Le coup du berger

Virginia Vitry's lover has given her a fur coat and she is delighted. There's just one problem. What will she tell her husband?

Jacques Rivette's short film is based on a Roald Dahl story and is a typically snide piece of fiction for both men. For Rivette, there is an air of post-war anomie in the entire matter, one that runs through most of his work and most of the French New Wave. There is no real joy, and the comedies are all mocking ones, efforts of the biter-bit variety, like this.

The movie ends at a party, one supposedly shot in Claude Chabrol's apartment. It's something of a coming-out party for the New Wave, with Chabrol, Godard and Truffaut among the guests.

I assume this is supposed to be a clever little vignette of a day in the life, so to speak, of the average modern married couple. There's little really to captivate the imagination or eye in what can be called the mystery of the fur coat. Thankfully, it was something to be endured for only half an hour.

"Le Coup du Berger" is considered one of the earliest French New Wave films. It's a short from Jacques Rivette and like many other New Wave films is about a person who isn't necessarily to be liked or admired (much like Jean-Paul Belmondo in "Breathless").

When the story begins, an unfaithful wife is given a fur coat by her lover. Her concern is how to let the husband see the coat without arising his suspicions. All this is compared in the film to as a sort of chess game.

So is this worth watching? Well, for film historians, absolutely. After all, how can you know what the New Wave was or learn from it if you don't watch any of the films...and this is a seminal film from the movement. Now this is NOT the same as saying the film is necessarily enjoyable or brilliant...it's only mildly enjoyable and looks a bit like a cinematic film and a home movie combined stylistically. For the average person, far from being a must-see...but for film students and budding filmmakers, well worth your time...especially since at the end you get to see several influential New Wave directors playing extras.

Claire (Virginie Vitry) is a chic young Parisian woman married to a somewhat older husband, Claude (Jacques Doniol-Valcroze). As this 28-minute trifle opens, she leaves her husband playing baroque music at the piano, telling him she is off to see her sister, Solange. In reality she meets her lover, Jean (Jean-Claude Brialy) at his apartment; after some idle chatter and love-making he tells her a story of the shriveled heads that the Jivaro indians used to give their lovers as tokens of affection but as she shivers in disgust, he gives her a mink instead. How will they hide it from her husband though? An elaborate scheme involving hiding it at a bus terminal where the husband himself will find it and bring it home is concocted but alas the husband is wiser than they think...

A playful and charming little piece seemingly indebted to noir in its conspiratorial storyline and photography - though much lighter than true noir, co-written by Rivette with Charles Bitsch and Claude Chabrol, who appears in a cameo in a party sequence at the end along with Rivette, Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, this is Rivette's 4th and last short (28 minutes) before he turned to features. It's his first in 35mm with sound, and the photography (black and white) and mise en scene are quite accomplished if for the most part unspectacular. Several of his trademarks do show up here, including the interest in games and play-acting, conspiracies and young love; also in its use of diagetic sound - as far as I can tell all of the music in the film is by the baroque composer François Couperin, but it is heard as part of a typical mimetic sound-scheme, played on the piano in the first scene, and played on record in later scenes. The film is framed as a story of a chess-game, narrated briefly at various points by the director who comments on the story in a droll, ironic manner that reminds me more of early Godard than of Rivette's other work.

Certainly not a great work but a fascinating and entertaining enough little piece that should be seen by all lovers of the director's work. Part of an indispensable South Korean DVD (with subtitles in English) called "Their First Films" which also has early shorts by Godard, Resnais, Truffaut, Melville etc, mostly in very good to excellent prints. The picture, sound and subtitles on the Rivette are probably as good as you could reasonably hope for.

An amuse-bouche of la nouvelle vague, clocking in at just 28 minutes and with a simple story. It's about a married woman who is given a fur coat by her lover, and tries to trick her husband into not knowing where it came from by stowing it in baggage claim and "finding" the ticket in a taxi. The chess metaphor for them maneuvering each other is weak and awkward, and to be honest, there isn't much verve in the performances or how this was filmed. The backward zoom shot of the lovers separating, reflecting the sudden distance between them, is the only one I perked up over, but seeing the various luminaries of the French New Wave as extras in the party scene was pretty cool. Worth a quick watch, mostly to think of the concentration of talent and what films like this would lead to.