My Night at Maud’s (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Years ago, Eric Rohmer wrote the story, “My Night at Maud’s,” one of his Six Moral Tales, before he filmed it.  In my opinion, the film gets boring; the written story, for all its dialogue, does not.

Seldom in his oeuvre did Rohmer make as many references to Catholic, or Christian, faith as he did in “Maud’s.”  The Michelin engineer (unnamed), living in Clermont-Ferrand in France, befriends for a short time the beautiful divorcee, Maud.  He also necks with her a bit despite being a Catholic who believes he is destined, or predestined, to marry a fellow Catholic named Francoise.  Resistant to having sex with Maud, the engineer nevertheless makes the mistake, on a dangerously snowy night, of lying down next to Maud on her bed for an night’s ordinary sleep.  Maud’s mistake is putting her arms around the man and pressing her body against his.

Still, no sex.

And then there’s Francoise.  Gradually the matter of forgiveness pops up:  Will the engineer forgive Francoise for a particular amatory-sexual sin?  The themes that emerge in Rohmer’s story are spiritual playing-with-fire, perfidy in severe and mild forms, and the challenges to chastity.  It is a successful Christian tale which I don’t believe should have been made into a movie, unlike another moral tale, “Claire’s Knee,” which is okay as a movie.

Military pride and victory, battlefield suffering, religious conviction, and death in all its pervasiveness all meet in the Julien Duvivier film, La Bandera (The Flag, 1935), whose gritty screenplay Duvivier and co-scenarist Charles Spaak adapted from a novel.

The picture concerns a Frenchman called Gilieth who murders a man in Paris (“a piece of crap” he calls him) and then runs away to Barcelona, where he is unemployed and hungry.  In order to survive, he joins the Spanish Foreign Legion, though not without a clandestine Spanish detective on his trail.  All the legionnaires, Gilieth included, volunteer to fight in the Spanish Civil War, and an agonizing, disastrous experience it is.  Can there be—is there—the acquisition of honor in this?

The French actress Annabella, who was married to Tyrone Power, has top billing in this film (she plays an Arab girl whom Gilieth marries), but she is not the star.  Jean Gabin is, satisfyingly cast as the one-time murderer. . . La Bandera is now creaky and obstreperous, but also vivid and candid.  I would say that at first its attitude is misanthropic, but eventually it does see Gilieth as acquiring honor as it puts a measure of faith in men on the battlefield, as it necessarily respects human risk and endurance.  At least the Spanish detective seems to see Gilieth as acquiring honor (or expiation).

(In French with English subtitles)

Cover of The Shawl

There are politically correct people who would yammer about the Jewish woman, Rosa Lublin—in Cynthia Ozick‘s novella, The Shawl—yelling “Sodom!” when she sees two male lovers lying naked on the beach.  They would foolishly suspect Ozick of being “homophobic.”  But such people understand nothing about war or brutality or trauma—at least the trauma of others.  Rosa was in a German concentration camp, and the Nazis murdered her infant daughter, Magda: the shawl of the story’s title was used in swaddling the child.

Living in Florida, Rosa behaves as though Magda were still alive, for only the past has any substance for her.  The present is dead, incomprehensible.  It is necessary to ask, though, whether Rosa is mad, to which I respond that I think Ozick is presenting her as traumatized.  Not mad, but eccentric and impractical through trauma.

A mother with a single child who is dead can easily be a “crazy woman” (a phrase of Rosa’s).  On the last page of The Shawl, however, Rosa manages to demonstrate a patent sanity, an encouraging note in this strong, excellently written 1988 fiction.

Cover of The Shawl

There are politically correct people who would yammer about the Jewish woman, Rosa Lublin—in Cynthia Ozick‘s novella, The Shawl—yelling “Sodom!” when she sees two male lovers lying naked on the beach.  They would foolishly suspect Ozick of being “homophobic.”  But such people understand nothing about war or brutality or trauma—at least the trauma of others.  Rosa was in a German concentration camp, and the Nazis murdered her infant daughter, Magda: the shawl of the story’s title was used in swaddling the child.

Living in Florida, Rosa behaves as though Magda were still alive, for only the past has any substance for her.  The present is dead, incomprehensible.  It is necessary to ask, though, whether Rosa is mad, to which I respond that I think Ozick is presenting her as traumatized.  Not mad, but eccentric and impractical through trauma.

A mother with a single child who is dead can easily be a “crazy woman” (a phrase of Rosa’s).  On the last page of The Shawl, however, Rosa manages to demonstrate a patent sanity, an encouraging note in this strong, excellently written 1988 fiction.

Rene Clair‘s 1931 film, A Nous la Liberte, ends (almost) with a comically ironic look at the replacement of man with machine in the factory—before it was known that society would weather this storm—and it induces us to wonder how relevant this matter is to our own time.  In any case, what is actually central to the film is that an escaped convict, Louis (Raymond Cordy), is hungry for freedom but, after becoming a wealthy manufacturer, leads other men into forms of captivity.  He means no harm, though, and finally he loses his business and is free only in the way he was after escaping from prison.  He hits the open road.

Liberte is such a weird little flick it is not exactly my favorite Rene Clair.  Again, statements are put to music and the plot is bulging.  It is as artificial as it is satirical (more so).  But uniqueness is uniqueness; Clair is cannily and charmingly daring.  And Liberte does succeed at making you think.

(In French with English subtitles)