El albergue rojo

"L'Auberge rouge" has recently been restored,and the copy I saw was wonderful.The pictures are glittering black and white .

The subject was not new:the inn where you take your life in your hands when you enter ;such a sinister place was a permanent feature of the FRench melodramas of the nineteenth century.After all ,Hichcock's "psycho" belongs to THAT tradition too,as the Eagles' song "Hotel California" or horror farce "Motel Hell" do.

The precedent user wrote that Fernandel and Autant-Lara were at odds during the filming but I do not think that's because he's upstaged by Carette and Françoise Rosay.Actually "l'auberge rouge" was Autant-Lara at his most anti-clerical:the scene when Rosay and Fernandel use a "GRille à Chataignes" (chesnuts grate?) as a confessional grille is sheer genius;many of the scenes may have inspired Luis Bunuel for "la Voie Lactée" and particularly "Phantom of LIberty" a whole segment of which features an inn,monks and vicious things.

The problem lies in the fact that such an admirable actor as Fernandel did not fit Autant-Lara's bill (or fitted the bill too well).Fernandel 's acting is so natural,so strong that he throws the movie off balance.He has an obvious tendency to go in the opposite way:his monk is full of joie de vivre ,of bonhomie .Whatever we may think of religion,it's impossible not to side with him.

Black humor is everywhere:from the dead body hidden inside a snowman to the travelers' horrible fate -which I will not reveal of course-,from a monkey lost in the snow arrested by the gendarmes to Rosay gently warning her guests about to leave her place:"you'll find the convent easily!You cannot get the wrong way! on the right,you can hear the wolves howl,and on the left you can hear the torrent flowing:it's the precipice!"

The snowy landscapes (amazing studio work) are dazzling.

Autant-Lara's anti-clericalism (already present in "douce" and "le diable au corps" ) which came to the fore in "l'auberge rouge" muted in the sixties: "Tu ne tueras point" ,his accursed work,showed a young man refusing to be drafted because of his religious beliefs;and "Le Franciscain de Bourges" was the story of a priest, living like a saint in the Nazi hell.