Gaumont at MoMA: Un Temoin dans la Ville

In French film noir, nobody personifies bad karma like Lino Ventura. Unfortunately, his characters were not immune from the payback they dispensed. That is true in spades for the vengeance-seeking Ancelin. On the streets of Paris, what comes around goes around, especially after hours in Édouard Molinaro’s Un Témoin dans la Ville (trailer here), which screens during MoMA’s retrospective tribute to the storied French film production house Gaumont.

Well-heeled lothario Pierre Verdier had been carrying on an affair with Ancelin’s wife until he tired of her and threw her to her death from a speeding train. He managed to wriggle out of a formal prosecution, but he will not escape Ancelin’s rough justice. The steely long haul trucker stages Verdier’s (involuntary) suicide to the last detail, but he did not know the cad had called for a cab. Unfortunately, that means Lambert the cabbie can place him at the scene. Reluctantly, Ancelin starts stalking the witness, just as Lambert’s courtship of Liliane, a company radio dispatcher starts to bear romantic fruit.

Témoin (or Witness in the Night) is based on a novel by the collaborative partners Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, as were Hitchcock’s Vertigo and Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Diabolique. Frankly, it is hard to figure why this film doesn’t rank alongside the latter, because it is a wickedly lean and mean noir thriller. As Ancelin, Ventura is at the peak of his hardnosed, taciturn powers. He was born to play this sort of role and Molinaro brought out the best in him. However, Franco Fabrizi (later to be seen in Fellini’s I Vitelloni and Ginger and Fred) and Sandra Milo (Fellini’s 8½ and Sautet’s Classe Tous Risques) are also completely engaging as the amorously bantering Lambert and Liliane (no slouches in this cast). The unexpected charm of their earthy chemistry really sneaks up on you and adds an additionally tragic layer to the naturalistic, street-level thriller.

In fact, Témoin offers a fascinating time-capsule snapshot of nocturnal Parisian life, circa 1959. Unlike the rather transient nature of the cab driving work today, Lambert and his colleagues (most definitely including the white coat-wearing ladies working the radios) seem to lead a strangely insular and tribal existence. They work together, drink together, and the lucky ones pair-up together, like Liliane and Lambert. Of course that means when one of their own is threatened, they instinctively respond in kind.

Even by high film noir standards, the black-and-white cinematography of Henri Decaï is a thing of beauty. It is also matched by the vintage “crime jazz” soundtrack, featuring French tenor player Barney Wilen (somewhat familiar to American fans through his work on the Miles Davis soundtrack for Elevator to the Gallows and the Jazz Messengers’ soundtrack for Dangerous Liaisons), along with visiting Americans Kenny Dorham on trumpet, Kenny Clarke and drums, and Duke Jordan and piano. It sounds consciously inspired by the Davis session from the previous year, with Dorham’s trumpet more prominently featured than Wilen’s tenor. It is tasty and very effective underscoring the skullduggery on screen (particularly some of Clarke’s percussion solos), but it is not quite a classic on the level of Gallows.

How is this not a more famous movie? There is so much talent in Témoin working at the top of their games and collaborating together with perfect compatibility. This is a terrific film every jazz and noir fan should see. Very highly recommended, Un Témoin dans la Ville screens again this Tuesday (9/6) at MoMA, as part of the Gaumont: Cinema pout tout le Monde series.

Two by Garrel

Philippe Garrel X 2
Zeitgeist Films

It seems nearly impossible for Philippe Garrel’s characters to discuss their feelings, particularly love, without resorting to epistemological arguments. Yet the examined life is not necessarily the happiest in Garrel’s films I Can No Longer Hear the Guitar and Emergency Kisses, now available on DVD in the two-disk collection, Philippe Garrel X 2.

Though hardly a household name in America, Garrel’s art-house stock has been rising in recent years, partly due to the relatively recent theatrical release of Guitar. Inspired by the death of the director’s longtime lover Nico, the celebrated Velvet Underground vocalist, the film mirrors their tumultuous, drug-clouded ten-year relationship. As viewers first meet Gerard and Marianne, everything seems sunny for the passionate couple, enjoying an Italian holiday with his artist buddy Martin and his girlfriend. However, following a jealous outburst from Marianne, the supposedly enraptured Gerard abruptly leaves the next morning without notice.

Throughout the film, this pattern of attraction and repulsion will repeat itself. At times, their on-again-off-again affair is quite sordid, as both succumb to heroin addiction, hoarding smack from each other, while living in abject squalor. Periodically, Gerard is cleaned up and straightened out by the loving Aline, but despite his better judgment, he can never resist Marianne whenever she resurfaces in his life.

Garrel presents a somewhat less harrowing portrait of problematic love in Emergency Kisses, which he filmed two years before Guitar, perhaps because it was more of a family affair, both on and off-screen. As the portrait of Mathieu an emotionally distant filmmaker, his actress-wife Jeanne and their young son Lo, played by Garrel himself, his then wife Brigitte Sy, and their son Louis Garrel, respectively, Kisses obviously has great autobiographical significance as well.

When Mathieu casts a different actress in the role of his wife in a prospective film based on his life, it causes a deep fissure in his marriage. However, despite various resentments and infidelities, their son keeps them connected in a way Gerard and Marianne (the neglectful parents of children from separate relationships) can never be.

Kisses and Guitar share many similar elements, beyond their troubled central relationships. Both Mathieu and Gerard seek the wise counsel from more mature figures, each of whom has a certain scarred elegance. Yann Collette has a charismatic screen-presence as Gerard’s indulgent friend Martin, despite the glass eye which usually relegates him to villainous roles. Likewise, the wrinkled and weathered veteran French actor Maurice Garrel, real-life father of Philippe and a frequent mainstay of his films, appropriately plays Mathieu’s understanding father.

Both films are marked by their quiet sound, but sparingly feature effective jazz-oriented scores. In concert with Jacques Loiseleux’s black-and-white cinematography, Barney Wilen’s saxophone themes often lend Kisses a noirish vibe. It compares with the moody, impressionistic Miles Davis soundtrack for Louis Malle’s Elevator to the Scaffold on which Wilen also played. For Guitar, French fusion artists pianist-composer Faton Cahen and violinist Didier Lochwood, along with British avant-garde alto-player Elton Dean, perform more lush, classically-oriented themes, which sound great but at times are at odds with the tawdriness of Gerard and Marianne’s train-wreck romance.

There are moments of wince-inducing honesty in both films, but at other times Marc Cholodenko’s overly intellectualized dialogue defies credibility. Even in France, can people really talk like this? Yet, Garrel’s merciless close-ups have such emotional directness the films often feel like a voyeuristic experience.

Garrel is a fascinating filmmaker, whose work is distinguished by his patience and unrelenting frankness. He elicits some brave performances in what are clearly very personal films. (Despite Guitar’s arguably greater critical reputation, Kisses might be the more rewarding film, thanks to its intriguing father-son dynamic.) Garrel’s use of filmmaking as both a therapeutic outlet and psychological defense mechanism is explicitly explored in Philippe Garrel: Artiste, a French television documentary featuring extensive interviews with the director, which is included as a bonus feature. Altogether, Garrel X 2 is an impressive package that should further enhance Garrel’s burgeoning reputation.