In France the past master of the movie made out of sketches was Julien Duvivier;no other director came close in this field .He never collaborated with other directors in this genre and his shorts were never included in those portmanteau movies made by different artists .
"La française et l'amour" is panned by most of the French critics ,but when they wrote off the French cinema of the fifties as dismal ,they neglected many good works :nowadays ,some of them tend to reverse their opinion.
"La française et l'amour" does not hold a candle to the Italian equivalents of the time ;a curate's egg best describes it.
Take the first one :it was made by a director on the decline, Henri Decoin ,but who,along with Duvivier and Clouzot ,lent credibility to French films noirs ;here his segment deals on a (at the time) taboo subject ;in 1960 , one rarely told the children how babies were made ; this may be a farce ,but parents did not know how to tell them the truth ;it would be 1968 before sex education really appeared .
Delannoy was one of the two main bete noires of the nouvelle vague, but he made many good movies ignored by the snobs ;his segment ,supposed to depict teenage angst falls flat though;and Roger Pierre,a comic actor ,as the Prince Charming ,well....
Boisrond is probably the most mediocre director of the batch ;his segment ,dealing with virginity , is totally bland and dull ,with poor acting at that .
Things go better (it could not get worse) with the following segment ,directed by celebrated René Clair ,helped by two wonderful actors , Claude Rich and Marie-José Nat : the honeymoon and the first row , because of a hat , of another man and another woman on the train ,and of cutting remarks about the bride's family ; Clair's sketch has elegance going for it.
Henri Verneuil , generally overlooked by the highbrows,but adored by the mainstream audience (whom I side with) ,manages pretty well with adulterer : deadpan Paul Meurisse, charming Dany Robin and handsome cynical Belmondo ,with a good supporting role by Claude Piéplu as a boring guest at the restaurant give the segment wit ,and the husband's final trick is smart.
Christian-Jaque ,another legend of the French cinema ,was a spent force in the sixties , but his sketch ,very well acted by two luminaries Annie Girardot and François Périer ,treats divorce in a very original way : both want to get divorce , but they've got no reason why. You must accuse your spouse , if you want to get divorce , it's the law !So their lawyers begin to set the wife against the hubby and vice versa; it sometimes verges on absurd ,which is fine with me.
You can stop here for the last sketch ,directed by the second bete noire of the NV ,Jean-Paul LE Chanois -who did produce good works in the late forties / early fifties,I insist -is rubbish ;Robert Lamoureux is ideally cast as a crook ,but the story never takes off ,after a promising start with Simone Renant's speech for his defence. The screenplay totally misses the point , beauty Martine Carol as a lonely heart?
An erratic work : by keeping segments 4,5 and 6 you get an enjoyable film ;at 132 min, it's overlong.
"La française et l'amour" is panned by most of the French critics ,but when they wrote off the French cinema of the fifties as dismal ,they neglected many good works :nowadays ,some of them tend to reverse their opinion.
"La française et l'amour" does not hold a candle to the Italian equivalents of the time ;a curate's egg best describes it.
Take the first one :it was made by a director on the decline, Henri Decoin ,but who,along with Duvivier and Clouzot ,lent credibility to French films noirs ;here his segment deals on a (at the time) taboo subject ;in 1960 , one rarely told the children how babies were made ; this may be a farce ,but parents did not know how to tell them the truth ;it would be 1968 before sex education really appeared .
Delannoy was one of the two main bete noires of the nouvelle vague, but he made many good movies ignored by the snobs ;his segment ,supposed to depict teenage angst falls flat though;and Roger Pierre,a comic actor ,as the Prince Charming ,well....
Boisrond is probably the most mediocre director of the batch ;his segment ,dealing with virginity , is totally bland and dull ,with poor acting at that .
Things go better (it could not get worse) with the following segment ,directed by celebrated René Clair ,helped by two wonderful actors , Claude Rich and Marie-José Nat : the honeymoon and the first row , because of a hat , of another man and another woman on the train ,and of cutting remarks about the bride's family ; Clair's sketch has elegance going for it.
Henri Verneuil , generally overlooked by the highbrows,but adored by the mainstream audience (whom I side with) ,manages pretty well with adulterer : deadpan Paul Meurisse, charming Dany Robin and handsome cynical Belmondo ,with a good supporting role by Claude Piéplu as a boring guest at the restaurant give the segment wit ,and the husband's final trick is smart.
Christian-Jaque ,another legend of the French cinema ,was a spent force in the sixties , but his sketch ,very well acted by two luminaries Annie Girardot and François Périer ,treats divorce in a very original way : both want to get divorce , but they've got no reason why. You must accuse your spouse , if you want to get divorce , it's the law !So their lawyers begin to set the wife against the hubby and vice versa; it sometimes verges on absurd ,which is fine with me.
You can stop here for the last sketch ,directed by the second bete noire of the NV ,Jean-Paul LE Chanois -who did produce good works in the late forties / early fifties,I insist -is rubbish ;Robert Lamoureux is ideally cast as a crook ,but the story never takes off ,after a promising start with Simone Renant's speech for his defence. The screenplay totally misses the point , beauty Martine Carol as a lonely heart?
An erratic work : by keeping segments 4,5 and 6 you get an enjoyable film ;at 132 min, it's overlong.