Bonjour Tristesse (1958)*** – Seen at the Cinema at the Bradford Widescreen Weekend

You might be forgiven for wondering why Otto Preminger, a past master at film noir, did not simply adapt the source novel by Francoise Sagan by tilting the material in that direction. After all, Preminger had helped create the genre with Laura (1944) and followed up with noir trilogy Whirlpool (1950), Where the Sidewalk Ends (1951) and Angel Face (1952).

The purported saving grace of the Sagan novel is the main character’s guilt at the disaster she triggers, although, from another perspective that could be viewed as author cunning, employing acceptance of culpability to render her more sympathetic. In other words, she gets away with it, and that’s a completely different twist.  

Whereas, in another world, she would be doing jail time or at least undergoing psychiatric care, her action appears to make her even more independent, discarding men at whim, turning into the character whom Jean-Luc Godard would use as the inspiration for Breathless (1960).

The tale is told in flashback, allowing a peppering of grief into what otherwise would be a straightforward story of spoiled little rich girl Cecile (Jean Seberg) plotting to rid herself of interloper Anne (Deborah Kerr) who has disrupted the perfect life she shares with doting father Raymond (David Niven).

In some respects it applies a coming-of-age template to all the main characters, adults as well as young required to adjust to the consequences of love and alter their behavior. It’s not just the teenage Cecile who’s spoiled – nothing to do but laze in the sun, swim in the sea and attend parties and night clubs – but Raymond, a charming philanderer/perfect cad, new girlfriend on tap, the beauty of current one, Elsa (Mylene Demongeot), undercut by her propensity to blister under the sun and despite her overall shallowness a mathematical whiz in the casino, a skill which would probably allow her to dispense with her apparent dependence on an older rich lover.

Into this cosy set-up arrives, by an accident of timing, old flame Anne, a successful couturier, whose mental fragility is disguised by an outwardly strong character. Her presence is accepted until Elsa is sent packing and Raymond proposes marriage. Anne makes the fatal mistake of overdoing the maternal, seeking to rein in Cecile, instructing her to chuck her boyfriend Philippe (Geoffrey Horne) and spend her time studying. It says a lot about Anne’s character that she couldn’t have more seriously miscalculated not just Cecile’s character but that of Philippe, who, intending to become a lawyer, seems a sensible choice for a boyfriend.

So, Cecile hatches a plan to bring Elsa back into Raymond’s orbit knowing that fidelity is scarcely his strong suit. Oddly enough, this kind of plotting, especially given the South of France atmosphere, would play better as a standard rom-com ploy, daughter trying to push father in the direction of preferred lover.

Instead, it exposes the cracks in Anne’s psyche and drives her to suicide. But since no one is aware, and Elsa too dumb ostensibly to recognize the part she plays, of the machinations, Cecile gets off scot-free, and in reality using the guilt to make her appear more sympathetic. This probably worked better in the Sagan novel which, with a first-person narrative, allows the author to form the other characters in a manner that makes Cecile’s actions more understandable or at least acceptable, nudging the reader towards sympathy rather than repulsion.

Whatever way the story is pitched, it doesn’t really work. All the characters, save Elsa, are exposed as inherently fragile, unable to accept change and/or reality. The suicide seems a mundane narrative ploy. Raymond is never presented as the love of Anne’s life and her death  seems an incredible over-reaction, intended to give the story a more dramatic climax.

However, the characters are all well-drawn and the vivacity of the French lifestyle brings the picture to life, but hardly suited to Preminger who, by this stage, had a tendency to look for a bigger issue to chew over.

Jean Seberg (Moment to Moment, 1966) never managed a successful Hollywood career but this film was a big hit with emerging French filmmakers, and she was a far bigger box office attraction in France. The iconic short haircut and Givenchy attire seemed to present her as a latter-day Audrey Hepburn, but it was her screen independence that appealed more. Deborah Kerr (Prudence and the Pill, 1968), portraying a complex character, would be the pick of the actors except David Niven (Prudence and the Pill) exerts effortless charm and in terms of screen splash you could scarcely fault the effervescent Mylene Demongeot (The Singer not the Song, 1961).

Preminger, as ever, toys with convention. It’s the present day that’s shot in black-and-white rather than the past. Just as he rid John Wayne of his trick of breaking sentences in two in In Harm’s Way (1965), here Deborah Kerr is revealed without make-up, her freckled face providing her with an innocence. He had some fun with the house servants, apt to glug champagne, literally, behind their employer’s back. Arthur Laurents (Rope, 1948) wrote the screenplay.

Not quite sure how it ended up at the Bradford Widescreen Weekend since although it is in Cinemascope it was not one of that process’s more outstanding champions. Nor why it was introduced as Deborah Kerr’s movie when as far as the public was concerned the star was Jean Seberg. Nor even why Kerr was deemed a “Queen of Scope” since you could apply that term to virtually every female star who appeared in the 1950s in Cinemascope (20^th Century Fox), VistaVision (Paramount) or Panavision (MGM).

If this were made now, there would be a scene at the end where Cecile tips the wink to the audience and enjoys rather than feels guilty about her clever ploy.