Arc de triomphe

More people should know about this wonderful film--reading the book in advance really enhances the experience of it, but one can just enjoy the incredible performances of Bergman and Boyer (not to mention the excellent character roles, particularly Charles Laughton). The use of light/shadow is also extremely well done and atmospheric. It's high time someone re-releases this movie on DVD (Criterion, perhaps), because it's another wonderful example of classic film noir, very well executed.

For those not familiar with Remarque's novel, it's a must-read--although I warn you, after you're done you will have an insane urge to try Calvados.

Lewis Milestone scored his greatest film success when he did the classic adaption of Erich Maria Remarque's novel All Quiet on the Western Front in 1931. It seemed a natural for him to do an adaption of another Remarque book, Flotsam, retitled here as Arch of Triumph. I guess that United Artists didn't want the audience to think the film was about sea refuse.

Unfortunately while All Quiet on the Western Front stayed very much on its anti-war message, Milestone opted to make one of those tragic romances that Frank Borzage was more noted for. The problem of all the refugees from all the political turmoil up to THAT time collecting in places like Paris was left very much in the background.

Charles Boyer is one of those refugees, a Czech who can't go back to his own country because of Hitler's bloodless takeover. He's a doctor who's been serving in Loyalist Spain and got run out of there. With no passport, he's an illegal alien in France in 1939 and subject to deportation which he is by the way at one point in the film.

He meets Ingrid Bergman who's also a refugee of sorts from a series of bad relationships. He saves her from suicide and a relationship develops. In fact when Boyer is deported, she does what she has to do to survive.

Louis Calhern may have the best role in the film as Boyer's friend and counselor, an exiled Russian Lieutenant Colonel of the Czar's guard who is a doorman at a swank Russian café. Charles Laughton is in here to as an S.S. officer who Boyer remembers killing his old girl friend back in Spain and who he hunts without mercy. Laughton has one of the smallest roles he ever did in a film and I wish there were more of him here.

Laughton is seen briefly at the beginning doing the torture in his best Inspector Javert manner. Later on when Boyer spots him and makes his acquaintance to lure him for the kill, he's an avuncular tourist, but clearly on some kind of mission. He's good in both sides of the same character.

It's a real downer of a film, Arch of Triumph. Good thing we know how history turned out because it sure doesn't look good for the good guys when this film ends.

Not sure about this one. There's much to like; the atmosphere, the camera work, the lighting and shadows, the closeups, the acting. But something's missing, perhaps continuity, or the impression that it all somehow fits together. Taken as a series of vignettes this film is very good. Combine the vignettes to tell a subset of the original story and it could be even better. But put it all together and it succumbs under the sheer weight of all the subplots.

And yet, despite my criticism, I am pleased to have seen it. As I said there's much to like, especially the acting. Louis Calhern is always a joy and here he lends a nuanced gravitas to his part. Charles Boyer is better than usual playing a tormented refugee torn between love and revenge. Charles Laughton is the pivot about which the story revolves and without him his one dimensional character would have been but a caricature. There's even a memorable cameo by an uncredited William Conrad. His scene is no more than a minute or so but it's not one you're likely to overlook or forget. But the best reason to watch it is of course Ingrid Bergman. Her effortless ability to switch personalities simply draws you in to her performance. Here she plays an insecure wreck, an incredibly seductive, infuriatingly deceitful and mostly terrified woman. Her character's choices are not perhaps entirely honorable but with Bergman who cares...

Pay no attention to high-brow detractors; if you want to see a luminous Ingrid Bergman and a world-weary Charles Boyer at their film noir best, run--do not walk--to your nearest store and buy this film (VHS only, unfortunately).

Do not expect sparks to fly between these war-time lovers--Bergman as a kept woman carried along willy-nilly by forces beyond her control, and Boyer as a physician and resistance member on the run in occupied Paris--their encounters are brief and ill-starred, save only for the deep tenderness that occasionally surfaces, especially at the film's end.

Casablanca it's not, but it will disappoint no lover of this genre.

Director Lewis Milestone tries - and succeeds, to some extent - to make ARCH OF TRIUMPH an interesting film. To that end, he is greatly helped by the cinematography, with beautiful chiaroscuros that heighten the oppressive atmosphere, but he is let down by a meandering script, a far cry from Remarque's original novel.

Boyer, normally a middle of the road actor, does well enough here to overshadow even the great Ingrid Bergman (they had been paired together in GASLIGHT, 1944, and she had won an Oscar for that performance). I think that happened because by this point Bergman had already met, and fallen in love with, Roberto Rosselini, and that must have distracted her no end (her character even claims to be Italian, and she speaks Italian toward the end of the film). That emotional upheaval, which was about to have serious consequences for her career, pushing her out of Hollywood for about 8 years, definitely impacted on her acting in this film, and on the latter's quality.

In the end, it is the film's dark atmosphere that stays with you - and that's not much. Still, I am glad I watched it, it is better than many supposedly politically correct movies done today.