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| Lac aux dames. Puck (Simone Simon) has rescued Eric (Jean-Pierre Aumont) to her Île de Cygne. Eric has tried to swim across the lake defying fog, wind and dangerous currents. A sequence reminiscent of Frank Borzage's The River. |
Erotiikkaa / Ne naiset! Ne naiset! / Erotik.
FR 1934. PC: SOPRA [Société Parisienne de Production] (Paris). P: Dominique Drouin. D: Marc Allégret. SC: Marc Allégret et Jean-Georges Auriol, d'après le roman Hell in Frauensee. Ein heiterer Roman von Liebe und Hunger (1927) de Vicki Baum. [In Finnish: Uimaopettaja Urban Hell, transl. Unto Koskela, Helsinki: Otava, 1931.] Dialogues and lyrics: Colette. Cin: Jules Kruger. AD: Lazare Meerson, Alexandre Trauner. Cost: Marcel Rovhas. M: Georges Auric. M dir: Roger Desormière. S: Hermann Storr. ED: Denise Batcheff, Yvonne Martin (as Yvonne Beaugé). Ass D: Yves Allégret, Colette. Direction artistique: Philippe de Rothschild.
C: Jean-Pierre Aumont (Eric Heller), Rosine Dérean (Danny / Danièle Lyssenhop), Simone Simon (Puck Dobbersberg), Sokoloff (Baron de Dobbersberg), Michel Simon (Oscar Lyssenhop), Illa Meery (Anika), Odette Joyeux (Carla Lyssenhop, Danièle's sister), Maroulk (Vefi), Maurice Rémy (Comte Stereny), Asselin (Brindel), Roman Bouquet (l'aubergiste / innkeeper), Eugène Dumas (Matz).
M selections include: – Johann Strauss (Vater): "Radetzky-Marsch" (1848), Op. 228.
Helsinki premiere: 24.4.1935, Empire, released by Suomi-Filmi Oy – film control: 18861 – K16 – 2250 m / 82 min – Bologna 2017: 95 min – IMDb, Wikipedia: 106 min
Previous film adaptation: Die drei Frauen von Urban Hell (DE 1928).
Restored in 1987 by La Cinémathèque française. 35 mm print from La Cinémathèque française.
Screened at Kino Regina, Helsinki (Colette et le cinéma), e-subtitles by Lena Talvio., 27 Aug 2019.
Program note by Émilie Cauquy (Il Cinema Ritrovato, 2017): Colette:
"On the other shore, I sing… I wait, the waves rock my dream, my boat… What will they bring me, night and morning? Out there are kindled fires and feasts… Here, in the dark, breaking the green waves, my oar streams with droplets of moon. On the other shore, the fires and feasts and the blonde girl have taken him. The lake, the mirror of our faces with mouths joined, reflects me alone, mouth that sings, eyes that stream with tears? No, no, with droplets of moon… "
– Puck’s song in Lac aux dames (lyrics by Colette), in Colette at the Movies: Criticism and Screenplay, edited by Alain and Odette Virmaux, Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., New York 1980
Émilie Cauquy. "At first Colette gave her the air of a Pekinese dog, then Jean Renoir transformed her into a cat, and finally Jacques Tourneur found the panther in her. To those who marveled at her therianthropy, the actress, invited to San Sebastián in 1988, loved to reply: “There are two types of women, those who end up as cows, and those who end up as goats. I would rather be one of the goats”. In Lac aux dames, Simone Simon is Puck, a shrewd and wild, fairy-tale and firmly modern spirit as in Shakespeare. To complete this portrait picture, Jean-Pierre Aumont said that, “Simone seems to have come into the world to play the part of Colette’s pure and wicked ingénues. She knew how to convey sincerity to the camera and at the same time a mischievousness which swept away all the theatrical conventions of actresses at the time”. Puck was the creature destined to bring Simone Simon to the attention of Fox, and to the attention of Marcel Duchamp, who was inspired by her for his Rrose Sélavy. One of Puck’s first lines goes like this: “I’m not a good girl”. Overt frankness shaped by Colette from top to bottom, this mysterious exoticism, this bohemian poetry make Simone Simon the true star of the film."
"Colette was chosen by Philippe de Rothschild (Théâtre Pigalle, 1929-1932), who was intent on producing a light film, for the most part en plein air, based on a bestseller. The novel by Vicki Baum (whose literary structure deserves attention: one shouldn’t forget that it was Dorothy Arzner who adapted Baum, a strong and eccentric character), re-worked by Colette, Marc Allégret and André Gide, made a stratospheric film, a transgender sensation. The main male (or presumed to be) character, Jean-Pierre Aumont, twenty-three years old, a young brilliant leading man with completely golden naked chest (it is said that Johnny Weissmuller was even considered for the role), is a doll to be enjoyed, admired, desired, dressed, looked after, saved, married, in essence unable to exist without the women around him. “Of course he loves me, but he doesn’t know how to tell me, he’s a swimming instructor, you understand?”. Lac aux dames, or the Fred Peloux in Chéri turned upside down by the Vinca in Green Wheat." Émilie Cauquy (Il Cinema Ritrovato, 2017).
