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May 16, 2008
"Le bon dieu sans confession" : my favourite war. (3/8)
The director demonstrates nearly Lubitsch’s flair as, with the story moving from location to location, switching its focus from character to character, jumping back and forth in time and from room to room, he decides which doors shall be closed or remain open, who shall know what and when, what the audience shall be visual witness to or not.
The film initial tone is wonderfully sarcastic. As François Dupont’s wife dutifully sniffs her way through her husband’s funeral, her most vivid memory of him is how he was always too hot.
Claude Autant-Lara has an uncanny talent to unveil social hypocrisy and films the ceremony with apparent objectivity but explosive irony, like a classic play of bourgeois theatre ; behind the smoke screen of respectability, the film will progressively and gleefully bring to light a less edifying truth.
When Julien Carette, a veteran of Renoir’s masterpieces, whose poacher in « La règle du jeu » established of paragon of anti-social behaviour, bears a regimental flag at the funeral, because he fought with François Dupont in WW1, casting itself asserts the film insolent mood.
Of the many things that happened between 1938 and 1953, « Fric-Frac » and « Le bon dieu sans confession », one is WW2 : in 1939, « The rule of the game » somehow announced it ; in 1947, « Un revenant » failed to mention it.
In 1953, WW2 drives much of « Le bon dieu sans confession » story. It is a blessed era for traffickers and astute business men : François Dupont seems to be doing well ; his partner, Varesco, is not so lucky : an immigrant and not yet a French citizen, he is in a precarious situation in Nazi occupied Paris ; even more so when Janine makes up her mind to replace him as her platonic lover’s business partner and discreetly denounces him to the Germans ; Varesco is arrested and, though François Dupont manages to get him out and send him to Southern France so-called « zone libre », the seeds for further betrayal are sowed ; as to Maurice Frejoul, he is still young enough to fight and made prisoner by the Germans, but manages to escape and lives hidden in his wife’s estate.
The war has plotted the perfect arrangement for Janine : with her husband all to herself and under her control, she goes back and forth at will between him and François Dupont, who does not know of Maurice’s return and has sent his family to the safety of the countryside to spend more time with his platonic mistress.
When her time arrives to narrate her side of the story, Janine freely « confesses » it : war was quite fair to her. Danielle Darrieux could have uttered the same confession as her character : as a young and successful actress, she too had a fairly good war.
She was so charming that, even when she toured Germany on a film promotion trip, most would hurry to blame her misstep on her candour and still heartily give her « Le bon dieu sans confession » : the French saying implies a blind, but misplaced, trust.
As France was liberated, Danielle Darrieux was among the few artists who did not pay for their wartime « carelessness ». Janine, her character, shall not either for her deliberate schemes.
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