Les dragueurs (1959)
Jacques Charrier’s ladies man takes novice Charles Aznavour under his wing and teaches a lot of lessons, few of them commendable, in picking up women over the course of one long evening. This movie is unlikely to dissuade skeptics of the New Wave who (falsely) label the movement misogynistic, but the film goes so head-first into its wanton sexual objectification that it would be ludicrous to get upset at it without looking deeper at what it depicts. Is there more there than just the New Wave’s version of Spring Break-style bro humor? Maybe. The film, while not offering pat criticisms or affirmations, exhibits curiosity in capturing a catalog of mating rituals in which horndog men accost (and in some cases literally molest) young women. By the time the film ends up in the midst of an orgy at what could pass for an afterparty from Eyes Wide Shut, we’ve seen more than enough to conclude that men are pretty awful and the film isn’t necessarily endorsing their behavior— after all, in the end, virtue is rewarded and vice is, if not punished, at least left deprived. But this feels like a facile resolution, and the film is unconvincing in its sudden morality. And of course the moral lesson that a Nice Guy deserves a cute girl just because he doesn’t molest her like every other dude she meets is setting the bar so low it’s buried beneath ten feet of concrete.
Michel Deville would later tweak Charrier’s persona here for his terrific À cause, à cause d'une femme (1963), a clever combination of two wildly different genres, the Hitchcockian wrong man thriller and a sex farce. The film could almost be a sequel to Les dragueurs, as in it a Casanova finds himself framed for a murder by one of his many paramours and is forced to solve the mystery with the help of a few of his conquests. Deville strikes an uneasy but often engaging tone between comedy and tragedy, and for all his outward charms the protagonist is shown to be quite piteous in the end. I think Deville’s handling of not dissimilar material is superior to Mocky’s for its vacillating tone and ambition, but I appreciate Mocky’s film more from an anthropological aspect. Modern society may still be sexist, but certainly we’ve come a long way from many of the behaviors we see in Les dragueurs! (No commercial English-subbed commercial release, available with English subs via back channels)
Snobs! (1962)
In a mix of Woman’s World and One Two Three, a group of milk company execs vie for the presidency in the wake of their leader diving head-first into a milk vat in the film’s opening scene— this leaves everyone on screen laughing uproariously, including the man’s widow. This audience member was left out, though. Oh brother, this movie, this movie, THIS MOVIE. I initially gave Les dragueurs enough rope to assume the filmmakers didn’t side with the prurient protagonist. After this I’m certain I was mistaken. Snobs! is so tasteless that it defies even that cheap and easily-ascribed label. I could go on for some time just cataloging this movie’s worst offenses, so in the interest of saving time, allow me to provide a top five of the film’s most audacious yet unfunny moments. Spoilers present, obviously, but I can’t imagine anyone watching this so whatever, you’ve been warned:
05 During a newspaper montage, the only footage overlayed on the printing press is that of a toddler taking a shit in a chamberpot and then using the paper to wipe its ass
04 A split screen phone call between a religious executive (top) and the local bishop (bottom) is presented like this
with a shadow moving behind the obscured portion to show the presence of another party in the bishop’s genital area. At the end of the scene we hear a cat meow and think, “Oh how innocent.” Then the cat emerges from beneath the bed sheets at top of frame, not below
03 Another religious exec is shown throughout the film repeatedly praying in church and blessing the lord for his good tidings. On the day of the big announcement, he verbalizes how he’s ready for Jesus to lead him to greatness. Cut to him getting hit by a milk truck, instantly dying. He is then later shown intercut with a church service playing the organ shirtless in Hell while demons poke him with pitchforks
02 The religious exec from Number Four is suspected of nefarious acts due to him disappearing every night with a big leather bag. Rivals for his contract call and report him to the cops, who discover him in a lighthouse. The camera frames the inside of the lighthouse to reveal what appears to be the exec violently sodomizing a naked man. After being arrested, it is revealed the exec has healing powers and was giving the man a massage. A police officer is so pleased that we see him unbuckle his pants and make hand motions indicating the unleashing of his genitals. The exec looks on longingly at the unseen sight of the policeman's reveal
01 A scout leader is discovered by our protagonist with what appears to be a thirteen year old girl beneath the sheets in the back of a milk truck. She is a member of a teenage dance troupe supported by the local mechanic bigwig, a grotesque bald man with a high-pitched voice who pays the girls to dance lithely in his shop while he looks on from the passenger seat of his cab. The protagonist forces the lovers to marry and the girl is dismissed from the troupe. The protagonist hires the scout leader to drive trucks for the company and the pair are later seen driving the milk truck that kills the man from Number Three. In order to assure the bald man’s compliance with his plans, our protagonist provides his own girlfriend, who is also underage, to replace the dismissed dancer. We see the bald man greedily lead her away for no doubt pure activities
So… this movie is remarkably vulgar. But it’s not funny, like, at all, and while I will confess to being impressed at how the film managed to find new depths of depravity to sink into, this is just a bad Billy Wilder movie with small dick jokes. Oh, I didn’t mention the small dick jokes. There are many, many small dick jokes. (No commercial English subbed release, available with English subs via back channels)
+++++
zedz, Marguerite Duras came way too late as a director to be considered part of the movement for the works she directed. Certainly there is no shortage of discussion of her importance for both source texts and screenplays for films which are considered part of the movement, but I recall no such discussion for her as a director. However, I will keep an eye out the next time I have my materials in front of me to see if I have forgotten, overlooked, or not yet gotten to something that says otherwise. It’s important to remember that figures who seem like they come really late into the movement like Moullet, Eustache, and Pialat, in fact had shorts produced several years before their more well-known features, and these shorts allowed them to be folded in and considered for later works by those who compiled existing lit on the movement, not the later works themselves. It's an issue that has to be addressed when increasing the time span one thinks of for this movement, and one of the challenges I face moving past the accepted norm in my own work
