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Jun 29, 2009
Huillet-Straub : overdue agricultural Oscar. (3/8)
The film also includes two major digressions, which make liberal use of borrowed or recycled material.
As Cézanne-Huillet explains that an old maid in Flaubert’s « Madame Bovary » inspired him for a portrait, Jean Renoir’s 1934 filmed version of the novel pops up on screen and takes us from Provence -and the various European Museums where Cézanne’s paintings were filmed- to Normandy for the « comices agricoles », a mix of country fair and agricultural Oscars ; it is one of the book most famous chapters, about which generations of school teachers have « rachâché » ad nauseam before countless Ernestos.
Why bring in a 1934 black and white film to illustrate a comment made by a painter obsessed with colour and dead in 1906 in relation to a book written in 1857 ?
Because the film was by the son of another painter, Auguste Renoir, who belonged to the same generation as Cézanne ? In order to tie-in more tightly the various art forms of painting, literature, photography, cinema ?
Just like Cézanne does not explain himself in his paintings, but in conversations with the likes of Joachim Gasquet, Huillet-Straub leave their film to stand alone and answer the question in an interview about it.
It appears Cézanne’s comment about the old maid had reminded Danièle Huillet of a line in Renoir’s film which said the old maid was to receive a medal for « serving fifty-four years in the same farm » ; the filmmaker had thought the line « énorme » -huge- and wished to include it into their own film.
We do hear the line and the old maid shows up on screen, but disappears after a few seconds, while the excerpt of Renoir’s film runs and runs and we have enough time to notice that, if Pierre Renoir looks at his best portraying a character, Monsieur Bovary, badly mistreated in the novel, Valentine Tessier and Fernand Fabre make for cruelly shallow Mme Bovary and Rodolphe Boulanger.
As we eventually return to Provence and Cézanne, we wonder : why such a lengthy excerpt?
Were Huillet-Straub in need of screen fodder to beef up their own film to fifty-one minutes ? Or in search of a sure way to anger their Musée d’Orsay financiers ?
No, according to their interview. One, Danièle Huillet had forgotten the old maid and her fifty-four years went so quickly on screen ; two, as per Jean-Marie Straub’s words, Renoir is like a « block of marble » : you « cannot cut it wherever you please ».
Whatever the filmmakers’ reasons, their audience shall not complain : to trade minutes directed by Huillet-Straub for minutes directed by Renoir minutes is a very fair bargain.
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