''Les Parents terribles'' is a
1948
Events January
* January 1
** The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is inaugurated.
** The Constitution of New Jersey (later subject to amendment) goes into effect.
** The railways of Britain are nationalized, to form British ...
film adaptation directed by
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (, , ; 5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, filmmaker, visual artist and critic. He was one of the foremost creatives of the su ...
from his own stage play ''
Les Parents terribles
''Les Parents terribles'' is a 1938 French play written by Jean Cocteau. Despite initial problems with censorship, it was revived on the French stage several times after its original production, and in 1948 a film adaptation directed by Cocteau ...
''. Cocteau used the same cast who had appeared in a successful stage revival of the play in Paris in 1946. The film has sometimes been known by the English title ''The Storm Within''.
Background
Cocteau's stage play ''Les Parents terribles'' was first produced in Paris in 1938, but its run suffered from a number of disruptions, first from censorship and then the outbreak of war. In 1946 it was revived in a production which brought together several of the actors for whom Cocteau had originally conceived their roles, notably Yvonne de Bray, Gabrielle Dorziat, and Jean Marais. Cocteau said that he wanted to film his play for three reasons. "First, to record the performances of incomparable actors; second, mingle with them myself and look them full in the face instead of seeing them at a distance on the stage. I wanted to put my eye to the keyhole and surprise them with a telescopic lens."
Plot
In a rambling apartment a middle-aged couple, Yvonne and Georges, live with their 22-year-old son Michel and Yvonne's spinster sister Léonie ("tante Léo"), who has also been in love with Georges. Yvonne is a reclusive semi-invalid, dependent on her insulin treatment, and intensely possessive of her son (who returns her immoderate affection and calls her "Sophie"); Georges distractedly pursues his eccentric inventions; it is left to Léo to preserve such order as she can in their life and their apartment, which she describes as a "gypsy caravan" ("la roulotte"). When Michel announces that he is in love with a girl, Madeleine, whom he wishes to introduce to them, his parents are immediately hostile and seek to forbid the relationship, reducing Michel to despair. Georges realises that Madeleine is the same woman who has been his own mistress in recent months, and he confesses all to Léo, who devises a plan to extricate father and son by forcing Madeleine into silent surrender of them both.
The family visit Madeleine in her apartment where they are impressed by her modest and well-disciplined manner. Michel's initial joy at this apparent reconciliation turns to despair as Madeleine is blackmailed into rejecting him by Georges's secret threats. Yvonne consoles her son with satisfaction as they return home. Léo however is appalled by the cruelty and selfishness of what has been done and decides to support Madeleine.
The next day Léo persuades Georges, and then the more reluctant Yvonne, that the only way to rescue the inconsolable Michel is to allow him to marry Madeleine. Michel and Madeleine are joyfully reunited, but Yvonne is unnoticed as she slips away and poisons herself. When the others realise what she has done, it is too late to save her. A new order is established in the "roulotte".
Cast
*
Jean Marais
Jean-Alfred Villain-Marais (11 December 1913 – 8 November 1998), known professionally as Jean Marais (), was a French actor, film director, theatre director, painter, sculptor, visual artist, writer and photographer. He performed in over 100 f ...
: Michel
*
Josette Day
Josette Day (Paris, July 31, 1914 – Paris, June 27, 1978) was a French film actress.
Born Josette Noële Andrée Claire Dagory, she began her career as a child actress in 1919 at the age of five. When she was 18, Day was the mistress of Paul M ...
: Madeleine
*
Yvonne de Bray
Yvonne de Bray (12 May 1889 – 1 February 1954) was a French stage and film actress. She was born Yvonne Laurence Blanche de Bray in Paris and died there.
In 1939, she and her partner Violette Morris invited Jean Cocteau to stay with them a ...
: Yvonne ("Sophie")
*
Marcel André
Marcel André (2 January 1885–13 October 1974) was a French film actor.Goble p.87
Selected filmography
* ''Si l'empereur savait ça'' (1930) - Albert (Master of the Horse)
* ''Soyons gais'' (1930) - Townley
* ''Le père célibataire'' (1931)
* ...
: Georges
*
Gabrielle Dorziat
Gabrielle Dorziat (1880–1979) was a French stage and film actress. Dorziat was a fashion trend setter in Paris and helped popularize the designs of Coco Chanel. The Théâtre Gabrielle-Dorziat in Épernay, France is named for her.
Biography
S ...
: Léonie ("Léo")
*
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (, , ; 5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, filmmaker, visual artist and critic. He was one of the foremost creatives of the su ...
(voice - uncredited) : Narrator
Production
Cocteau made the decision that his film would be strictly faithful to the writing of the play and that he would not open it up from its prescribed settings (as he had done in his previous adaptation, ''
L'Aigle à deux têtes
''L'Aigle à deux têtes'' is a French play in three acts by Jean Cocteau, written in 1943 and first performed in 1946. It is known variously in English as ''The Eagle with Two Heads'', ''The Eagle Has Two Heads'', ''The Two-Headed Eagle'', ''Th ...
''). He wrote no additional dialogue for the film, but substantially pruned the stage text, making the drama more concentrated.
