Nana

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!

"Nana" (1926) is the third film by the great Jean Renoir. I've been unable to find his first film, which he co-directed with another filmmaker, but having seen his second film and solo debut, "La fille de l'eau" (a.k.a. "Whirlpool of Fate"; 1925), I was a bit surprised by "Nana", for a few reasons.

First, there's the star of both films, Catherine Hessling. In "La fille de l'eau", she played an innocent young girl, and she did so about as well as could be expected, given how almost absurdly overdrawn her character was in terms of virtue and purity. In "Nana", suffice it to say, her role is a bit different. She plays a tart, a prostitute. Once again, her character is ridiculously exaggerated, caricatured to an absolutely laughable extent. Here, however, unlike in Renoir's last film, Hessling does nothing to help matters. Her acting in "Nana" is so over the top that it at times becomes a marked hindrance to the integrity of the film. I would expect this kind of performance in a Keystone comedy from 1914, maybe, but not from a Renoir film in the latter half of the '20s.

Furthermore, the narrative breaks down into tragic melodrama in the latter portion of the film, and any thematic substance from the first half of the film is ultimately diluted in the perceived necessities of plot and story. This is unfortunate, but not unexpected; it's common of so many silents from this era.

That, however, is about the extent of my criticism for the film. It's a good film, overall, or at least a solid one. In some ways it surpasses "La fille de l'eau", and in other ways it falls short of it. The narrative in "Nana" is stronger than its predecessor's: The characters are more complex and less archetypal, and the themes are more pronounced while they last. To venture further into the subjective, I'd say that "Nana" has higher entertainment value than Renoir's last film, and that it's more dramatically engaging.

On the other hand, there was an element of visual poetry in "La fille de l'eau" that is missing from "Nana". Perhaps it's the issue of color tinting, at least in part. I've always felt that color tinting degrades a film's artistic value. "La fille de l'eau" was not tinted, and it preserved a certain artistry in the film's aesthetic that the tinted images in "Nana" simply can not match. I will concede, though, that if Renoir is going to insist on color tinting, the tinting in "Nana" is handled well — a series of similarly toned warm tints, providing a more consistent visual mood than, for instance, the messy rainbow of colors from all parts of the visible spectrum in Fritz Lang's "The Spiders" films.

"La fille de l'eau" also featured impressive montage, and one wonders where the editing talents displayed in that film disappeared to for "Nana". That's not to say that "Nana" is poorly edited, but simply that it doesn't exhibit the noticeably skilled use of montage that we saw in the former film. Renoir is credited for the editing in "Nana", whereas I can't find a credit for the editing in "La fille de l'eau", so it's possible that it wasn't Renoir's editing talents that we saw in that film, although I'm still willing to guess that it was.

Finally, "La fille de l'eau" gets a nudge for a fantastic dream sequence that I'm sure anyone who saw the film will remember. But enough contrasting. There are certainly similarities as well. The most obvious place where the two films can be compared is in their social inclinations. Both films, and for that matter every Renoir film I've ever seen, feature a blending of characters from different social classes. "Boudu Saved From Drowning", "The Lower Depths", "Grand Illusion", "The Diary of a Chambermaid", "The Golden Coach" — Renoir loves to throw lower class characters and upper class characters into the same setting and see what comes of it. It's his way of exploring his humanist disposition. Other filmmakers have done it in their own way. Kurosawa liked to look to the lower classes alone to find the true nature of humanity. Visconti, though not exactly a humanist, liked to look largely to the upper classes to explore human nature. Renoir likes to look at both, together — the coexistence of the two in a particular setting — and he defines humanity through the shared qualities, as well as the conflicts, that arise under those conditions.

"Nana" is a very much a male film, in that, like Luis Buñuel, there is a focus on the power of the female, and the manner in which a woman can trigger a maelstrom of chaos in the lives of the men who fall at her feet, and who set aside everything — even that most precious social status and respectability — in order to attain the object of their passion. This theme has the potential to be feminist, of course, but not here. The film's sympathies are almost entirely with the despairing male characters, and the female tantalizer is depicted as an absolutely ridiculous human being (although she is ultimately afforded a small degree of humanity).

On a side note, there's a role in 'Nana" for Werner Krauss, the German actor who appeared in films like Wiene's "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" and Pabst's "The Joyless Street". He's good. In fact, excluding Catherine Hessling, the whole cast is pretty good.

The film is made by a fairly young and inexperienced Jean Renoir, and yet it is clearly the work of a professional. Renoir was not the master of the cinema that he would later become, but already he was a good filmmaker, and his talent for storytelling is evident even this early in his career.

RATING: 6.00 out of 10 stars

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.

NANA is a dramatic love story by Renoir, one of the few directors that understood all aspects of cinematography. For me, these early mutes are the reason why cinematography is also an art form. Much more then the money driven "products" that came out the last years (spending millions on 1 film, but not including a story?). NANA only strengthened that opinion. It's certainly not the best film from the thirties I've seen. I find some scenes too long for that, but it's still very good. The sets are inside the hotel and house are amazing, the plot is strong. The actor that played Muffat is the best I've seen from that generation of films. I'm not really a fan of films that have a dramatic love story as a starting-point, I find it quickly too slow, but that's just really un-PC from me. ;) 6.5/10

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).