Douce

It's a complicated Christmas in 1888 in the Parisian home of the widowed, limping Count Jean Debucourt. His mother, Marguerite Moreno, is an overbearing monster. The governess, Madeleine Robinson, is secretly the lover of their thieving estate manager, Roger Pigaut; he has stolen the receipts from the estates and tells Robinson they will move to Canada. Meanwhile Debucourt tells Robinson he wants to marry her. This interferes with the plans of his daughter, Douce. She is played by 29-year-old Odette Joyeux as 15 going on 30, and she loves Pigaut. When Robinson turns down Pigaut's offer, Joyeux tells him she will elope with him.

Which among the three -- Robinson, Joyeux and Pigaut -- is honest about their confused wishes and hopes? How will it all play out? Director Claude Autant-Lara directs this adaptation of Michel Davet's novel with a heavy, cynical hand. He was born in 1901, the son of an actress who proclaimed herself as a pacifist at the outbreak of the First World War and fled to England, and an architect. He began in the theater as a set designer, then worked for Marcel L'Herbier. He began to direct in 1926, and when sound came in, he directed the French-language version of Keaton's PARLOR, BEDROOM AND BATH. Soon he was back in France, directing a string of more than 40 varied, expertly made, financially successful movies, all over the shop in terms of content. He directed his last movie in 1977 and died in 2000.

Any serious French film buff is always going to have to seek this one out if only because it marked the first outing of Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost, who went on to write all the great French films that WEREN'T written by Jacques Prevert, Charles Spaak or Henri Jeanson. They were also the two writers who got up Truffaut's nose the worst and he singled them out for special condemnation in his infamous essay in Cahiers. It's the old story, of course. If Truffaut could have written even one line half as good as these two cats he'd be well on the way to earning Amateur status. The fact is that next to these two Truffaut is illiterate. Put it this way, they're still showing 'Douce' sixty years after it was made. Will time be so good to The Four Hundred Yawns. In your dreams, Francois.

Douce is our old friend the costume drama and the fluid camera of Autant-Lara leads us gracefully into the story via the misleading (nice touch) Christmas-card setting which provides the external trappings for our main set, the well-appointed gaff of Madame de Bonafe, a gift of a role for Marguerite Moreno, who lives here with her son, Engelbert (so THAT's where Gerry Dorsey found it), who left a leg behind in one of those minor wars the French were wont to engage in, and has eyes for Irene (Madeleine Robinson) who is governess to his daughter, Douce (Odette Joyeux). Douce in turn is that way about Fabien (Roger Pigaut), a servant to Madame Bonafe (yes, it DOES sound a little like La Ronde, you got a problem with that) and stripe me pink if Fabien and Irene aren't getting it on in the servant's quarters. With basic elements such as these style is everything and Bost and Aurenche have supplied a stylish script to which Autant-Lara has added a touch of spin so that the whole thing gleams like burnished brass. Eat your heart out, Truffaut. 9/10

In 1887, the stranglehold the aristocracy held over the other classes is weakening. The Countess de Bonafé can no longer whip her servants, she can only brandish her cane at them. But the working class has not yet gained its full power; Fabien and Irène have to tread very carefully lest their affair should be discovered. There are two love triangles here: Engelbert-Irène-Fabien, which is very unstable, owing to Fabien being a coward and thief, and Irène not being able to solidify her hold on Engelbert, and the far more stable one of the Countess-Douce-Engelbert, three people of the same family and class who can unite when it becomes necessary to do so. Autant-Lara shows a solid hand as director; the low camera angles may distract some viewers, but the decors are excellent.

Christmas 1887. In a Parisian mansion, Douce, the bored daughter of an aristocratic family, nurtures a secret passion for Fabien, who manages the estate. But Fabien is the lover of Irène, Douce's governess, and plans to elope with her using money stolen from the family. Meanwhile, Douce's father, a widower, has also fallen in love with Irène, and his proposal of marriage sets in motion a train of events with tragic consequences...

