locked up in pleasure
by
Douglas Messerli
Jacques Natanson and Max
Ophüls (screenplay, based on stories by Guy de Maupassant), Max Ophüls
(director) Le Plaisir (House of Pleasure) / 1952
Max
Ophüls’ 1952 film, Le Plaisir, is a three-part film, based on stories of
the French writer Guy de Maupassant. Together they can easily be read as what
price needs to be paid by the guilty pleasures of life. All three stories are
easy summarize: the first, Le Masque, concerns an
elderly man, Ambroise (Jean Galland), who
despite living an someone impoverished life with his hardworking wife (Gaby
Morlay), still insists on attending the grand dances at the local dance palace,
hiding his aging face behind a mask. Despite his slightly clumsy movements, he
still charms the lady, particularly his dancing partner, Frimousse (Gay Bruvère).
But on the occasion that this episode details, the old man suddenly collapses;
a doctor is called, who takes him home, where Ambroise’s sad tale is revealed
as told by his wife. Despite her husband’s unfaithfulness and his clearly delusional
behavior, the wife still claims that she would prefer him as he is as opposed
to a bed-ridden man nearing death.
The best of these tales, La Maison
Tellier is based on the famed story about a well-run brothel, owned by
Julia Tellier (Madeleine Renaud) who closes down her popular establishment for
a day, taking a journey with her workers to the country to attend the first
communion of her neice. Suddenly, released from their cloistered lives, the
women come in contact with and engage with nature and, during the communion
service, begin to cry at the vision of the innocence of those around them,
before somewhat morosely returning to their night-time lives.
The least of these three stories is the
last, Le Modèle, about a young artist, Jean (Daniel Gélin) who falls
desperately in love with a model, Joséphine (Simone Simon), whose drawings and
paintings of her turn him into a rich man. The two, however, almost immediately
begin
arguing, and eventually he leaves her, moving in with an artist friend
(Jean Servais), who, although unspoken, has perhaps been jealous of the love
Jean has focused on the young girl. When Joséphine finally discovers Jean’s
whereabouts, he attempts to completely disavow her; she jumps from the top room
of the building, breaking both legs, while in guilt and sorrow for his behavior
he marries her and cares for her for the rest of her life.
Unlike de Maupassant’s cynical tone in
the originals, the German-born, but Austrian-centered Ophüls is far more
sympathetic with his “sinners”; indeed the director, through his connecting
narrator (supposedly the voice of Maupassant) easily forgives characters
without seeming to judge them as simply explaining the various kinds of
entrapment in which they have found themselves as the price to be paid for the
pleasures of the flesh.
Their tears that infect the moving
religious ceremony the next day are the result, as I previously suggested of
sentimentality; but they also suggest these ladies’ own dissatisfaction for
what they have paid to live their lives. And all of them, despite the
insistence of Madame Tellier that they must rush to catch the train back,
secretly wish, clearly, they might stay on in the country village for at least
one more night. Meanwhile, however, they have caused serious battles back in
their town, as the visiting sailors and gentlemen both are set to male-to-male
warfare without the gentle ministrations of their women friends.
Even on the train, Ophüls makes clear
that the world he is depicting is about those who are either inside or out. The
two local peasants who enter the car where the madames are gathered are only
too happy to get outside into their own world again. And the lecherous
traveling salesman, only too happy to be around so many beautiful women, is
given and indecorous boot by the women when he tries to take advantage of the
situation.
As the film’s narrator makes quite clear,
we, the audience, are also among those on the “outside.” Only if we can imagine
the figures he shows us, intellectually and emotionally involve ourselves with
their joys and plights, might we be invited in. Fortunately, this director is
always happy to help us to find our way in.
Los Angeles, May 8, 2017
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