[Gérard Lieber, "La Mise-en-scène des voix dans ''Les Parents terribles''", in ''Le Cinéma de Jean Cocteau... actes du colloque...: textes réunis par Christian Rolot...'' (Montpellier: Centre d’études littéraires françaises du XXème siècle, Université Paul-Valéry, 1994.) pp.51-52.] He did however reinvent the staging of the play for the camera, employing frequent boldly framed close-ups of his actors, and he made full use of a mobile camera to roam through the rooms of the apartment, emphasising the claustrophobic atmosphere of the setting. The translation from theatre to screen was a challenge which Cocteau relished: he wrote, "What is exciting about the cinema is that there is no syntax. You have to invent it as and when problems arise. What freedom for the artist and what results one can obtain!".
Another significant contribution to the atmosphere of the film was the art direction by
Christian Bérard
Christian Bérard (20 August 1902 – 11 February 1949), also known as Bebè, was a French artist, fashion illustrator and designer.
Bérard and his lover Boris Kochno, who worked for the Ballets Russes and was also co-founder of the Ballets d ...
which filled the spaces of the apartment with objects and décor - awkward heavy furniture, piles of trinkets and ornaments, pictures crooked on the walls, unmade beds, and dust - which described the way in which the characters lived.
Cocteau refuted however the suggestion of some critics that this was a realist film, pointing out that he had never known any family like the one portrayed, and insisting that it was "painting of the most imaginative kind."
Filming took place between 28 April and 3 July 1948 at the Studio Francœur. Cocteau's assistant director was
Raymond Leboursier
Raymond Leboursier (22 May 1917 – 26 July 1987) was a French film editor, film director, actor, and screenwriter.
Filmography
Actor
* 1930: ''Le Réquisitoire'' (first title of the film: ''Homicide'') by Dimitri Buchowetzki
* 1931: ''The ...
, who was joined by
Claude Pinoteau
Claude Pinoteau (25 May 1925 – 5 October 2012) was a French film director and scriptwriter. Born in Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts de Seine, Île-de-France, France. He died in Neuilly-sur-Seine, aged 87. (in French) His sister was the actress ...
(uncredited).
At the time of shooting the final shot (where one sees the apartment receding into the distance), some insecure tracks for the camera produced a shaky image on the film. Rather than reshoot the scene, Cocteau made a virtue of the problem by adding the sound of carriage wheels on the soundtrack together with some words (spoken by himself) to suggest a deliberate effect: "And the caravan continued on its way. The gypsies do not stop" ("Et la roulotte continuait sa route. Les romanichels ne s'arrêtent pas").
Critical reception
When the film was first shown in France in December 1948, the critical reception of it was overwhelmingly favourable and Cocteau was repeatedly congratulated on having produced an original piece of cinema out of a work of the theatre: for example, "It is what one may rightly call pure cinema... The correspondence between image and text has never been so complete, so convincing".
André Bazin
André Bazin (; 18 April 1918 – 11 November 1958) was a renowned and influential French film critic and film theorist.
Bazin started to write about film in 1943 and was a co-founder of the renowned film magazine '' Cahiers du cinéma'' in 1951, ...
wrote a detailed review of the film in which he took up the idea of "pure cinema" and tried to analyse how Cocteau had succeeded in creating it out of the most uncinematic material imaginable. Bazin highlights three features which assist this transition. First, the confidence and harmony of the actors, who have previously played their roles together many times on stage and are able to inhabit their characters as if by second nature, allow them to maintain an intensity of performance despite the fragmentation of the film-making process. Second, Cocteau shows unusual freedom in his choice of camera positions and movements, seldom resorting to the conventional means of filming dialogue with reverse angle shots, and introducing close-ups and long shots with a sureness of touch that never disrupts the movement of the scene; the spectator is always placed in the position of a witness to the action (as in the theatre), rather than a participant, and even that of a voyeur, given the intimacy of the camera's gaze. Third, Bazin notes the psychological subtlety with which Cocteau chooses his camera positions to match the responses of his 'ideal spectator'. He cites an example of the shot in which Michel tells Yvonne about the girl he loves, his face placed above hers and both facing the audience, just as they had done in the theatre; but in the film Cocteau uses a close-up which shows only the eyes of Yvonne below and the speaking mouth of Michel above, concentrating the image for the greatest emotional impact. In all of these aspects, the theatricality of the play is preserved but intensified through the medium of film.
Cocteau came to regard ''Les Parents terribles'' as his best film, at least from a technical point of view. This opinion has frequently been endorsed by later critics and historians of cinema.
[Georges Sadoul, ''Le Cinéma français 1890/1962''. (Paris: Flammarion, 1962.) p.106: "Durant l'après-guerre, son meilleur film avait été les ''Parents terribles''..." '' (1980 TV film)
]
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Parents Terribles, Les
Films based on works by Jean Cocteau
1948 films
French films based on plays
Films directed by Jean Cocteau
Films scored by Georges Auric
Films with screenplays by Jean Cocteau
French drama films
1948 drama films
French black-and-white films
1940s French-language films
1940s French films