Jean Grémillon was a lesser-known French director whose career started in the silent era, but ranged into the 1950s. Today I’ll be looking at three of his films made during the German occupation of France during World War II, as well as a later film, starting with 1941’s Remorques (“Stormy Waters”). It stars the great Jean Gabin as André Laurent, a tugboat captain leading a crew of men on dangerous jobs bringing in floundered ships. His wife, Yvonne, is starting to put pressure on him to retire, but his job and his men mean a lot to him. One stormy night, they bring in a ship captained by an unscrupulous man with a wife ready to leave him. The wife, Catherine (Michèle Morgan), instantly has eyes for Laurent, and he doesn’t immediately turn her away. Gives some skeezy vibes to the viewer, as Laurent’s wife is ill and getting worse, something that Laurent doesn’t know. The movie has some nice moments, but ultimately it’s not all that memorable. One of those movies that I’ll come across again a few years from now and not remember having seen it. ★★
Lumière d’été (“Summer Light”) has, in the beginning at least, a lot of moving parts that seem very intriguing from the get-go. Michèle arrives to a remote, mostly empty hotel hoping to meet her boyfriend, but he’s not there. Instead she meets the varied people living in and around the hotel. Cri-Cri came to the hotel 4 years ago with her own man, but when they separated, she stuck around and now runs the place. Cri-Cri’s current beau is Patrice, a wealthy man whose wife died (in perhaps a nefarious way?) a little while back, but Patrice now has eyes for Michèle. Also ogling over the new arrival is Julien, a working man at the local mine. When Michèle’s boyfriend, Roland, does turn up, we find that he isn’t the hunky artist that we were led to believe. This little love “pentangle” has a lot going on, all swirling around Michèle and her rather innocent outlook on life. Despite all of the characters being a bit oversimplified and one-dimensional, it’s a mostly fun film. The beginning sets the tone early, and while it does start to drag after awhile, the ending was exciting enough to make up for some of that. There’s also some quite-good comic relief by a few other hotel inhabitants: the rather-dumb bartender/bellhop/jack-of-all-trades, and an older man, living in the hotel for awhile, who laments the progress of Paris (which looked much better before that eyesore Eiffel Tower went up). ★★★
Le ciel est à vous (“The Woman Who Dared”) follows a married couple, Pierre and Therese Gauthier, and their 2 kids. Pierre is a mechanic who has a love of airplanes, but Therese has made him promise to never go up in one, as she fears losing him to an accident. That is, until she rides up in a plane one day, and falls in love with the thrill of flight. The family begins to put all their funds into working up a strong plane that would allow Therese to challenge the record for most miles flown by a woman in a solo flight. Pretty straight forward film, but there’s enough there for me to not like it. When the family is doing well financially, they buy their daughter a piano, as that is her love. But when times get tough, they tell her she can’t go to a conservatory to study music, and later, even sell the piano to fund their own adventures. Pretty despicable people, and the film lets them get away with it. In fact, it glorifies her flight, and portrays the kids as happy with their deteriorating situation. I couldn’t get behind a couple of egotistical, hedonistic people who put themselves first in all things. ★½
L’Amour d’une femme (“The Love of a Woman”) centers around Marie, a late-20-something woman newly arrived to a remote island town to be its new doctor. The previous doc, retiring at the age of 70 after having spent decades caring for the island’s people, is beloved by the folks, but Marie will have to earn their trust. In a land of couples (and their kids), Marie’s one good friend is the other single woman on the island: the schoolteacher, Madame Leblanc. When Marie worries that she will always be an outsider, and if she’ll continue to be lonely, Leblanc tells her that she has raised generations on the island, and that all of them continue to be “her kids.” Marie will have that kind of relationship with them all one day. Over time, as Marie heals people, she does start to become “one of them.” Just as this starts to happen though, she falls for an engineer working on the island for a short time. André returns her love, and wants to marry her, but he wants a traditional wife, one who will stay at home and raise their kids. Marie has to decide if she can give up the career she loves for the chance at a family. The movie has great moments, some uneven moments (which are mostly a sign of the times), but overall it’s a solid film. ★★★
- TV series currently watching: Fear the Walking Dead (season 7)
- Book currently reading: Dragons of The Hourglass Mage by Weis & Hickman
Jons Movie Takes 