Lumiere d’ete
Directed by Jean Grémillion
Written by Pierre LaRoche and Jacques Prévert
1943/France
Films André Paulvé
First viewing/Hulu Plus
This love pentangle has some interesting social commentary between the lines.
The entire story is punctuated with blasting nearby for a new dam. Michele has a long walk between the station and the mountain hotel where she is to rendezvous with her artist lover. The aristocrat Patrice gives her a lift to the hotel. The artist has not yet arrived and the hotel’s owner Cricri has lunch with her before she goes to her room to wait for him. It develops that Michele is madly in love with her artist and Cricri is passionate for Patrice, for whom she moved to the country,.
In a case of mistaken identies, a young dam worker named Julien is sent up to Michele’s room. Before she is fully awake, she kisses him, thinking him to be her lover. This one kiss is all it takes to hook Julien. Michele must wait in the hotel for several days and Patrice falls for her too, making Cricri almost pathetically jealous.
When Roland (Pierre Brasseur – Children of Paradise), Michele’s artist, finally shows up, he proves to be much different than we could have imagined. In fact, he is apparently in the last stages of alcoholism and has a really wicked tongue to boot. He does everything in his power to hurt her, partly to get her to drop him.
Patrice, seeing an opportunity, lures the Roland to his chateau with Christine in tow. He claims to be helping Roland to dry out but is actually practically forcing liquor upon him. Cricri sends Julien to try to extricate Michele from the situation. Julien fails and so does a visit from Cricri. When Patrice finally makes his intentions clear, Michele decides to leave for Paris with a loan from CriCri.
Patrice’s last gambit is throwing a lavish costume party, a la The Rules of the Game. There the lovers play a kind of romantic game of musical chairs, with tragic consequences to almost everybody concerned.
This is a beautifully staged film. I particularly liked the dam construction sequences but it’s all handsome. I think the background of explosions, so reminiscent of war time bombing, is no accident nor is the essential depravity of the monied characters. The acting is all wonderful. Brasseur might seem over the top if he were not so damn good. The score and sound effects contribute a lot.
Clip – work on the dam
