Andre Bazin on Claude Autant-Lara and literary adaptation: Four original reviews

The Game of Love: The Uncertainties of Fidelity

If postwar French film production has largely been a matter of literary adaptations, the latest film by Autant-Lara, for which we have had to wait for more than five years, represents this tendency in a particularly exemplary way. Let me remind you-it is something that I have often reflected on before in this journal-that roughly speaking since The Pastoral Symphony (La symphonie pastorale, 1946; dir. Jean Delannoy) and Ladies of the Park (Les Dames du Bois du Boulogne, 1946; dir. Robert Bresson), the best French filmmakers have not approached the problems of adaptation in the same way as they did before the war. With very few exceptions, back then the director and the scriptwriter took little more than their themes, some characters, or the setting and period from a given novel (sometimes only the title). In this regard they felt more or less free to do whatever they liked following their own worthy or vulgar motives, without necessarily staying very close to those of the novelist. At that time, it was a matter of course that because "the cinematic point of view" and its means of expression were completely different, fidelity to the novel was nothing but a seductive illusion, if not a fatal one and a sure sign of impotence.

There can be no doubt that now Aurenche and Bost, on the one hand, and perhaps JeanPierre Melville, too, with The Silence of the Sea (Le Silence de la mer, 1947), have established the idea of fidelity as something praiseworthy. I am well aware that Frangois Truffaut has argued that they were not faithful, but he is wrong, at least insofar as the liberties the scriptwriters of The Pastoral Symphony allowed themselves were limited to the relatively narrow area of certain equivalent scenes they deemed necessary.1 It is less important whether they were wrong or right to think that a straight line is not the best way to get from one point to another, than for us to perceive the nature of the piece as a whole. In short, like hypocrisy faced with virtue, in the very places where they were unfaithful they were still paying homage to fidelity Z Of course it would be absurd to stipulate that in our day fidelity has become de rigueur for literary cinema. There is no reason why an intelligent freedom with the text should not make for good films, or even great ones, as happened before the war, for instance, with Jean Renoir's A Day in the Country (Une Partie de campagne, 1936). But this is only the case where the director's universe can claim parity with that of the author, which is rare, for reasons that are only too obvious. On the contrary, it is perfectly clear that there is nothing to lose by proclaiming fidelity as one's ideal when one is dealing with a work of quality, because in this case film is in no position to be able to claim that it can do better than the author. As for the objection that it ought to be trying to do something different, we leave that to the author Cecil Saint-Laurent to make, knowing full well that-just the opposite-- the exercise of fidelity is a creative necessity far more fruitful than freedom, even from the limited point of view of cinematic form alone.

The adaptation of The Game of Love (Le Ble en herbe, 1953; a.k.a. The Ripening Seed) was from its inception bound to represent this tendency of the French cinema in the most decisive manner. First the literary quality of the model and above all its originality of tone and style, also its considerable popularity, made a comparison of book and film more unavoidable than ever. Then, too, Autant-Lara had chosen a text that was typical for a novel in the sense that the plot with all its twists and turns appears unimportant by comparison with its fundamental psychological and moral bent. Dramatically speaking, virtually nothing happens. For the director this challenge was going to be even more difficult to meet because the age of the hero, if Autant-Lara didn't want to cheat, forbade him the use of proven actors (as was the case for his Devil in the Flesh [Le Diable au Corps, 1947] as well). What is more, the text demanded the untrammeled directness of an impressionistic treatment. Not only was the audience to be deprived of any spectacular event and strong dramatic development, but even of psychological analysis, of the carefully explained unfolding of character, which could have compensated to some extent for the lack of dramatic structure. It is true that Autant-Lara could have relied on the salacious side of the story to make up for these deficiencies, but we shall see that he completely refused to do so-to an exaggerated degree, I think.

To be sure, Aurenche and Bost have not abstained from making any additions whatsoever. First of all there is a sort of comical and dramatic prologue, spoken by the tempest, which losses up Phil half dead and completely naked onto the beach where the young ladies of the Sacred Heart are about to go for their annual dip in the sea. We cannot fail to notice how much our two authors are drawn to a little anti-clerical provocation; but their inspiration led them slightly astray because this wholly invented episode otherwise establishes with great ingenuity the essential themes that the film will go on to develop. First, a number of picturesque details serve to indicate the historical period, which is never referred to again because from this point on the film is concerned exclusively with the characters. Second, the dramatic quality of this initial situation allows the emotional relationship between Phil and Vinca to be made clear in a rapid and striking fashion. Finally, the boy's nakedness establishes the carnal theme of the work in all its serio-comic ambiguousness, yet is presented indirectly and under a plausible pretext. I have only one criticism of Autant-Lara to make for his opening scene: he hasn't given up his desire to make it satiric, investing it with a sort of grotesque acerbity that lowers this introduction to the level of social satire, a genre from which the film immediately distances itself. On the other hand, from the point of view of the mise-en-scene it is the best moment of the film. In particular, there is an unforgettable low-angle shot, with the camera placed at the very surface of the water, which gives us perhaps for the first time in cinema the physical sensation of being drowned.