Rushfield Babylon

Criterion Caravan: #25 La Bete Humaine (1938) Dir: Jean Renoir

So we come in our journey through the Criterion catalog to 1938. Good ol’ France is still churning out thrillers, not daring to believe the darkness that is going to fall over it just two years down the line.  With 20/20 hindsight, one is tempted to say that accounts for the tense, almost hysterical attitude in Bete Humaine, but that is probably reading too much.

The production history on the wikipedia page for this film begins, “Jean Gabin wanted to star in a film about locomotives ” Frankly, that’s good enough for me.  Anytime Jean Gabin wants to make a train film, count me in. And frankly the first and last scenes of this film, which are just long minutes showing Gabin driving a train as it races down a track, communicating in signs with his fireman over the screech of the engine, are the best things about the film, and the best fast moving train footage I’ve ever seen.  Take your breath away they really do.

Unfortunately, I can’t say as much for the plot of this film. Renoir as always creates some incredibly taught scenes in which every shot tells you a novel’s worth of stories. But the characters in this are just a little too off-putting to take seriously, or to know how to read during the film. It tells of a triangle consisting of Gabin’s character, a good-natured engineer who now and then just has to do terrible things, a flirtatious young woman who eggs her lovers on to do terrible things, and her frumpy station master husband who is driven to terrible things by his need to control.  Lots of metaphors for the railway system!  So if railway system metaphors aren’t your cup of tea, stand clear.  

And in the midst of the tension between these fairly off-putting characters, it’s a bit of a weird muddle through it, everyone constantly on edge about to pop for reasons you can’t quite buy.

Jean Gabin also looks much puffier than he did in Pepe Le Moko, just a year before. Super-stardom is agreeing with him apparently, but while he remains a formidable screen presence, one misses that easy charm.

An interesting film. Plenty to look at but ultimately lesser than Renoir’s Grand Illusion. Come for the train driving scenes though. Those you will not forget.

Criterion Caravan #4: Master of the House

Continuing my journey chronologically through the Criterion collection. #4. Carl Dreyer’s 1925 silent Danish comedy/melodrama.

One of the big gaps in my film education is the work of Danish director Carl Dreyer, and he was one of the big reasons I was looking forward to this project, since he winds up on pretty much every greatest director list these days, including taking the #9 slot on the Sight and Sound poll.  This is his first film in the Hulu Plus/Criterion catalog, but I must say, our journey together did not kick off on a happy note with this one.

Master of the House was described as the story  ”of a man who takes his wife for granted and does not appreciate the effort it takes to maintain a household.”  The man is a very cruel stuffy businessman in a starched collar and he is very cranky and complainy to his long suffering wife, who works her fingers to the bone for him. He is even meaner to their children, making his son stand in the corner for scuffing his shoes.  And if that’s not enough, he is a veritable Josef Stalin to the family’s bird, blowing smoke on it from his long pipe and almost dropping its cage.

Well!  You can imagine how this could push anyone to the brink, and for the long suffering wife, the bit with the bird is the limit.  She has a breakdown and is hustled off to her mother’s house, while an old lady friend of the family comes to live with the husband, ostensibly to look after him, but (SPOILER ALERT) really to be mean to him and teach him to help out around the house and shame him into appreciating his wife.  Which she does.

So the plots of silent films don’t quite rip along at a modern pace, packing in twists and pinch point beats in every scene, but with many they are beautiful enough, or the acting or the comedy is electrifying enough to leap out from across the divide of a century and captivate you.  That doesn’t happen here.  

I have read some writings on Master of the House where it’s use of reaction shots is called pioneering, and it is lauded for having characters that are a tiny bit three dimensional.  And to that I give it my hand.  But if you’re like me and you took reaction shots for granted a long time ago and worthy as it is, its hard to get yourself worked up by “Look at that!  He’s showing him looking surprised, while she’s opening the door!”  I mean, good for them!  Thank God we have reaction shots and supposedly if it weren’t for Dreyer we might not.  But seeing the first light bulb turned on and off for an hour and a half, as important as that may be, might also lose me.

This is called a comedy. Again, maybe this was a laugh riot in 1920’s Denmark. I’d like someone from those days to come and tell me what they found so hilarious though, because it was largely lost on me.

I’m ashamed to say I fell asleep twice while trying to watch this.  But I made it through.  And I’m confident Dreyer has better stuff in store for us, so we’ll call this one a gentleman’s C and move on.

Are you watching too? Send me your thoughts on Master of the House and I’ll post them here.

Next up:  Join my me as we take in Dreyer’s big hit, the ninth best film of all time according to the S and S poll: The Passion of Joan of Arc.