The opening tracking shot of "Douce", across a miniature of Paris with an Eiffel Tower in construction, establishes a fin de siècle world in which new ideas are imposing themselves upon the old landscape. In the social order, too, there is evidence of change: Douce's father (Jean Debucourt) sees only good in his planned marriage to Irène (Madeleine Robinson) and in her elevation to his own social level. This elevation is depicted literally when he takes her for a ride in his newly installed lift, a symbol of his modernity in the stuffy gaslit townhouse. For him, love transcends class.

But the father's manner is too mild ("douce"). He has been wounded physically and psychologically, plagued by a sense of failure, hobbling on a wooden leg. The household is dominated by his mother the countess (Marguerite Moreno), a harridan whose starched black dresses represent her inflexible adherence to the old order and the sense of sin associated with transgression of social boundaries. As well as blocking her son's happiness, she is infusing her granddaughter Douce (Odette Joyeux) with her outdated orthodoxies, not realising that the thrill derived from breaking a taboo may become in itself a potent attraction for a modern, rebellious adolescent. The intransigence and cynicism of the crowlike old woman are the poison that saturates this house from the top down.

There's an angry polemic burning at the heart of the film, but on the surface, as in the title, all is soft and calm. "Douce" is one of the most elegant films ever made, each scene gliding smoothly into another as the characters move from room to room within the mansion. The screenplay is polished and literary, the performances intelligent and refined, the music perfectly integrated into the drama, the direction exquisitely choreographed with sumptuous camera movements to rival Ophüls. It's a drama of biting satire and of deep emotions deeply suppressed, registering only as a narrowing eyelid or a pursed lip.

And at the centre of the drama is the 17-year-old Douce herself, brilliantly played by Odette Joyeux - who was almost 30 at the time, and older than Madeleine Robinson who plays her governess. Douce is depicted on contemporary posters as a bird in a gilded cage, but her nature is more feline: playful, impulsive and by turns tender and cruel. She is experiencing love for the first time, and this makes her a vulnerable and ultimately a tragic character. As she sets out in the snow for her midnight assignation with Fabien (Roger Pigaut), her hooded cape reminds us of Little Red Riding-Hood about to meet the wolf.

"Douce" is not an anti-bourgeois film, as some have suggested. Truffaut famously remarked (in condemning films such as Autant-Lara's): "What is the value of an anti-bourgeois cinema made by the bourgeois for the bourgeois?" The countess is ridiculous and contemptible, but the servant classes, as depicted here, are little better: Irène is an opportunist, Fabien is a thief, and his haughty attitude suggests a kinship of temperament with the countess. Only the rare few such as Douce and her father, who are willing to throw aside social convention and follow their hearts, are portrayed with sympathy in this film. And that's the message of Autant-Lara the artist, not the politician.

This movie plays like a Chekov play. Unspoken emotions are amped to the top. Actions are performed without being revealed. And most importantly, nothing seems to happen. Plays can get away with nothing happening, but the milieu of cinema requires and demands action. This movie avoids it and manages to still work. By doing this, it takes the world of thirties to forties cinema where plot, story and action is king and introduces character as the harbinger of a movie to the big budget studio productions of France and thus the world. It is similar to the idea behind the French New Wave but Truffaut attacked this kind of movies and this director and particularly the writers of this movie, Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost, a legendary screen writing team as old farts or the old wave, thus the term the new wave. The dialog in this movie is literate almost bibliotequeish to say the least, and it does take its time to warm or move your heart. As I said, it cons you into believing nothing is happening while we are watching the destruction of an old world; one of aristocrats, barons and the meritocracy. It is 1887 and Douce the daughter of the Bonafe patriarch who also lives with her grandma, the Bonafe matriarch in a studio-set created house that seems to have yanked right out of one of Poe's tales. It is a character in itself in the movie. Light does not come from outside in this house. Only the artificial lighting of the cinematographer castigates the gloom. The patriarch wishes to marry the servant teacher Irene who is of poor class. But she is betrothed to another of working class. I know, you've read, heard and seen this plot many times before but not as expertly done as this movie. In fact, if you are a fan of Wong-Kong-Kwai, you should love this movie. It reminded me of In the mood for love. It has all the trademark pacing, irony and exotic direction of his movies. Odette Joyeux is very good but the standout is Marguerite Moreno as the matriarch. Watch it to see how an era disappears with fumes, death, anger and a carol.