Moderato cantabile

"Moderato cantabile" (1960) directed by Peter Brook was a movie with a certain spleen of its weather, like a love story in a foggy atmosphere near or not too much far away in Gascogne Gulf from the quite distant channel between England and France. The couple had met in a coffee break at the place of the port and both were seeing each other concerning a criminal environment from the daily journey, nowhere outside with the police searching for somebody helping to solve the killing of someone there.

Director Peter Brook so happy with his career, that he forgot perhaps in making more movies like this one, even though this one it was not so easy in finishing it, but that unfinished touch is not evanescent. This kind of appearance from the main characters, a woman with a child and a man, both young and the message it was there like that. A stylish look for both main characters that knowing something else about an event have an approach to a soft sentimental adventure and forgotten the reality of their acquaintance created a link of friendship without any presumption for after tomorrow.

Because it seems if did you understood that, something is always possible when things are confused for the minds and the first is breathing well and expelled oxygenate air, making steam by night : reconciliation brought her for another stand of high society from the time. It seems also that the screenplay came from someone who had much pleasure to bring any confusion in the mind of the characters with her - because is a she - deconstruction in her obsessive purpose, that life is not so important around if a kiss save your honor and butterfly. This is the strength of Marguerite Duras story adapted anyway by Peter Brook with a kind of innovative and quite prejudice against savagery of the time, during persecutions in France, because colonial defeat at the time mixed with resistance from Gironde tradition where the story came from.

the atmosphere. the Duras mark. the mark of Peter Brooks. and the performances. a Belmondo who conquest a special status, exploring a role who has the force of nuances. Jeanne Moreau - the same and different. the piano's lessons. and the city. a film about solitude in a honest, cruel manner. slices from Madame Bovary. and the search of sense in the presence of the other. the mixture of temptation and fear, expectation and sin, the form of illusion and the brutal end does it a gem. not only for the artistic virtues but for a special manner to use the novel for the portrait of a small world. a film of music as piece from silhouettes, dialogs and fall. a not real comfortable film. but useful.

This has to be one of the dullest films of the early Sixties. Remember that Godard, Malle, Truffaut and company had been challenging the traditions of story telling; the world seemed young again, and full of possibilities. Moderato cantabile has nothing of this spirit. It might have been made by an old-guard director like Clément or Delannoy (if they had decided to take a chance on a Duras script).

There isn't much energy or interest in this story: what happens in the first ten minutes is endlessly rehashed throughout the remainder. Belmondo is ill at ease here, or at least seems that way to me--there is no chance for any extroversion, exuberance or even anger from the character. Jeanne Moreau is used decoratively (Brook must have seen what Resnais was able to do with Delphine Seyrig in Last Year In Marienbad) and always looks elegant, if never really desperate or anguished. You know something's wrong when the piano teacher provides much of the dramatic interest: she's bullying the child into giving her a Diabelli sonata "moderately, with a singing feeling".

Note: I have just remembered that Clément did do a Duras script (Barrage contre le Pacifique) in 1958.

Moderato cantabile (1960) was shown in the U.S. with the title Seven Days . . .Seven Nights. Peter Brook directed this French film, and Marguerite Duras adapted her novel for the screen. (Note that IMDb has the film listed with its U.S. title, although the VHS uses the original French title, and lists the date of release as 1959.)

The plot of the movie is somewhat basic. A beautiful woman leads a banal life as the trophy wife of a town's leading industrialist. Her only pleasure is her interactions with her son, Pierre, who is about seven years old. (The title Moderato Cantabile comes from the son's piano teacher, who is trying to get him to understand the concept.)

Within the first few minutes of the film, a horrible scene occurs in a bar right next to the piano teacher's home. For the rest of the film, the plot keeps circling back to discussion that event. We assume something bad is going to happen, although we don't know what.

Jeanne Moreau plays the wife, Anne, and Jean Paul Belmondo plays Chauvin, someone who works in her husband's factory. They meet and discuss the event, and then we watch their relationship unfold.

This would be just another black and white French film from the 1950's, except that it stars Moreau and Belmondo. Belmondo is a formidable masculine presence, with his high cheekbones and his broken nose. Moreau is unique--certainly one of the great actors of the 20th Century.

Director Brooks knows that when he is working with Moreau he is working with an extraordinary actor, and he lets us know that he knows. In one scene, there's a single image of Moreau's face that fills the screen. That single image is on the screen for almost 30 seconds! Those large eyes and downturned mouth are a part of French and worldwide cinematic culture.

I want to make note of Didier Haudepin, who plays Moreau's son, Pierre. He's an extraordinary child actor, because he looked as if he weren't acting. He had a major role in the movie, but it appeared that he was just a normal kid who didn't like piano lessons. It's hard for an actor-- especially a child--to look as if he weren't acting. Haudepin managed it, and it's no surprise that he went on to have an outstanding career in film.

We saw this movie on VHS cassette, but it's available on DVD. It's an excellent film, and definitely worth seeking out and viewing.

P.S. We became interested in Moderato Cantabile because years ago we acquired an original movie poster of the film. We eventually donated the poster to the excellent Little Theatre in Rochester, NY. If you attend The Little, you'll see it prominently displayed. Our thought to ourselves was--you've seen the poster, now watch the movie!

In a small provincial town that time neglects, two lost souls meander round quite circumspect, an imperceptible entwine, fading in and out of time, both longing for a moment to connect. One is captured in a marriage like a fly, cocooned inside a coffin left to die, the other, isolated, all his options firmly gated, unable to remove the bonds that tie.

Once again, Jeanne Moreau delivers a performance few other actors could have managed, both then and now, more than ably supported by a sullen Jean-Paul Belmondo, they both leave you wishing they were alive in a more modern world, where tradition and fear of the institutions that bind them have all but vanished, and they can be who they want to be. Although without those shackles the connections may well have been quite different.