Le Plaisir (Ophuls, 1952): BFI Southbank, NFT2 8.40pm
This film is screening as part of the Jean Gabin season and
is also being shown on May 18 and May 27. Details here.
This is not one of the great director Max Ophuls' best-known
works but for those both familiar and unfamiliar with his ouevre it is more
than worth a trip across town for. BFI head of film programming, Geoff Andrew,
put this in his top ten moviesin the 2002 Sight & Sound poll and repeated viewings in the last couple of
years have led me to believe this is a much-underrated movie.
Time Out review:
'Ophüls' second French film following his return from the
USA was adapted from three stories by Maupassant. Le Masque describes how an
old man wears a mask of youth at a dance hall to extend his youthful memories.
La Maison Tellier, the longest episode, deals with a day's outing for the
ladies from a brothel, and a brief romance. In Le Modéle, the model in question
jumps from a window for love of an artist, who then marries her. Although
Ophüls had to drop a fourth story intended to contrast pleasure and death,
these three on old age, purity and marriage are shot with a supreme elegance
and sympathy, and the central tale in particular luxuriates in the Normandy
countryside. The whole is summed up by the concluding line, that 'happiness is
no lark'.' David Thompson
If you need convincing here is a masterful essay by critic
VF Perkins in Film Quarterly on this somewhat neglected masterpiece of
anthology film-making.
Here
is an extract.
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