Remontons les Champs-Élysées (a Gaumont / Éclair digital transfer)

Sacha Guitry: Remontons les Champs-Élysées (1938).

Remontons les Champs-Élysées. Fantaisie filmée conçue, dialoguée, portée à l'écran et interprétée par Sacha Guitry.
Kärsimysten katu / Lidelsernas gata.
    FR 1938. PC: SEDIF. P: Serge Sandberg.
    D+SC: Sacha Guitry. Chef opérateur: Jean Bachelet. Opérateurs: Marc Fossard et Georges Lucas. AD: René Renoux, Roger Claude et Lucien Carré, ass: Jeanne Étiévant. Cost: dessinés par G. K. Benda, exécutés par Louis Muelle et Granier. Les meubles de style sont tous venus de chez Chalom. Les perruques sont de chez Pontet.
    M: Adolphe Borchard – enregistrée par orchestre des Concerts Pasedelopu au pupitre G. Derveaux. S: J. De Bretagne. ED: Myriam.
    Songs include:
– a song by a young doe (biche) in Parc-aux-Cerfs (The Deer Park)
– the song accompanying the virgin's entry into the royal bedchamber
– a French revolutionary song chanted by the people
– Richard Wagner: Pilgerchor aus Tannhäuser (1845)
– Pierre-Jean de Béranger, a chanson by
– Olivier Métra, waltzes by
– Jacques Offenbach, waltzes by
    C: Sacha Guitry (L'instituteur / Jean-Louis / Ludovic / Louis XV / Napoléon III), Jacqueline Delubac (Flora), Jeanne Boitel (La Pompadour), Lisette Lanvin (Louisette), Pierre Mingaud (Laurent Mourguet), Lucien Baroux (Marquis de Chauvelin), Raymond Galle (Louis XIII), Germaine Dermoz (Marie de Médicis), Emile Drain (Napoléon Ier), Raymond Allain (Eugénie de Mnotijo), Mila Parely (La tricoteuse: la servante de Marat / la fille de Marat).
    Jean Périer (Choiseul), Roger Bourdin (le chanteur des "Ambassadeurs"), Robert Pizani (Richard Wagner / Jacques Offenbach / Olivier Métra), Jean Coquelin (le médecin de Chauvelin), Morton (Lebon), Jean Davy (Ludovic jeune / Jean-Louis jeune), René Fauchois (Marat), Josseline Gaël (la jeune Suédoise / Léone jeune), Jane Marken (la mère de Louisette).
    Jacques Erwin (Louis XIV jeune / le Duc de Montpensier), Maurice Schutz (Louis XIV âgé), Henry Bry (le bonimenteur), Barbara Shaw, Gay Buisson (les sœurs siamoises), Geneviève de St.Jean (la biche), Vonelly (Dubertret), Julien Rivière, Guy Sloux, Pierre Huchet (les valets), Irène Corday (une biche), Jeanne Provost (Mme du Hausset), Jane de Rosalba (une dame d'honneur), Alain Durthal (le médecin du Roi), Léon Walther, Claude Lehmann, René Maupré, Puylagarde, Roussel (les seigneurs), Jean Buquet (Ludovic enfant), Ariane Pathé (Madame du Barry), Anna Scott (la dauphine), Jean Hébey (le dauphin), Gaston Dubosc (l'abbé Maudoux), Jacques Berlioz (le Duc de Bouillon), André Laurent (Jean-Jacques Rousseau), Paul Villé (Guignol), Pierre Mingand (le montreur de marionnettes), Henry Houry (un orateur), Louis Allibert (Bonaparte), Madeleine Foujane (l'impératrice Marie-Louise), Marie-Claire Pissarro (la servante), Philippe Richard (Louis XVIII), Robert Deller (Charles X), André Marnay (le roi Louis-Philippe), Georges Grey (le Duc de Joinville), Andrée Berty (une servante), Mme de Morlaye (la reine Marie-Amélie), Dorival (l'aubergiste), Violette Fleury (la fille de l'aubergiste), Raymonde Allain (l'impératrice Eugénie), Marika (la pianiste), Pierre Juvenet (le Duc de Monty), Georges Derveaux (Olivier Métra ), Jeanne Helbling (la femme du professeur).
    Janine Darcey (une biche), Claire Gérard (une dame au café), Renée Gardès (une tricoteuse), Jean Marais (l'abbé-précepteur chargé de veiller à l'éducation du jeune Ludovic).
    Genre: Comédie.
    108 min / 2950 m [Finland 1940],100 min, 97 min
    Date de sortie: 1 Dec 1938.
    Finnish premiere: 10 Nov 1940 Rea, released by Kino Filmi O.Y.
    Telepremiere: 5 Feb 1969 Yle TV1.
    A Gaumont / Éclair digital transfer.
    Corona lockdown viewings.
    Viewed from the MUBI platform, 98 minutes with English subtitles by Éclair, at a forest retreat in Punkaharju on a tv screen, 10 July 2020.

