Henriette

Post-war French cinema faced something of a crisis with the massive influx of movies from Hollywoodland and this utterly delightful piece from Julien Duvivier, one of his country's greatest cinéastes, reflects his own dilemma as to whether to remain faithful to his pre-war style or to give audiences films with maximum action and minimum psychology. He and his frequent collaborator Henri Jeanson often disagreed, as do the scénarists here, played by Louis Seigner and Henri Crémieux, and we are shown the sometimes tortuous creative process and the multiple developments a story can take.

The performances are delicious with Dany Robin at her most enchanting whilst Georges Auric's scintillating score, Roger Hubert's camerawork and the cutting of Duvivier's editor of choice Marthe Poncin, notably in the splendid chase sequence, contribute to the creation of an overlooked Gallic gem.

On the principle that bigger is not necessarily better, it is probably kinder to pass over in silence Richard Quine's expensively mounted but leaden remake.

The witty framework of "La Fête à Henriette" (later Americanized as "Paris, When It Sizzles") allows Julien Duvivier to play with several different cinematic genres in the course of one movie (mostly staying within the confines of a romantic comedy, though). The main problem is that large portions of the movie-within-the-movie are just not very interesting. Also Michel Auclair, who has a role probably more prominent than Henrietta herself, is rather lacking in charm. But it's all well-shot around Paris, and quite astoundingly sexy for its time - there are at least four exceptionally beautiful women in it (I only wish Jeannette Batti had a larger part). **1/2 out of 4.

A penpal from the IMDb was good enough to send me a VHS copy of this French classic unavailable in America. It's a very unusual comedy: After the rejection of their latest - and preposterous - scenario, two scriptwriters get back to basics to prepare a new movie. The new scenario centers on Henriette, a pretty, lively Parisian, and how she spends the 14th of July in Paris with her fiancé. We follow the tribulations of Henriette as various other characters make their entry in the story and turn a traditional festive day into something more adventurous than expected.

What this synopsis doesn't say is that this movie has a very unconventional narrative structure. It unfolds, develops, rolls back on itself and starts again according to the whims, arguments and opinions of the two on-screen screenwriters, their wisecracking female typist and their two girlfriends, while they go about everyday activities like going to the barber or fixing dinner. One of the scriptwriters (Henri Crémieux) fancies himself an anarchist and revolutionary (long before the New Wave) while the other (Louis Seigner) is more of a practical-minded classicist. The first one is always insisting on improbable and melodramatic turns of event, murders or suicides, while the other wants to keep things light, realistic and entertaining. All through the film, scenes and characters are introduced, analyzed and disposed of, resurrected or simply erased from the record. The result is one of those unknown masterpieces of French cinema that will probably stay unknown in America until the Criterion Collection takes a fancy to it.

This film boasts magnificent set pieces, female nudity, sexual situations, witty dialogue, unbelievably risky photography and stunts. Its editing also makes "Citizen Kane" look a student film. But it is most of all revolutionary in its narrative structure. It has been remade twice, as "Paris when it sizzles" (1964) and "À l'attaque" (2000). Even if the first of these remakes was a relative failure, it was also the first mainstream American comedy to call into question the narrative clichés and conventions of Hollywood film-making. The film is taking liberties with the space-time continuum in ways that would inspire numerous films as diverse as "Zazie dans le metro", "Adaptation", "Run, Lola. Run", "Amélie", the later comedies of Sacha Guitry and even the relatively few lighthearted moments of Truffaut's "Shoot the Piano Player".

To this day, anyone who knows about this film – which gives cinematic story-telling the unlimited potential of a radio play - is sill in awe of its wonders.

I have a question for anyone who has seen this film or only heard about it: "Even though it would seem the most natural thing to do, in movies, for a director to play with the space and time structure of his story, can you think of any example previous to 1952 where an on-screen scriptwriter intervenes to change the run of the story?"

The only examples that come to my mind are both by Preston Sturges. There is a short sequence in "Sullivan's Travels" where Joel McCrea, as a director, toys around with the story of a film he wants to make called "Brother, Where Art Thou"; and another one in "Unfaithfully Yours" where the conductor-hero plans a murder in his mind that doesn't quite turn out as expected in reality. But even these examples don't involve the re-writing of the film's storyline as it goes along… My question also eliminates any time-travel-type science-fiction film as well as films that straddle the borderline between dreams and reality like René Clair's "Belles de nuit" (1952).

