A Carruagem de Ouro

I saw this recently at a retrospective celebrating the 50th anniversary of the founding of Cahiers du Cinema, and I approached it with some trepidation. I didn't know if I would like it as much as Renoir's more famous films of the 30s, and I had previously found some of the color films he did in the 50s to be less accessible. I needn't have worried; this film is a masterpiece. The color is sumptuous and breathtaking; I have always like Technicolor, in which this film is shot, for the richness of its palette. The acting is brilliant and introduced me to some wonderful actors I have never heard of before. Well worth viewing.

"La Carozza D'Oro" is the only Italian film made by Jean Renoir. As Renoir recognized later, his main collaborator in the making of the film was Antonio Vivaldi in a form of his music that director used to hear while writing the script which is based on a stage play by Prosper Merimee. Vivaldi's music is also extensively used throughout the film.

The story is about the group of Italian actors that move to XVIIIth century Spanish South America. Anna Magnani gives a superb performance as a main star of the group - Camilla, whose main passion in life is theater. She finds herself in the center of attention of the three man: a toreador Ramon (Riccardo Rioli), a Vice King Ferdinand (Duncan Lamont) and a young adventurous officer Felipe (Paul Campbell) facing the tough choice in making a decision: whom to choose?

A funny theatrical comedy of life from great French director Jean Renoir, with superb acting and wonderful music from Antonio Vivaldi. 8/10

A small and poor Italian Commedia dell'Arte troupe has gone to colonial South America. Its leading lady Anna Magnani (Camilla) has three admirers: poor Spanish nobleman Odoardo Spadaro (Don Antonio), the Colonial Viceroy Duncan Lamont (Ferdinand), and the leading toreador Riccardo Rioli (Ramon), who struggle for her attention.

Very theatrical and obviously shot in a studio. Includes nice reconstructions of Commedia dell'Arte performances (though probably much better in the film than in reality). The troupe's children are charming.

Jean Renoir's colorful English language comedy is not the masterpiece prevailing critical opinion would have you believe ("riotously textural!" raved the Village Voice), but it is a pleasant and entertaining novelty. A spirited Anna Magnani leads a troupe of Italian actors to a Spanish colony in 18th century Peru, where the appreciative Viceroy rewards her talent (and beauty) with the gift of a golden coach, setting off a small political and romantic scandal. It plays for the most part not unlike a literate stage farce, and Renoir emphasizes the theatricality of the story by directing (and shooting) it like theatre, with deliberate, flat compositions and distracting color costumes; the action even begins on a legitimate stage, the walls of which 'disappear' as soon as Renoir's camera dollies into it. The (at the time) newly struck 1992 print, presented by Martin Scorsese, shows obvious evidence of restoration only in the curious epilogue, which brings the story back to its original stage setting, and appears to have been poorly reconstructed on video.

To this reviewer's reckoning, one has to inure the fact that French auteur Jean Renoir's latter track record smacks of resting on his tremendous laurels, THE GOLDEN COACH, the first of his post-Hollywood musical comedies trilogy, will be followed by FRENCH CANCAN (1955) and ELENA AND HER MEN (1956), headlines Anna Magnani as the pillar of an Italian Commedia dell'arte troupe, setting its foot in a 18th century colonial Peru.

Ms. Magnani is Camilla, whose romantic embroilment with 3 different male suitors: Ferdinand (Lamont), the Spanish viceroy, Ramon (Rioli), an indigenous toreador and her longtime Italian beau Felipe (Campbell), will be immediately thrown into a whirlpool of romp and pomp, with the titular golden coach as a token of love from the noble viceroy, which can be put into practical use to save his pending deposition if Camilla feels up to do it.

First things first, amped up by Vivaldi's repertoire, gingered up by Magnani and her troupe shrouded in sheer Technicolor splendor and variegated costumes, not to mention the deadpan aristocratic panoply and comic skits impromptu, THE GOLDEN COACH is so eye-pleasing and ear-soothing that, for one second, one might assume it is a masterpiece in the making, to certain extent, that expectation is partially validated by Renoir's effortless facility to beautifully refine the stodgy with freewheeling ease and the Midas touch, a compassionate, pyrotechnic Magnani, who defies any moral obligation and jaundiced ageism to attest that for a woman in the mellow years, her Camilla is second to none in commanding her own life path and expressing her own feelings, and she has many options at hand: retreating to a simpler, quieter life with Felipe, becoming a celebrity couple among locals with Ramon, aiding with Fedinand in his silk-stocking intrigues, or just resuming her stock role of Columbina with the troupe, it is her call and hers only.

A Cinecittà production bursts into its full-blown lavishness of its visual complexion and texture, THE GOLDEN COACH is a vintage farce hampered by its folly-driven staginess and erstwhile flippancy, unwieldy in its glittering sheen but still a very different kettle of fish from any other vanity projects, for one thing, Renoir is quite au fait with men's sophomoric foibles and a believer in a woman's elemental beneficence.