Nana

Having discovered and enjoyed Jean Renoir's first film LA FILLE DE L'EAU/WHIRLPOOL OF FATE (1925), I was looking forward to his second feature, NANA (1926) as it was based on a classic work by Emile Zola. Being a silent film enthusiast, I wanted to like NANA very much but while parts of it have merit, the bulk of it is overlong and overblown. Most of the blame must go to Renoir for letting the success of his first film go to his head. From the natural simplicity and directness of L'EAU, he does a 180 and gives us an extravagant costume drama full of large scale sets and florid performances.

An inordinate amount of criticism has been leveled at Catherine Hessling's title character and while her performance is overripe, she is simply doing what the director told her to. She was not really an actress but a model who was also Renoir's wife at the time. She acquitted herself quite well as a naive waif in their first film together but here she resembles Susan Alexander in CITIZEN KANE who is trapped in something out of her depth. To be fair, the other performers also indulge in the stereotype of exaggerated silent film acting but just aren't on screen as much.

NANA was a French-German co-production which accounts for the presence of the two Weimar Cinema icons, Werner Krauss and Valeska Gert. It also helps to explain the acting style that permeates the film as a whole essentially ruining it for those who aren't familiar with it. In fact if Renoir's name hadn't been on it, I would have assumed that this was a German movie all the way. It could almost be viewed as a French parody of German Expressionism but that was not Renoir's intention. Still for the film student and/or lover of silent movies, there is much to enjoy.

As befits the story of a chorus girl who wants to be an actress and then becomes a "kept woman", the settings are quite lavish going from a Moulin Rouge style cabaret (complete with a Can-Can number) to a theater where Nana flops as a serious actress to a lavish grand hotel where she is situated by her aristocratic lover (Krauss). To match these settings there are numerous remarkable costumes which only get more elaborate as the film progresses. The massive sets were designed by future director Claude Autant-Lara who also appears in the role of Werner Krauss' wife's admirer.

In the end NANA proved to be a costly flop that ruined Catherine Hessling's chances as an actress and forced Renoir to sell some of his father's paintings to help recoup some of the costs. Years later in his autobiography he called it "a mad undertaking". Fortunately Renoir learned from it and went on to a have a celebrated career. The movie was first released on DVD in 2007 on a Lionsgate/Studio Canal as part of a 3 disc set. Now Kino Lorber has just released it on Blu-Ray with music by Antonio Coppola, a restoration comparison and audio commentary. Worth seeing for fans of Renoir and silent movies...For more reviews visit The Capsule Critic.

This is the first Jean Renoir Silent film I have watched and perhaps rightly so since it is generally regarded to be his best, besides being also his first major work. Overall, it is indeed a very assured and technically accomplished film which belies the fact that it was only Renoir’s sophomore effort. For fans of the director, it is full of interesting hints at future Renoir movies especially THE DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID (1946) and THE GOLDEN COACH (1952) – in its depiction of a lower class femme fatale madly desired by various aristocrats who disgrace themselves for her – but also THE RULES OF THE GAME (1939) – showing as it does in one sequence how the rowdy servants behave when their masters' backs are turned away from them – and FRENCH CANCAN (1955) – Nana is seen having a go at the scandalous dance at one point. Personally, I would say that the film makes for a respectable companion piece to G.W. Pabst’s PANDORA’S BOX (1928), Josef von Sternberg’s THE BLUE ANGEL (1930) and Max Ophuls’ LOLA MONTES (1955) in its vivid recreation of the sordid life of a courtesan.

Having said all that, the film was a resounding critical and commercial failure at the time of its release – a “mad undertaking” as Renoir himself later referred to it in his memoirs which, not only personally cost him a fortune (he eventually eased the resulting financial burden by selling off some of his late father’s paintings), but almost made him give up the cinema for good! Stylistically, NANA is quite different from Renoir’s sound work and owes a particular debt to Erich von Stroheim’s FOOLISH WIVES (1922), a film Renoir greatly admired – and, on a personal note, one which I really ought to revisit presto (having owned the Kino DVD of it and the other von Stroheims for 4 years now). Anyway, NANA is certainly not without its flaws: a deliberate pace makes itself felt during the overly generous 130 minute running time with some sequences (the horse race around the mid-point in particular) going on too long.

The overly mannered acting style on display is also hard to take at times – particularly that of Catherine Hessling’s Nana and Raymond Guerin-Catelain’s Georges Hugon (one of her various suitors)…although, technically, they are being their characters i.e. a bad actress (who takes to the courtesan lifestyle when she is booed off the stage) and an immature weakling, respectively. However, like Anna Magnani in THE GOLDEN COACH, Hessling (Renoir’s wife at the time, by the way) is just not attractive enough to be very convincing as “the epitome of elegance” (as another admirer describes her at one stage) who is able to enslave every man she meets. Other notables in the cast are “Dr. Caligari” himself, Werner Krauss (as Nana’s most fervent devotee, Count Muffat), Jean Angelo (as an initially skeptical but eventually tragic suitor of Nana’s) and future distinguished film director Claude Autant-Lara (billed as Claude Moore and also serving as art director here) as Muffat’s close friend but who is secretly enamored with the latter’s neglected wife!

