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jdcopp wrote:

You need look no further than Jeanson's article 'The Two Renoirs'

One does not need to look further than Jeanson's article. Sorry, but I have already gone and looked further.

http://jdcopp.blogspot.com/2008/01/reno ... -late.html

I would applaud your blog -scholarship more if it referred to the article cited. Said article was written BEFORE the war contemporaneously with the attack on Le Quai des Brumes which has spurred this thread's particular tangent.
In 'La Fleche de Paris 12 August 1938' Jeanson (who as I mentioned is far from being safe from reproach himself)
wrote -
We possess two Renoirs
A true Renoir.
And a false Renoir.

.......

The true Renoir is delighted by the success of his friends,the younger filmmakers,
The false Renoir can't tolerate competition,and he suffers as much from the triumphs of his colleagues as from the failure of his own productions.


.....Quai des Brumes he has proclaimed is a film of fascist propoganda because the foreigners who see it will think that a country which produces the kind of characters played by Gabin or Brasseur is a country ripe for dictatorship.
So there!
Its reasoning is worth its weight in rubles.

.....

He ends with..
I also hope that the false Renoir reads this article through the eyes of the true Renoir and that he finds here all the lost illusions of someone who was once his friend.

I of course have cherry picked the lines pertinent to the concerns of this thread which in brief was What the fuck was Renoir on when he saw fascist characters in QdB?

Jeanson was a tricksy mercurial figure and I have no doubt as your blog notes was not beyond scabrous character assassination. But the article above is worth reading in full to see another side of a working colleague's appraisal of Renoir that is a sad disillusionment rather than cant and mere spite.

Well one might wonder why Carne as late as 1945 when Le Vigan's pro-Nazi activities were well documented tried to get him for Les Enfants?
Also that Duvivier offered himself as a character witness during his trial. To suggest as he did that Le Vigan was 'led astray' by Celine seems somewhat ingenuous but I don't know really enough about their relationship or the extent of Le Vigan's pro-Nazi proselytizing to totally dismiss the idea.

He does cut a tragic figure however- sentenced to 10 years hard labour and ending up in poverty and insane in South America.
Could have been a Herzog/Kinski vehicle.

Two weeks to go for the Visiteurs du soir DVD from M6Vidéo!

EDIT: I have heard rumours about a delay... And please note that there will be no subs on this.

How many Vigil Candles are burning in your flat until the day arrives?

Drole de Drame gets a UK DVD release in October.
I don't know anything about the company, Contemporary Films.

Maybe the same Contemporary Films I used to rent 16mm "foreign" films from in the 1970s?

Maybe we should fix the title of this thread. Good news on Drole though.

tojoed wrote:Drole de Drame gets a UK DVD release in October.
I don't know anything about the company, Contemporary Films.

Not trying to steal your thunder - but it is already available with english subs from Editions Montparnasse and may well be easier to pick up cheaper somewhere.

A French-language Carné site:
https://www.marcel-carne.com/

Includes transcripts in French of Carné´s interviews with Brian Stonehill (for Criterion) and Edward Baron Turk.

Having enjoyed, like most, the incredible five film run of Carne and Prevert from 1938-1945, to say I found Les Portes de la nuit a disappointment is kind of like Nathalie Nattier saying her night in this film didn't end well. I haven't seen Jenny yet, but didn't care much for Drôle de drame either, so I wasn't shocked that a Prevert-Carne collab could fall flat. What did take me out was how this movie spirals into a series of impressively terrible scenes that invariably devolve into resolving in the least interesting way possible. Which is bad enough. But this film has ambition, and that's where things really go wrong, as we are forced to suffer Jean Vilar's literal Angel of Death / Destiny / Fortune / &c, who is too fantastical a creature to be sustained by this film. There is an offhand line offered that perhaps he is mentally ill. Perhaps Miss Cleo would hold her breath until she was hospitalized to receive even a third of this "touched" man's gifts, so no. And yet as would-be compensation, this film doesn't offer much in the way of visual beauty (a real surprise), wherein perhaps one could get swept up in the fantastical elements. And the film does itself no favors by anchoring itself to some disappointing performances from actors who we expect more from like Brasseur or Montand (though he's so young here that it's not entirely his fault). I was stunned by how much I hated this one by the end of it, and I would be quite surprised if Criterion ever materialized a disc for it despite still holding the rights, as this is far weaker than the releases they have already prioritized (and I'd even go so far as to say in a way it's worse than even the dregs of LATE Carne like Du mouron pour les petits oiseaux or Trois chambres à Manhattan, because it's not like anyone went into those expecting greatness)

110 000 Euros has been granted (9 Dec. 2025) to Pathé Films, for digitizing Children of Paradise. I assume this will be a new restoration.
https://www.cnc.fr/professionnels/aides ... moi&annee=