Jacques Deval - who?

You’ll be lucky to run into someone who’s heard of Jacques Deval but he was, before and after WW2, the Neil Simon of his day. Possibly most prominent in theatre, he still managed to clock up seventy six screen credits including seven versions of his most famous play “Tovaritch” - filmed in Italy, Turkey, Hungary, his native France and most famously the splendid Warner Brothers - Anatol Litvak 1937 Hollywood adaptation with Charles Boyer and Claudette Colbert.

Throw in a couple of the language editions of Pabst’s L’Atalantide and multiple adaptations of Deval’s "Kitty Gallante" and "Her Cardboard Lover." He also, pretty much as a sideline, directed three movies.

Deval himself made a first film of "Tovaritch" in 1935 with short-film maker Germain Fried and uncredited assist from Jean Tarride and Victor Trivas.  The lead white Russian aristocrat duo were played by long lasting André Lefaur and Hungarian Irén Zilahy who had filmed that year’s Quadrille d’amour with Fried. 

The plot shows the couple reduced from the splendor of the 1917 Russian court to a penniless existence in Paulau’s seedy Paris Hotel d’univers, with an icon on their wall next to Lefaur’s saber. They attempt to maintain morale while not touching the four million francs entrusted to them to restore the Tsarist cause. At a low ebb, they spot a Positions Vacant advertisement and, on the basis that they had once served imperial masters, they write themselves references and apply (“toi valet, moi femme de chambre”). The move proves a great success with the couple able to help Alerme’s boorish, rich family present themselves in society but things begin to unravel at a diner party where the bankers and aristocrats, who knew the couple in their former roles, face the leads.

Also in the cast and making a disappointing impression is Winna Winifried, the Danish actress who had registered with striking naturalness in Jean Renoir’s then recent La nuit du carrefour, though the deep curtsy she unexpectedly makes recognising the former Grand Duchess is possibly the film’s most telling moment. Lefaur at least gets to display his accomplished fencing skills.

André Lefaur - 1921

They all give it their best shot but it’s hardly surprising to find them eclipsed by Boyer, Colbert, Melville Cooper and co. in the later American film. The one French performer to impress is close cropped Pierre Renoir (La nuit du carrefour’s Maigret) in the Basil Rathbone part, the leads’ contemptible former jailer (“Il n’y a plus de Tsar!”) who persuades them to use the fortune to save the oil fields of the homeland (represented by one drab shot of hay stacks) from the offer by rapacious imperialist diner guests, montaged to intrude leaning into Renoir's close-ups.

The editing is by Jean Delannoy and Henri Rust. The latter curiously also did Litvak’s version. It’s quite deft but can’t conceal the continuity errors with Lefaur’s pajama jacket. Close-ups reveal the on-set phone as a battered prop or emphasise the now useless cheque book thrown in the kitchen trash.

One is left with the probably correct impression of a cast of Boulevard theatre players turned loose in then busy designer Lucien Aguettand’s spacious, windowless movie studio decors.

There are untitled DVDs on this one but we do better with Deval’s 1936 Club de Femmes / French Girls’ Club, which is on You Tube in a passable copy with translation. It shows its director's familiarity with film form advanced. We open with yet another montage of converging train rails as young women with suitcases arrive in big city Paris. Mother Julienne Paroli tells her daughter to send money as soon as possible. However at the sleazy rooming house where the manageress assures the newcomer of respectability though the key to her door won’t be ready till the next day, a man’s feet are seen entering.

This situation can’t go on so a philanthropist whose statue adorns the entrance, sets up a guest house to be run by Eve Francis no less  (L’Herbier’s Eldorado) She has installed resident Doctor Valentine Tessier (Renoir’s Madam Bovary). Of the hundred and forty girls scampering around the pool and reading room in skimpy outfits, we get to know four.

Top billed Danielle Darieux, with twenty films already on her resumé at nineteen, is at her most pouty-winning. Easy to see why Henri Decoin and Albert Préjean were competing for her attention off set. She is determined to get her boyfriend into her room despite the no men rule and continues to be caught out by management. Francis reveals a soft heart demonstrated by carrying residents who can’t find the rent.

Club des femmes - Francis & Darieux

It’s one of our few glimpses of  Eve Francis who has an importance tangential to her acting career. She was the enthusiast to introduce Louis Delluc to movies, triggering his pioneering of Film Societies and Art Cinemas. I rate that as more important than her day job.

 Husband Henri Decoin & Darieux

Blonded Josette Day (Belle to Cocteau’s beast) is a steno who can’t spell so Else Argal, who keeps on getting gorgeous close-ups, intervenes. The actress was Mrs. Deval and would appear in only one other film, a bit part in Hollywood. She takes Josette in hand while reluctantly keeping those hands off. This is 1936 remember. The lesbian material, which is quite explicit if chaste, stopped the film getting registration in New York where it went on show anyway. Josette is a natural victim of the switchboard girl who is there to contact girls for her white slaver chums.

Australia’s own Betty Stockfeld (born in Sydney), then queen of the quota quickies, is  a willing customer of the operator. She came to Paris to exploit men who wanted her lovely white Norwegian (!) body - which isn’t anywhere near as well filmed. The operator’s underworld contacts have to buy her out of trouble when she tries to lift an American’s bankroll. She lands on her feet, about to marry the aging Lord Carringdale.

Smuggling the boyfriend in, got up as her girl cousin, past the remarkably gullible Francis and Tessier, means Danielle manages to meet her needs. The film gets by with only the one male character and for that poor Raymond Galle contributes a drag act that’s as plausible as Mrs Norman Bates. Meanwhile Day comes back distraught after some rough handling - a weeping naked in the shower scene. Argal determines to do something about it.

This sets up Tessier doing her “One day I will answer to the judgement of God though I avoid the judgement of men” complete with the prospect of joining a leperasarium and a nun on death watch - the only manifestation of religion the film manages. Club de Femmes is actually quite soft centered and moralistic despite its attempts to be scandalous. We get its “Je ne veux pas des chateaux” and final address by Francis in the snow.

The film form is increasingly assured as these plots converge with the squads of nubile young women making their way through the gleaming white decors that Aguettand has styled after the work of Lazare Meerson, who was also an influence on Cedric Gibbons in establishing MGM’s house style.

Prestige cameraman Jules Krauss and editor Jean Delannoy both get credits as director’s helpers. Like other celebrity writers - think Zane Grey, Robert Bolt, Sidney Sheldon and particularly James Clavell - Deval's movies are all but forgotten. He also did the 1950 Bernard Blier movie L'Invité du mardi - c'mon You Tube. You can do it!

The fact that the subject matter of Club de Femmes was considered sensational is one of the things that dates the piece but, like the conventions in which it is filmed, this also makes it one of the most accurate representations of thirties European popular entertainment and it does manage the shift from antique curiosity to attention grabbing melodrama. It deserves wider showing. 

If Deval's films are a footnote, they do make an intriguing one.

Colbert & Boyer 

 

 

 

 

 

Barrie Pattison 2021.



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