Until his dying day, director Marcel Carné insisted that his film Les Visiteurs du Soir, a romantic fantasy wherein two of Satan's envoys try to spread chaos in 1485 France, was not an allegory for Nazi-occupied France. But, of course, since the film was made in 1942 during the Occupation, it has come to be seen as the very thing that Carné so vehemently denied. Well, I for one believe Carné. The film serves no allegorical function because it is a film of surfaces bereft of any depth. It is a romantic fantasy plain and simple. The story centers on the love affair between one of the devil's envoys and the daughter of a powerful baron engaged to be married to a callous warlord. When they declare their love for each other, Satan himself (played with scene-chewing glee by Jules Berry who is easily the best part of the film) comes to earth to break them apart. But, this being a fairy tale, love wins out in the end. It's just too bad that the film lacks the sense of joy and wonder that makes fantasy so appealing as a genre. Les Visiteurs du Soir is a hollow movie that lacks the immediacy and energy that galvanized the similar fantasy films of Jean Cocteau. Both films feature clever practical special effects. But whereas the effects in a film like Beauty and the Beast (1946) seem like extensions of its fairy tale universe, the effects in Les Visiteurs du Soir progressively seem more and more like interruptions in its tepid romantic melodrama.
6/10
No comments:
Post a Comment