La petite Lise

This is the strangest film Gremillon made .Its soundtrack is absolutely bewildering:during the cast and credits ,some kind of "exotic" song is heard the words of which are difficult to understand ,even for a French.Two lines come back as a sinister leitmotiv (Il Voulait Une Femme et Il Vola =He wanted a woman and he stole);then in the horrifying penal colony of Cayenne ,at night,the convicts break into a "Ferme Tes Yeux Bleus =Close your blue eyes";the ending ,which is one of the saddest ,the most depressing I know features a South American like black musicians orchestra.

A convict comes back to his dear France and to his dear daughter,"La Petite Lise" to be confronted with tragedy.When he was away ,Lise became a prostitute (the word is never uttered),but is about to redeem her soul thanks to her boyfriend' s heartfelt love.But they need 3000 Francs to buy a garage in the country and to start a brand new life (sounds like the words to an Edith Piaf song;actually the whole films sounds like a Piaf song even if the chanteuse was about 16 when it was made) The two young actors's playing seems old-fashioned today ,and only Alcover's performance can touch today's audience.But he is deeply moving as a father who gave it all and did it again .But if you were a father ,wouldn't you do the same?

An objection remains: the way the script writers depict the Jew is ,par excellence ,the cliché:of course,he is a pawnbroker,stingy,deceitful,unkind ,spineless.This is not the only movie where the Jews are demeaned.

"La Petite Lise" is Gremillon's third feature film after "Maldone" and "Gardiens De Phare" (where a lighthouse keeper ,bitten by a rabid dog,threatens his father who kills him:Pasteur,where were you?)

Pierre Alcover is released from prison in French Guyana, whither he had been sent for killing his wife in a rage. He returns to Paris to find his daughter, Nadia Sibirskaïa,and a job. The job comes easily enough, but he doesn't realize that Mlle Sibirskaïa has been earning a living as a prostitute, and that her boyfriend wants to buy a garage and live a middle class life. To finance this, they intend to hold up a pawnbroker -- although they intend to repay him. But the scheme goes wrong, and to save the boy friend from being strangled, Mlle Sibirskaïa kills him.

Director Jean Gremillion makes effective use of silent film techniques in this early talky,with the opening sequences of the prisoners, and the late one of Black performers at a jazz club having a documentary feel. Mlle Sibirskala shows her acting technique to good effect in the aftermath of the murder in a fashion that reminds me of Hitchcock's Murder, albeit without the striking use of sound effects. Instead, it looks like large sections were shot wild, with sound used to fill in a naturalistic manner.

Although the copy I looked at wasn't of the highest quality -- it looks like it was drawn from a slightly battered 16mm print -- the still-experimental melding of image and sound in techniques that soon fell out of favor make this an unusually idiosyncratic movie.

Bob.