La camera verde

Green Room, The (1978)

** (out of 4)

Truffaut plays a journalist still grieving the death of his wife nearly ten years after her passing. Her passing helped his obsession of death, which ends up making him a friend in an equally strange woman (Nathalie Baye) who also has her own interesting thoughts on the subject. As his obsession grows deeper, the man decides to buy a chapel and turn it into a sanctuary for his wife and other dead friends. This is an extremely bizarre film from Truffaut and while I'm still new to his work, this here is certainly the least entertaining of his films that I've seen. I think the entire film is just one real big mess that never really makes sense of what it's trying to do. I couldn't help but feel a tad bit lost as the movie never really seems clear as to what it's trying to say about death as both characters are pulling in opposite directions. I found their relationship to be extremely forced and completely make belief as not for a single second did I feel either one could care for the other. Another minor issue was the performance by Baye, which I thought was rather weak. The problem with this is that Truffaut was pretty good and the two just don't work very well together and in the end it hurts the film because not only does their relationship feel weak but it doesn't help that the actor is so many better than the partner. I'd be lying if I said I hated this movie because I really didn't. There just wasn't anything here that kept me overly entertained and in the end I was just too bored by the characters and screenplay.

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.

I totally disagree with Maltin. Truffaut's The Green Room was destined not to be a crowd pleaser: unlike his most famous films celebrating life (Jules and Jim being the most obvious example) the film is serious in tone and deals with death, Truffaut himself playing the death-obsessed newspaperman.

The Green Room is nonetheless a very impressive film; the questions of the forms of love, life versus death, possession and the remembrance of those who have passed away are treated both intellectually (but not in an 'artsy' or artificial way) and emotionally (but not in a melodramatic way despite an interwoven love story).

The film is surprisingly short and the ending comes even a bit abruptly, so contrary to possible expectations it is not long and dull. The Green Room reminded me of The Magnificent Ambersons and (John Huston's) The Dead, which are also films to be recommended.