OFFICIAL INTRO:

"La longue et belle histoire des Champs-Elysées est racontée par un professeur à ses écoliers, en feuilletant l'album de famille de quatre générations ayant vécu aux Champs-Elysées".

"L'ancêtre, c'est Louis XV en personne. L'une de ses maîtresses, le Bien-Aimé a un fils illégitime qui épousera plus tard la fille de Marat. Ils auront à leur tour un garçon qui épousera la fille naturelle de Napoléon Ier. Ce troisième couple aura un fils qui épousera la fille naturelle d'un grand républicain, et ceux-ci, enfin, auront un garçon qui porte en lui – par la main gauche – du sang de Louis XV, de Marat, de l'Empereur et d'un républicain."

"Cet enfant ne sait pas très bien s'il doit mettre sa main droite sur son cœur – comme Louis XVI à l'échafaud – dans l'ouverture de son gilet – comme l'Empereur à Austerlitz – ou bien s'il doit lever le poing..."

Au cours de ce film, on verra notamment:

– Une chasse à courre sous Louis XIII.
– Louis XIV remontant les Champs-Elysées.
– La mort de Louis XV.
– La foire aux montres, installée au Rond-Point.
– Les duels dans les allées obscures.
– Jean-Jacques Rousseau, dans un rôle (imprévu) d'architecte.
– Richard Wagner, chef d'orchestre malchanceux.
– Le premier guignol dont le directeur est Guillotine, en 1793.
– L'armée allemande défilant en 1871.
– Les Alliés en 1918.
– Le roi d'Angleterre en 1938. (From the official program of the film).

AA: A lavish spectacle, a historical cabaret with Sacha Guitry as the master of ceremonies / schoolmaster. He is literally giving a history lesson to a class of schoolchildren, but performs his task in an irreverent manner, including subjects unsuitable for children.

It is a history of les Champs-Élysées, named after the Elysian Fields, the final resting place of dead heroes. The avenue runs from la Place de la Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe. In Guitry's hands the yarn grows into a history of France as a collection of vignettes, anecdotes and curiosities.

It is also a family history (a bit like Mark Twain's parody "autobiography") in an imaginary "shadow lineage" with ancestors dating back to Louis XV, Marat and Napoléon – all culminating in the schoolmaster / puppeteer narrator played by Guitry. His parents are of course the legendary figures' illegitimate offspring, themselves unknown in history books. To demonstrate how near we are to the past we are told that the teacher's mother is still alive at the age of 116.

Ernst Lubitsch directed a cycle of historical films like Madame Dubarry and Anna Boleyn in Weimar Germany, and Alexander Korda, probably inspired by Lubitsch, launched his own cycle in England in the 1930s, starting with The Private Life of Henry VIII. For Siegfried Kracauer, Lubitsch banalized and trivialized history in films in which world-historical epochs were reduced into bedchamber anecdotes. It is not quite wrong nor quite right to think so. Lubitsch did have a sense of tragedy and a vision of absolutism in his spectacles.

