Gervaise

A terribly tragic and horrible story of the growing degradation and poverty of a working class family allows for a raw and cynical movie, a kind of naturalist manifesto. Its characters are frustrating in their self destruction. From the start we know that they have no chance of salvation, because degradation and vice surround them and impel them at every step. For example, Gervaise, the protagonist, dreams of a ransom from poverty and seems almost to succeed, but a mere accident to sink her slowly into a physical and psychological brutalization that will reduce her to an animal level is enough. The central point of the movie is precisely this: the poor act by survival instinct and for them the laws of decorum or morality are not valid: prostitution is a way of not starving, alcoholism distracts from the ugliness of a miserable life. What makes it an excellent film, however, is not so much the message as the style: René Clement is a superb storyteller. He builds images of great descriptive power, so vivid that they almost seem to smell and taste. Gervaise is an adaptation of L'Assomoir, the seventh volume in Emile Zola's Rougon-Macquart cycle of 20 novels. Along with 'Nana' and 'Germinal' it is probably Zola's most famous. Zola's novel title is a metonymy: Father Colombe's Tavern, known as the Assommoir, was on the corners of the Rue des Poissonniers and of the Boulevard de Rochechouart. Parisian life in the 19th century remains a study for anthropologists to this day. Lower classes were grim. Their life was all but ruined by the brutality brought on, for instance, by alcoholism. Gervaise is the heroine. For a time she seems fortunate enough, but she succumbs as well. This was definitely one of the 20 best movies released in 1956, together with The Searchers Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut The Killing, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Nuit et brouillard Bob le flambeur, Toute la mémoire du monde, Aparajito, Patterns, Giant, The Harder They Fall, Bigger Than Life, Voici le temps des assassins..., The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Wrong Man, La traversée de Paris, Written on the Wind, Attack, Friendly Persuasion.

"Gervaise" is a film based on the story "L'Assommoir" by Emile Zola. It had been filmed several times before (these were mostly silent versions) and this is the most recent version of his story. It's all about a rather pathetic poor lady (Gervaise--Maria Schell) and her horrible choices of men. It is very well made but not exactly a pleasant film. In fact, at times, it's a bit painful to watch.

When the film begins, Auguste leaves Gervaise for another woman-- leaving her with children to raise. Eventually she marries Coupeau and their life seems to be going well. However, when the husband gets injured on the job, he degenerates to alcoholism and makes Gervaise's life completely miserable. The husband even knowingly brings his new friend, Auguste, home to live with them---knowing that long ago he was his wife's lover! At the same time, Gervaise has fallen for the only decent man in her life, the blacksmith. What's next in this tale of misery? See the film...if you dare.

This story is both about the wretched lives of the urban poor, as they are exploited, and about the disintegration of the morals of this class as well. It's not exactly pleasant viewing and is also clearly a lesson about the ills of drink--a very popular message when the film was made and remade several times during the silent era. Nearly everyone in this film is nasty and selfish and despite all this is IS well made. The acting, sets and direction by René Clément are all quite good...but you have to be willing to sit through nearly two hours of wretchedness and who wants to do that?!

François Perier as the alcoholic Henri Coupeau is unsurpassed as sick man having his overdose and delirium by alcohol. Maria Shell as Gervaise is convincing as the poor woman working day and night for the drunken men she is having in her home and her little daughter! This movie should be shown to all people having drinking problems. As it is set in a different period (the end of the second Emperor Napoleon's reign) is has something universal. The general atmosphere of this epoch is however very accurate.

"Gervaise" is an adaptation of the novel "L'assommoir" (1877, Emile Zola). In this novel a working cass woman breaks down due to a lot of bad luck and a lot of booze. When the novel came out there was discussion if the book was defending the working class (describing their harsh live) or insulting the working class (describing their alcohol abuse).

The film above everything seems to be defending women, describing the struggle Gervaise (Maria Schell) has to wage against the two idlers of husbands that play a role in her life. This is because the film omits the excessive pride of Gervaise that she does have in the novel. This results in a totally innocent woman having bad luck again and again. This overdose of bad luck gives the film a somewhat moralistic tone (it has sometimes been denoted as a very long commercial against alcohol abuse) and even becomes unintentionally funny / corny.

Although the film is somewhat outdates, it was one of the nominees for best foreign language film in 1956, so the film must have its pros. Apart from the acting of Maria Schell I would like to mention the beautiful setpieces. The film has partly the same bittersweet (a little bit more bitter) mood as "Casque d'or" (1952, Jacques Becker), a film that was made and situated in the same time as "Gervaise".

It required some self-convincing before I crossed my fingers and watched this filmed version of Emile Zola's L'Assommoir. Zola's work, I find, is nearly impossible to translate to the screen. To wit, I cite Jean Renoir's horrible adaptation of La Bete Humaine, with Jean Gabin no less and Simone Simon. Somehow film has not succeeded in capturing the dark, dismal heart of Zola's naturalisme. Read Zola's 20-volume series of novels, the Rougon-Macquart. The only question you will have is which one ends on the bleakest note. Few of his protagonists walk away on the final page, if they live to walk away at all, happily into the sunset - the exceptions being invariably the scoundrels, power-hungry Eugène Rougon, his money-grubbing brother Aristide, or the grasping retail magnate Octave Mouret. L'Assommoir, along with Germinal, La Curée and L'Oeuvre, are among the most dismal, though personally I was left most entirely depressed at the end of La Terre and the ironic La Joie de Vivre. That said, I was surprised. René Clément's Gervaise almost succeeds. It comes close to conjuring the darkness and despair and sense of futility in a Zola novel. Almost. He had a tremendous assist from Maria Schell. Her Gervaise is a truly hertbreaking characterization. She is exactly as Zola depicted her: kind-hearted, hard-working, generous, but totally lacking in the ruthlessness needed to survive - a born victim of a ruthless world. Zola would have applauded.

The screenplay changes some of the story, but not nearly as much as do other cinematic adaptations of great novels. It omits some characters, the brutal domestic violence episodes of the family Bijard. But that is to be expected. It reduces the role of Gervaise's in-laws the Lorilleux, who in the novel work rapaciously in their narrow, overheated apartment hammering out enough tiny gold chains to stretch from Paris to Marseille. It exaggerates the character of Virginie, building her into a veritble femme fatale. She, in the novel, is not the machinator of Gervaise's downfall. She is herself a victim of Lantier's parasitism, once he latches onto her household. Life and heredity are the cause of Gervaise's fated fall. Those are her nemeses. Zola himself, defending his work against critics - for the right, L'Assommoir was a left-wing attack on the virtue of the capitalist work ethic; for the left it was a right-wing slander on the noble and virtuous working class - described it as "la déchéance fatale d'une famille ouvrière dans le milieu empesté de nos faubourgs," the inevitable downfall of a working-class family in our sordid suburbs.

Two scenes are perfect evocations of the book: the party scene and the visit to the Louvre. Coupeau's long, agonizing descent into alcoholism is more drawn out and more devastating, and his death, not at home but in the hospital drunk ward in the grip of delerium tremens, is much more harrowing in the novel. The film leaves Gervaise alive. Zola did not. His story continues to her death of starvation, huddled in the tiny cubby-hole once inhabited by père Bru. That, I guess, was a sadness too far for the film. The film leaves us with a wink and a nod as little Nana flaunts out into the street with her new ribbon. Those who have read on in the series know what will be her degenerate life and miserable death once she gets to star in her own novel. For a mediocre filming of that story, try the 1955 movie with Martine Carol and Charles Boyer.