zedz wrote:domino harvey wrote:After having it checked out from Netflix for like two months, I finally slogged through Resnais' Pas sur la bouche. This total disaster is a musical made by someone with no understanding of how a musical works and indeed seems fairly contemptuous of the medium. Displays the worst kind of cold academic detachment, which is utterly deadly with this material. I'd say its bad reputation was even too generous!
This film left so little impression on me I had to do a google search for some details to confirm I'd actually seen it, so ditto. Resnais' previous
On connait le chanson has marginally more interest as a variant musical, but only if you're completely ignorant of Dennis Potter's much more effective, extensive and radical exploration of the same ideas in
Pennies from Heaven and
The Singing Detective. When I saw that film I was shocked that Resnais wasn't dragged over the critical coals for his bald plagiarism - or worse, the reductive conservatism of it.
Now that the dust has settled somewhat after zedz and dominos' Panzer divisions have rumbled through the ruins of Resnaisville I am sticking my head tentatively over the parapet and waving a small damp white hankie.
Far from this being a plea for Resnais' inclusion in the 2000 list (I haven't actually seen Bouche, other than a clip of Lambert Wilson's reverse Clousseau take on the french language) I do however find a lot of merit in 'On Connait la Chanson'.
Firstly Resnais dedicates the piece to Potter on a single card in the opening credits, so I don't think there's any disingenuous plagiarism going on here.
Secondly it is scripted by Jaoui and Bacri, whose other deft comedy of manners ( Un Air de Famille etc) I also enjoy. Lightweight fluff for some maybe but intelligent and watchable.
Principally though I'm not sure that the charge of reductive, conservative,cold, academic and the other similar snipings hit home here.
From memory, Potter's interludes such as in 'The Singing Detective', are mined principally from the late thirties (i.e post music hall, pre-pop) and are situated in the theatre of the imagination of the central character. These seem to be triggered by his musings on his present situation and momentarily invite us to step out into a parallel cabaret reality by rendering the space theatrical, through lighting, dance routines, the camp lip sync etc.
This is all fine and dandy and thoroughly enjoyable but makes me think that more often than not Potter started with a 'Desert Island Discs' list of favourites that were then engineered into place.
In 'On Connait la Chanson', and the title points to this, the choice of song is far more wide sweeping and arguably far more well known to a french audience than Potter's more archaic pieces to an anglo-saxon audience. This is by design to find a song that not only suits the moment emotionally but also works as recitative to move the narration along. Furthermore the sense of the lyrics is understood by those around the singer/mimer. We and they are not frozen in time while we watch the show. I think this is an important distinction and I don't see how this emotional response from Resnais can be accused of academic coldness or conservatism.
There are also different shadings of this technique at play also.
From the corpulent camp Commandant (pun and alliteration intended) responding to,and refusing, the infamous order to raze Paris to the ground with Josephine Baker's heavily foreign accented 'J'ai deux Amours', one of which is Paris itself, is easily the equal of Potter's and whose irony might even outstrip him.
Arditti's 'rehearsal' of how he's going to break from his wife using Gainsbourg's 'Je suis venu te dire que je m'en vais' which ultimately falters when he tries to deliver it face to face is also an emotional expansion of Potterworld I would suggest.
OK there are some other moments that are intended as ironic that might ring as clever-clever. (I'm thinking of the Use of Jane Birkin's 'Quoi" and then the appearance of La Birkin herself later on) but all in all I think it's a valiant try at a take on a genuinely sincere hommage. But as we all know 'hommage' is a french word for plagiarism n'est-ce pas?