The print I watched – via Lionsgate’s “Jean Renoir 3-Disc Collector’s Edition” – is, for the most part, a lovingly restored and beautifully-tinted one which had been previously available only on French DVD. Being based on a classic of French literature (by Emile Zola, no less), it cannot help but having been brought to the screen several times and the two most notable film versions are Dorothy Arzner’s in 1934 (with Anna Sten and Lionel Atwill and which I own on VHS) and Christian-Jaque’s in 1955 (with Martine Carol and Charles Boyer, which I am not familiar with).

The premise of Emile Zola's magnificent cycle of novels 'Les Rougon-Macquart' is that we are what we are through a combination of genetics and environment and that bad social conditions are apt to bring hereditary vices to the surface.

We are first introduced to Nana as a girl in book seven of the series 'L'Assommoir', in which her blood has been spoiled by a long heredity of misery and drunkenness and where she is already on the path to being a cocotte. She appears again as the title character of book nine and here the process is complete. Having failed miserably as an actress she decides to make her fortune by employing her talents in the boudoir. Her life as a courtesan can be viewed either as a symbol of Second Empire corruption or as a means by which she can gain revenge for her deprived childhood.

Jean Renoir's version represents his most challenging film of the silent era and he comes through with flying colours. The elements we have come to expect from this director are all here in terms of theatricality, tragi-comedy, relations between the upper and lower classes and of course excellent characterisations. Visually there is the painterly influence of his father Auguste. He has certainly got his money's worth here as future director Claude Autant-Lara is not only credited as set and costume designer but also plays the role of Fauchery whilst Pierre Lestringuez has adapted the novel as well as playing Bordenave. Memorable sequences are the Grand Prix races, Nana dancing the Can-Can in the Bal Mabille and not least the disturbing scene where Nana's maid and hairdresser witness her ridiculing and degrading her three high society lovers one by one.

Renoir has chosen to concentrate mainly on the trio of Nana and Counts Muffat and Vandeuvres. Muffat, whose obsession with Nana brings only disgrace and despair, is played by the brilliant Werner Krauss. He became one of Germany's most respected and honoured actors despite his closeness to Hitler's regime and his virulent anti-Semitism. His mesmerising performance epitomises aristocratic arrogance and disdain which makes his character's fall from grace even more pitiful. As Vandeuvres we have Jean Angelo, an actor of great presence and sensitivity whose character pays the ultimate price for his 'amour fou'. As Nana, Renoir has cast his then wife Catherine Hessling whom he met when she was modelling for his father. Her portrayal has been described as 'idiosyncratic'. Physically she is a far cry from Zola's imagining but she has captured Nana's innate vulgarity and there is no mistaking that her character has, in Zola's own words, "grown from the Parisian pavement."

Beautifully restored with some gorgeous tints, the film has retained a little of Maurice Jaubert's original score and an imaginative, newly composed score has been provided by Marc-Olivier Dupin for a fourteen piece ensemble.

Despite the film's success it could never recoup its massive budget and Renoir himself lost the money he had put in through the fault of the distributors. Not far short of a century later it remains the work of a master and as Renoir himself has said "It is the only one of my silent films that is worth talking about."

Another film to cross off my Jean Renoir Complete List, another probably never to watch again. It's not that it's bad, generally it's pretty good and nearly always interesting but it's over-melodramatised and simplified Zola for my taste.

Actress Nana has men especially rich men eating out of the palm of her hand and begging for more, she has at least 3 suitors vying for her courtesan favours. How it all unravels is the subject of the classic tale. And the sets are marvellous, sub-Stroheim, the modern tinting and music very good (Studio Canal), the print clear and sharp, and the photography excellent considering the then technical limitations Renoir had to contend with. The big problem is Hessling's – and the other leads – constant over-acting spoil the flow of the story. Definitely not tres chic! They all make the contemporary British barnstorming actor Todd Slaughter look subtle in comparison, although to be fair for a lot of the time the leading men seemed to understudy statues to Nana's wildly waving arms. As a rule silent films needed expressive acting to hold wandering eyes in the cinemas, but this reminded me of the mickey-taking in Singin' In The Rain. A red blooded male swooningly said at the beginning in response to her stage dancing that she was "the pinnacle of elegance"! And I also doubt whether either sexists or feminists will find anything worthwhile.

But I enjoyed the 129 minutes as I like silent films anyway – if you're only a Renoir completist I think it'll be an ordeal for you to complete. Nice print and tints!

After the al fresco hallucinations of the La Fille de l'eau come the severities of Zola's interiors, the other side of the coin of Jean Renoir's theater. The opening shot reverses Hitchcock's in The Pleasure Garden, the eponymous coquette (Catherine Hessling) ascends a staircase and is lowered by a rope before the eager audience, her feet don't quite touch the ground. The femme fatale as marionette-mermaid, on stage she cannot play noblewomen so instead she collects noblemen, on goes the trajectory from "La Blonde Venus" to la petite duchesse to doomed courtesan. Many an admirateur éperdu comes and goes, helplessly smitten and withered. The ponderous Count Muffat (Werner Krauss) stands backstage next to medieval armors, later in her boudoir in... more