the titular green room in his house, he makes his own attempt at dealing with this stream of deaths the war brought. For him, everyone death deserves to be remembered. But, for a society wanting to move on, this behaviour is abnormal. Why would one want to remain in the past, in a past so traumatic? Truffaut gave his answer through the film.

History, as saddening as this is, would justify Davenne. Because, for all the fun and prosperity that France and the world experienced in the Roaring twenties - in France, tellingly known as "Les années folles" , the crazy years- the next decade's end would bring with it the most catastrophic war human history has ever witnessed. And, then, no one could escape thinking about death. It would simply be everywhere.

Francois Truffaut certainly spread his net widely when sourcing filmic material and has here drawn inspiration from two short stories and a novella by Henry James. There is something of the biographical in most of Truffaut's oeuvre but this is indisputably his most intensely personal and heartfelt.

The death of his contemporaries, notably his mentor André Bazin and film archivist Henri Langlois, made him all too aware of his own mortality and he has cast himself as Julien Davanne, a writer of obituaries, whose obsession is to create a chapel of remembrance for his late, beloved wife and others who have touched his life. This brings him into contact with Cecilia who is mourning a man who was once a friend of Julien's but who had since betrayed him........

Despite its depressingly morbid subject matter this is a film that once seen, is not easily forgotten and the suitably gloomy atmosphere is courtesy of Néstor Almendros' muted cinematography. Truffaut had also felt the loss of one of France's greatest film composers, Maurice Jaubert, who perished in the early days of WWII and his use of Jaubert's music is inspired, especially in the chapel scenes. The eagle eyed will no doubt spot the photograph of Oskar Werner in the guise of a German soldier. He and Truffaut had worked together twice and ironically, were both fated to die the same year.

Julien's scenes with the mute boy Georges are reminiscent of those between Dr. Itard and Victor, the wild boy of Aveyron in 'L'Enfant Sauvage' and reveal that Julien is capable of showing compassion for the living as well as for the dead.

The question that arises in both films is whether Truffaut made the right decision in casting himself as the leading character. Personally I feel that although Truffaut got away with it in the earlier film he does not fare as well in this. He is suitably forbidding and distant but there is such a thing as dramatic license and the role ideally required an actor of greater range. Truffaut himself was later to acknowledge this. He certainly got it right however when casting Nathalie Baye whose performance as Cecilia is simply stupendous and touches the heart.

Although critically well received the film was commercially catastrophic which not only affected the director's health but caused him to lose financial backing from the French arm of United Artists.

Based upon the principle that 'everyone has their dead' Truffaut felt that the film would strike a chord with audiences but he had sorely underestimated the capacity of most humans to overcome their grief and failed to recognise that for the majority, 'Life belongs to the living'.

Julien Davenne has suffered trauma, it still haunts him, he's perpetually a mourner, after losing his wife Julie, he still loves her oh so truly, leaves him trapped inside a tomb, can't turn the corner. Cecilia attempts to make a bond, there's connection, and slowly he does respond, after fire burns his tribute, to his perpetual love salute, she becomes someone, of which he is quite fond - but not for long.

It's not the most riveting period drama you've ever come across although, like The Story of Adele H, it shows how people with serious mental illness behaved when there was little or no support, or indeed appreciation for, in this case, PTSD. Nathalie Baye is gorgeous and elegant, and as such, shows just how much Julien Davenne has lost his marbles, but at least she gets to light his candle.

If there is a strange film, it is this one. François Truffaut directs himself. He is a husband who idolizes his dead wife and ends up building her a mausoleum in an abandoned chapel in a cemetery. He is a columnist in charge of the obituary column of a provincial newspaper. He will meet a woman who understands him, she also has a death in her life.

The film is both fascinating for its subject, and totally original, because this subject is not often the subject of a "mainstream" fiction; which is quite relative considering this very subject. And it was probably not easy to finance a film on such a subject. The basic materials are the writings of Henry James. The screenplay was written by François Truffaut himself and Jean Guault, a regular collaborator of François Truffaut.

The interpretation by François Truffaut himself of this character, accentuates its strangeness and originality: the jerky elocution of Truffaut, his inexpressive face permanently, gives depth to the character, and makes it all the more moving and unfathomable.

The work of the sets, interior and exterior, with a small provincial town at night, but also an impressive cemetery, which is overgrown with vegetation, almost abandoned, but which produces an astonishing climate.

The film manages to talk about the subject of the dead, while remaining in realism, or rather without tipping over into the fantastic, which could quickly appear, but it is not the case.