Guitry obviously knew his Lubitsch and Korda when he launched his series of historical satires or cultural causeries with Les Perles de la couronne (1937). Much is original: Guitry's own boniment, his sense of the absurd and his skill in the razor-sharp cut or transition. The young Louis XV enters a carriage and leaves it instantly from the other side as an old man 50 years later. In one of the most memorable scenes the young Bonaparte meets the old Napoléon and challenges him about Republicanism.

I don't know if there is any historical accuracy in Jean-Jacques Rousseau appearing as a young architect after whose drawing the Café Les Ambassadeurs will be built, or Richard Wagner applying for a position of a conductor there and being promptly fired after the premiere of the Pilgrims' Chorus from Tannhäuser.

The soundtrack is wonderful and is in itself a musical history of France. I would love to see a soundtrack listing; I tried to compile some notes in the credit listing above. This aspect of the film belongs to the same lineage as Ettore Scola's Le Bal.

The Me Too aspect of Remontons les Champs-Élysées is inflammatory, particularly in the Parc-aux-Cerfs (The Deer Park) sequence. To sum up: France before the Revolution is presented as an endless brothel, in which all women (including underage "deer") are fair game for the inextinguishable appetites of the King, and other men are free to enjoy his "leftovers". A bit like in the topical Jeffrey Epstein / Ghislaine Maxwell case, La Pompadour is seen as the senior administrator of the sex traffic.

I paused to think whether this story could be produced today. My conclusion is yes. Maybe it should be, and the screenwriter and the director should be women. The presence of the Tricoteuses de la Révolution, already conspicuous, might be expanded.

The history of France, and its bonimenteur Sacha Guitry, are seen as a sum of their paradoxes and contradictions. Guitry leads a double life as a teacher (on weekdays) and puppeteer (on Sundays) and has married a woman whom he found as a "baby abandoned, baby found" on les Champs-Élysées (abandoned, "but not by one of the Presidents of the Third Republic").

Together with his 10-year son he is not sure whether he should put his hand on his heart like Louis XVI, in his tunic like the Emperor, or in a fist like his great-grandfather Marat. But he knows one thing very well: "in any circumstances there are three words we can all agree on: Vive la France!"

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: THE MUBI INTRO:
BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: THE MUBI INTRO:

Remontons les Champs-Élysées
Directed by Sacha Guitry
France, 1939
Comedy, Drama, History
    98
    French
    English

Synopsis

A Paris schoolmaster, tells the story of the famed Paris boulevard, the Champs-Elysées, from its beginnings in 1617, as a road cut by Marie de Médicis through marshes and woods, through its garish bourgeois splendor under Napoleon III, to the present.

Our take

In this urban walkabout, Sacha Guitry turns to one of the most beautiful avenues in the world to draw an amusing, graceful portrait of the French capital through the decades. Using outdoor location photography and frequent Godard-style jump cuts, the film is a one-man history of a whole country.

SYNOPSIS FROM WIKIPEDIA:

"Le film retrace l'histoire des Champs-Élysées, racontée par un instituteur (descendant à la fois de Louis XV, de Marat et de Napoléon Ier), de la place de la Concorde en 1617 à la place de l'Étoile en 1938. Sont notamment évoqués l'assassinat de Concino Concini, les circonstances qui amenèrent Louis XV, las de la marquise de Pompadour, à faire aménager le Parc-aux-Cerfs, l'établissement des premiers théâtres de marionnettes sur les Champs-Élysées, la mort du Bien-Aimé annoncée par celle, survenue six mois auparavant, du ministre Chauvelin, et son enterrement nocturne, les noires heures de la Terreur, la rencontre, fortuite et improbable, entre Bonaparte et Napoléon, celui-ci reprochant à celui-là d'avoir trahi ses idéaux de jeunesse, l'assassinat nocturne de l'inventeur du gaz d'éclairage, les débuts parisiens de Richard Wagner, le retour des cendres de l'Empereur en 1840, le départ de Louis-Philippe pour l'exil, le succès des chansons de Béranger et le triomphe des valses de Métra, un bal à la cour de Napoléon III…"