It is rather shocking to find that (at the time of writing) there are only seven reviews of this film while there are some 69 reviews of the 1964 US remake, Paris When It Sizzles. This is a really charming film as well as being extremely interesting from a point of view of its narration (Duvivier following here in the footsteps of Sacha Guitry). The remake is, well, a Hollywood flop.

The fifties, between the great age of European film in the twenties and early thirties and the renewal of its traditions with the "new wave" movements of the sixties, was in some respects the time when US and European film traditions were at their most compatible. Since the advent of the talkies, compounded by the disaster of the war, US film-style might be said to have been triumphant, less so in Italy (neo-realismo and commedia all'Italiana) but distinctly so in Germany (whose cinema industry had been ruined by Hitler) and France (what the "new wave" would sneeeringly call "the cinéma de papa").

Yet, even at this low tide of European film, the comparison between these two films provides a useful gauge of the huge gulf that still divided European film (at its best) from the programmed mediocrity of Hollywood.

Quine's US film simply does not begin to comprehend the concept behind Duvivier's film. French wit is replaced by a distasteful vulgarity (just as the elegant score by Georges Auric is replaced by the muzack of Nelson Riddle). William Holden was at something of a lowpoint in his career but Audrey Hepburn (who had made Breakfast at Tiffany's in 1961 and Charade in 1963 and would appear in My Fair Lady this same year) would have seemed an ideal casting. Noel Coward does a very camp comic turn and there is an array of stars (Curtis, Dietrich, Sinatra) playing cameos. But nothing can redeem the film.

The French film offers a multi-layered experience where different levels of "reality" are juxtaposed - the entertaining frame-story of the two scenarists, the provisional (and ultimately rejected) ideas for the film to be written (all in practice suggested by one scenarist), shown sharply angled on the screen and what may be the final film (all in practice the work of the other scenarist). From the censorship that has ruled out the original film (that scene with the bishop and the young girl) to the various sensational suggestions made my scenarist A to the final script as devised by scenarist B, there is satirical comedy on every level and some interesting insights into the way a film scenario is constructed. The elements of parody work well (with an excellent recurrent gag about problems of disposing of bodies). There is immense charm in every moment of the film.

What is more, the frame story remains the frame it should be and the film within the film is actually written, which symbolically receives its credits (missing at the beginning) at the end.

The US film is a falsely sentimental story about a middle-aged drunk using the writing of a scenario as a pretext for seducing a young secretary and her not very strenuous attempts to resist. The incidental "satire" (of avant-garde film-making, of "method" acting) is sour and hamfisted and the parody (westerns, horror, war films, musicals, crime) is crude and rudimentary. The film is as entirely charmless as a film with two such charming stars could be.

The frame story (not much of a story) becomes effectively the film (another in the sequence of Hepburn's romances with older men) and the film within the film (a very truncated version of the original filled out with typical sixties kitsch) becomes of little interest.

It is almost exactly as though the US director has watched the French film and deliberately decided to reject everything in it of value.... 1964 was not a good time for US film (but nor was 1952 for French film) but whereas Duvivier was still able to produce a fine intelligent film, Quine's effort merely emphasises how difficult the hidebound US industry was finding it in the sixties to review its practice in the light of new ideas or to compete with the revolution by then occurring in the European film industry.

Two scriptwriters come up with a story and end up with a day in the life of Henriette as played by Dany Robin. It plays out in real time as they are making up the story and takes several directions at the end of which we have watched the story of 'Henriette's Holiday' which all essentially takes place on her birthday. The end.

Aubin is ok in the lead role, somewhat forgettable. It is Michel Auclair (Maurice/Marcel) who stands out as the 'other man' on Aubin's special day. Her photographer boyfriend Michel Roux (Robert) spends his time distracted from her and has a sneaky meeting planned behind Aubin's back with circus performer Hildegard Knef (Rita). The film develops itself until we get fireworks at the end of our love story.

I have to further mention Knef, who I recently saw in "Decision Before Dawn" (1951). She plays an experienced lady in both films, if you know what I mean, and she does it well. However, there is also a nod to other film classics in this film. Knef very obviously resembles Rita Hayworth in "Gilda" 1946 and there are several shots that seem lifted from that film just to stress the similarity. She is even given the name "Rita"! No-one has yet mentioned this so I'm putting it out there.

It is an entertaining film whilst you watch it and there are funny moments. This is a creative film that is both well done and original.