ILLICIT ATTACHMENTS: THE CLANDESTINE CINEMA OF MARCEL CARNÉ

Marcel Carné’s (1906–1996) reputation is so tied to the notion of French poetic realism that it can obscure the sharpness and lack of sentiment that underwrite his best films. Beginning as a critic before apprenticing under Jacques Feyder, Carné moved quickly from technician to defining voice of late-1930s French cinema. His early collaborations with screenwriter Jacques Prévert – Drôle de drame (1937), Le quai des brumes (1938), Le jour se lève (1939) – established a distinctive mood: stylised studio worlds populated by workers, drifters, petty criminals and romantic fatalists who, echoing the impending catastrophe unfolding in real-world Europe, can see disaster coming but press forward anyway, unable and perhaps even unwilling to avoid it. Carné’s postwar films extended the sensibility established in his celebrated prewar work. The settings and social textures shifted, but the underlying attention to atmosphere, performance and mood remained constant. The tone of these later works – such as Thérèse Raquin (1953) and Les tricheurs (1958) – was, however, noticeably different, almost as if the romance of romanticism had itself faded. After the carnage of World War II, the fatalism became cleaner, the worldview a little sharper. There’s also a subtler continuity: Carné’s sensitivity to a desire that moves obliquely and to connections defined by glances and coded affinities. His open but discreet homosexuality never announces itself in the films, but it leaves a trace in the way he frames outsiders and illicit attachments, shaping emotional currents that run just barely beneath the surface. This season offers a carefully selected taste of works from both key periods of Carné’s career, bridged by his wartime masterpiece Les enfants du paradis (1945), the film that most effectively and poetically communicates Carné and Prévert’s faith in artifice as a key to revealing emotional truth.

Wednesday 14 October

7:00pm LES PORTES DE LA NUIT

Marcel Carné (1946) 111 mins – Unclassified 15+

Carné and screenwriter Jacques Prévert’s final collaboration is a fascinating allegory of the legacies of World War II, the occupation, resistance and collaboration. In a starkly beautiful, wintry, nocturnal postwar Paris, a former Resistance fighter (Yves Montand) encounters a long-lost comrade, enemies of the war, a beautiful young woman (Nathalie Nattier) and various others, all leading him towards the tragic inevitabilities of fate. Featuring Serge Reggiani, Pierre Brasseur and Sylvia Bataille, it also introduced Joseph Kosma and Prévert’s indelible “Autumn Leaves” to the popular music canon.

4K DCP.

9:10pm THÉRÈSE RAQUIN

Marcel Carné (1953) 102 mins – Unclassified 15+

Carné and Charles Spaak adapted Émile Zola’s 1867 novel, shifting the Paris murk to contemporary Lyon and swapping the novelist’s “putrid” naturalism for something closer to film noir. Carné’s frequent cinematographer, Roger Hubert, lends a heavy, portentous atmosphere to the bleak streets, while Maurice Thiriet’s score helps tighten the emotional screws. Simone Signoret’s Thérèse has a simmering, watchful intensity, trapped between a snivelling husband and Raf Vallone’s impulsive Italian truck driver, while Roland Lesaffre – Carné’s longtime collaborator and off-screen partner – adds an unsettling charge as the young blackmailer twisting the knife.

35mm print courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive, Australia.

Wednesday 21 October

7:00pm LES ENFANTS DU PARADIS

Marcel Carné (1945) 190 mins – PG

Carné’s celebratory, haunting and overwhelming masterpiece is as much a tribute to the various forms of storytelling as it is to the French traditions of romance, theatre, music and cinema. The poetic narrative tracks the exploits of a Parisian acting troupe in the 19th century whose lives are intertwined by their infatuation with the eternal feminine – namely a courtesan indelibly played by Arletty. Despite numerous suspensions to production during the Nazi Occupation, and the clandestine employment of Jewish artists including composer Joseph Kosma and production designer Alexandre Trauner, the film is also notable for its extraordinarily detailed, heavily populated and teeming creation of its period setting. The brilliant ensemble cast includes Jean-Louis Barrault, Pierre Brasseur, Pierre Renoir and María Casares.

CTEQ ANNOTATION
Les Enfants du Paradis
by Girish Shambu

Wednesday 28 October

7:00pm LE JOUR SE LÈVE

Marcel Carné (1939) 93 mins – Unclassified 15+

Often considered to be one of the peaks of French poetic realism, and the final of an extraordinary run of five films directed by Carné in the second half of the 1930s, this intense, moody and claustrophobic thriller follows the last hours of a killer (Jean Gabin) besieged in his apartment and pondering on what led him there. This typically fatalistic, existential work was released to significant acclaim before being banned by the Vichy Government in 1940. Scripted by key Carné collaborator Jacques Prévert and indelibly marked by Alexandre Trauner’s production design, it also co-stars Jacqueline Laurent, Jules Berry, Arletty and Bernard Blier.

4K DCP.

8:45pm LES TRICHEURS

Marcel Carné (1958) 123 mins – Unclassified 15+

Often regarded as the last major film of his career, Carné’s tale of rebellious youth was a massive box-office success in France, leading to it being awarded the prestigious Grand prix du cinéma français in the year of its release. Set in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the epicentre of the French existentialist movement, and featuring a young Jean-Paul Belmondo in one of his most significant early roles, the film effectively captures the mood and sentiment of many young Parisians at the end of the 1950s. Shot by Claude Renoir, it also stars Pascale Petit, Andréa Parisy and Jacques Charrier.

4K DCP.