AA: Vicki Baum was a German writer involved with the currents of die Neue Sachlichkeit and Querschnittfilm, a modernist in literature and the theatre with an instinct for popular entertainment thanks to which she became an international bestselling writer. David Bordwell has written illuminating lines on the most famous adaptation of her work, Grand Hotel, analyzing it as a breakthrough in Hollywood for a new kind of narrative.
Lac aux dames, based on a 1927 novel by Vicki Baum published in English as Martin's Summer, is more conventional, yet with certain affinities with Grand Hotel: it also takes place at a big hotel, and there is an aspect of the Querschnittfilm, the Querschnitt blade being Eric Heller himself, the swimming instructor, the male protagonist and sex object who keeps meeting more women than he can handle.
Jean-Pierre Aumont receives star billing but the whole film is well cast. A special revelation is Simone Simon in her international breakthrough, an unforgettable apparition worthy of comparison with Louise Brooks in Die Büchse von Pandora and Jean Seberg in Lilith.
Lac aux dames may seem to belong to the Don Juan tradition of fiction. It is true that women throw themselves at Eric Heller and he does not always succeed in fending them off. He is an engineer, an inventor and a sportsman, but he is completely broke (the novel was written in 1927 in Germany). In the novel it is stressed that the weather is almost always bad, and Eric cannot earn anything. He cannot visit balls because he has nothing to wear. He is weakened by hunger; he has no credit left at the restaurant (but he is always welcome to the innkeeper's daughter's room upstairs). When his arm is wounded from a rusty nail and he contracts blood poisoning he does not visit a doctor, presumably because he cannot afford to.
The film as directed by Marc Allégret and photographed by Jules Kruger is marvellously sensual and erotic. Especially the scenes between Jean-Pierre Aumont and Simone Simon are deservedly anthology pieces. Illa Meery's scenes, considered daring at the time and savoured by Lo Duca in L'Érotisme au cinéma I-III, are included in the print on display. Allégret and Kruger relish the visual possibilities of the water element. Eric resists the advances of the underage Puck but finally succumbs to them (in what is in today's parlance statutory rape). The hot scene takes place in a granary ("it is good to lie in the oats", says Puck); the setting strikes a chord in a Nordic viewer.
Fundamentally Eric is depressed by the superficial and frivolous attentions of the ladies of the leisure class, but in three of the affairs there is an element of gravity, and Puck is transformed by the physical act of love ("I'm not a child anymore"; "when you touched me my sap began to flow"). When Eric rejects her she gets desperate, and everybody is alarmed, fearing that Puck has drowned herself in the lake. Eric jumps into the lake, too, in a suicidal moment, but he is fished back to safety with a net.
The protagonists are far from conventional. In Puck, like in Lilith and Lulu (Die Büchse der Pandora), madness and passion are inseparable. In Jean-Pierre Aumont there is a magnetic bisexual charge, his oiled, athletic body a luminous sight resembling male stars of Fox Film Corporation like Charles Farrell and George O'Brien. In Puck and Eric, death drive comes close to the surface.
The plot of the novel has been changed in many ways. An interesting detail: Eric Heller has invented safety film (which became the film industry standard in the 1950s). The novel ends with the news that Eric's invention has been patented and that he will become a rich man. In the novel unlike in the film adaptation it is Puck who reunites with Eric at the hospital bed.
The film has been beautifully shot on location in Austria in the state of Salzburg at the Wolfgangsee, named after Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. I'm reminded of Douglas Sirk's Interlude whose Finnish title is The Lovers of Salzburg although it takes place in Bavaria; but there is a visit to the Mozart House in Salzburg. A suicide attempt at the lake is a key connection between the two films.
The dialogues by Colette are sharp and witty, her lyrics to Puck's songs full of poetry.
Sources give three different durations for this film. On display was a print whose duration today was 94 minutes, restored by La Cinémathèque française, giving a satisfying impression of Jules Kruger's cinematography, with some passages perhaps retrieved from difficult and duped sources, even 16 mm.
BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: OUR PROGRAM NOTE BY JARI SEDERGREN:
BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: OUR PROGRAM NOTE BY JARI SEDERGREN:
Komea mutta rahaton nuori mies Eric – työtön insinööri – ottaa kesätyöpaikan uimaopettajana. Kuvankauniissa ympäristössä Alppien järvialueella – kuvaukset toteutettiin Salzburgin lähistöllä – Eric rakastuu nuoreen perijättäreen, joka on lomailemassa isänsä kanssa. Hänen huomionsa osuu myös poikatyttömäiseen Puckiin joka asuu järven toisella puolella ja joka pelastaa hänen henkensä eräänä sumuisena yönä. Paikalle saapuu myös Ericin vanha mielitietty, jonka aviopuolisoa poliisi etsii.
Elokuvan todellinen päähenkilö on tietysti villi ja vapaa Puck, jonka ensimmäisiin repliikkeihin kuuluu ilkikurinen toteamus: ”Minä olen paha tyttö”. Puck on Coletten luomus kiireestä kantapäähän, boheemia runoutta ja salaperäistä eksotismia koko paketti.
Coletten valitsi tehtävään elokuvan rahoittaja Philippe de Rotschild, joka työpaikka oli vuosina 1929-1932 Théâtre Pigalle. Teksti oli kirjailija Vicky Baumilta, joka oli samaten vahva ja eksentrinen persoonallisuus ja joka toimi esikuvana mm. aiemmin tänä vuonna nähdylle naisohjaajalle Dorothy Arznerille. Sukupuoli-termi saa näissä teoksissa huutia.
Jean-Pierre Aumont on Ericin roolia tehdessään 23-vuotias ja suoriutuu tehtävästään varmaankin paremmin kuin häntä huomattavasti rotevampi Johnny Weismuller, tunnettu olympiauimari ja Tarzan-tähti, jota tehtävään aluksi suunniteltiin. Naisten keskelle Aumont on kuin luotu: “Tottakai hän rakastaa minua, mutta kai sen tajuat että hän ei voi kertoa sitä minulle, onhan hän uimaopettaja.”
– Jari Sedergren 27.8.2019
CAST AND CREDITS ACCORDING TO WIKIPÉDIA:
Fiche technique
Titre : Lac aux dames
Réalisation : Marc Allégret, assisté d'Yves Allégret et de Colette de Jouvenel
Scénario : Marc Allégret et Jean-Georges Auriol, d'après le roman Hell in Frauensee de Vicki Baum
Dialogues : Colette
Direction artistique : Philippe de Rothschild
Décors : Lazare Meerson et Alexandre Trauner
Costumes : Marcel Rochas
Photographie : Jules Kruger et René Ribault
Montage : Denise Batcheff et Yvonne Martin
Son : Hermann Storr
Musique : Georges Auric
Production : Philippe de Rothschild
Société de production : Sopra
Société de distribution : Société des films sonores Tobis
Pays d'origine : France
Langue originale : français
Format : Noir et blanc - 35 mm - 1,37:1 - Son Mono
Genre : Comédie dramatique
Durée : 106 minutes
Date de sortie : France : 18 mai 1934
Distribution
Jean-Pierre Aumont : Eric Heller
Rosine Deréan : Danny Lyssenhop
Simone Simon : Puck
Michel Simon : Oscar Lyssenhop
Illa Meery : Anika
Odette Joyeux : Carla Lyssenhop
Vladimir Sokoloff : Baron Dobbersberg
Maroulka : Vefi
Paul Asselin : Brindel
Romain Bouquet : l'aubergiste
Maurice Rémy : Comte Stereny
Eugène Dumas : Matz
Anthony Gildès
Germaine Reuver
Milly Mathis
IL CINEMA RITROVATO 2017
Sog.: dal romanzo Hell in Frauensee di Vicki Baum. Scen.: Jean-George Auriol, Marc Allégret. F.: Jules Krüger, René Ribault. M.: Denise Batcheff. Scgf.: Lazare Meerson. Mus.: Georges Auric. Int.: Jean-Pierre Aumont (Eric Heller), Rosine Deréan (Danièle/Danny Lyssenhop), Simone Simon (Puck), Illa Meery (Anika), Vladimir Sokoloff (barone di Dobbersberg), Odette Joyeux (Carla), Michel Simon (Oscar Lyssenhop), Ila Meery (Anika). Prod.: Philippe de Rothschild per Société Parisienne de Production. 35 mm. D.: 95’.
Il lago delle vergini
Director: Marc Allégret
Year: 1934
Country: Francia
Running time: 95'
Copy from La Cinémathèque française
courtesy of Les Éditions René Chateau
Restored in 1987 by La Cinémathèque française
LOCATIONS (IMDB)
St. Wolfgang, Upper Austria, Austria
Wolfgangsee, Salzkammergut, Austria
St. Gilgen, Salzburg, Austria
STUDIO (IMDB)
Studios Films Sonores Tobis, Épinay-sur-Seine, France
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