Affaires publiques

Remarkable first film by Robert Bresson, which contains a funny but cynical view of world politics. Born in 1901, Bresson was old enough by 1918 to witness the effects of I World War and probably he was more than aware of what was to come to European states (monarchies and republics) in the years after 1934.

«Affaires publiques» is often compared to Vigo's «Zéro de conduite», made a year earlier (and by the influence of this film, the connection goes as far as 1968, to Anderson's «if....»). However, it seems to me the similitude has more to do with visual likeness in the way the authorities behave and the clothes they wear, than with their subjects. They both deal with authority, but education is different from politics. As a matter of fact, the philosophies, laws and budgets of education are, in the end, determined by economic and political powers.

"Affaires publiques" deals with heads of States and the military (and with firemen, for comic effect), with liaisons between the Republic of Crogandie and the Kingdom of Miremie, lands on the verge of war, while on the surface frivolity and a mating game disguise the real situations of the people, who in the end lead everything to revolt.

Bresson anticipates the situation in Renoir's "La règle du jeu" (1939), a more private than public affair, but the inner conflict is quite similar. However, the movie that came to my mind on the two occasions that I watched Bresson's film is Leo McCarey's & The Marx Brothers' "Duck Soup", also made in 1933 as Vigo's movie. I definitely do not believe that Robert Bresson was under the influence or imitating Vigo or "Duck Soup". He would eventually prove to be a major artist of the film medium, who made quite original movies. What all the coincidences make me think is that very talented artists in the film industries of several countries had similar thoughts about world affairs by the early 1930s... that would lead to II World War.

It is a pity that I could not see a better copy (I really do not know if a good copy has survived), but after a second view and thought I think this is a great, dark, tragic comedy, that precedes the spirit of the theatre of the absurd.

This film is pretty unique in the annals of cinema history, in that the efforts by the same director that came afterwards were such polar opposites that one can barely believe his eyes when watching it: the thing is that this 23-minute short was believed lost and only retrieved in 1987, when Bresson had effectively retired (being then 86 years old)…so that, to most movie buffs and admirers of the director, his debut proved to be the one they got to see last (in my case, it was the penultimate one, since I chose to watch this, A GENTLE WOMAN {1969}, and the documentary THE ROAD TO BRESSON {1984} on the 12th anniversary of his passing, just two weeks shy of the new millennium!).

Anyway, this is a satirical farce with political overtones, very much in the style of The Marx Bros. masterpiece DUCK SOUP (1933) – since it involves two neighboring fictionalized countries – and the ending, with two newscasters disapproving of an elderly high-society dame's singing by flinging objects at her, is a literal borrowing/tribute. The runaway princess subplot, then, may well have been inspired by the W.C. Fields vehicle YOU'RE TELLING ME! (1934), albeit emerging as its weakest link. Another obvious influence here is Charlie Chaplin – especially in the set-piece of the unveiling of a statue (which, depicting a yawning man, unleashes a veritable flood of boredom/exhaustion grimaces among the spectators of the ceremony and even the heroine, whose airplane summarily crashes!), but also the fact that a squad of firemen here behave as if they were The Keystone Kops.

In the end, the film is more a curio (if anything, it owes at least as much to Rene' Clair as it does the afore-mentioned Hollywood star comedians) than a success, but it undeniably boasts a handful of innovations and side-splitting moments: the sound of a tuba causes a house to move off its hinges, which is then brought back into place by a Pied Piper-ish flute player!; one of the firemen is a professional fire-eater, so that every time a spark is lit (as part of the town festivities), he rushes to extinguish the flame by gobbling it up!; finally, the climactic christening of a ship by the traditional breaking of a champagne bottle against its side proves problematic because of the incredible resilience of the glassware – someone has the bright idea of using a cannon to destroy the bottle but, first, the heaving of the evidently cumbersome weapon onto the platform almost brings the whole crashing down but, then, the blast naturally produces a hole in the vessel which, upon being slid into the sea, it promptly sinks!

For the record, the unearthed print of this one (which had actually been stored under a different title!) is in a rather precarious state, with the image so fuzzy that one can hardly make out the actors' facial features!; incidentally, future Jean Renoir regular and reliable Hollywood character actor Marcel Dalio appears in four separate roles here (including a Military General who, in order to have a medal pinned on his chest, it is required to shear off his lengthy beard!). So, while France may have lost a comic genius when Bresson returned to film-making 9 years later, World Cinema certainly gained one of its most rigorous analysts into the human condition (and the quest for spiritual grace).

My Rating : 8/10

Bresson's first venture as director was a medium-length comedy with nods to René Clair and Jean Vigo called ''Les affaires publiques''.

Bresson later admitted that he did have a fondness for it and it's failure prevented him from making other films.

Of all the lost films in cinema history's phantom filmography, the 'lostest', so to speak, at least ex aequo with the complete Greed, has always been Robert Bresson's Les Affaires publiques. All one knew was its title (which has turned out to be inaccurate), its date of registration (1934), its running time (approximately twenty minutes) and - most startlingly in view of the director's subsequent reputation - the fact that it was a comedy. Indeed, Bresson himself referred to it, with perhaps more than a soupçon of poker-faced malice, as 'like Buster Keaton, only much, much worse.'

Well, Les Affaires publiques has been found - a real achievement considering that the title on the can of film was Le Chancelier (The Chancellor) while that on the print itself was Beby inauguré (Beby Inaugurates). The can was chanced on by a group of film historians rummaging through the chaotically stacked archives of the Cinémathèque Française.

What, one asks, does a burlesque comedy by Robert Bresson actually look like? The answer: A circus with a plot; a piece of filmic doggerel; a cartoon with live actors - and like a cartoon activated exclusively by energy. For all that there is frankly nothing in Beby inauguré quite as memorable as the fact and the circumstances of its belated rediscovery, it is not just a curiosity, to be savoured solely for its rarity; and if scarcely the revelation that might have been hoped, it is very much better, funnier than Bresson's self-contradictory description had led one to fear.

As for the plot, if that is the correct word, it is indescribable, being nothing more than a sequence of gags centred on two adjacent republics, Crogandia and Miremia (shades of Duck Soup), a Miremian aviatrix whose monoplane crashes on Crogandian soil, the solemn inauguration of a statue by the frock-coated Crogandian Chancellor (Beby), and the no less solemn and no less snag-infested launching of a ship. Actually, despite glimmerings of Duck Soup, The Navigator (in the semi-choreographed animation of inanimate objects) and Million Dollar Legs (in the quaint surreality of the situation), Bresson's maybe insufficiently anarchic sense of humour comes closest to the human puppetry of Clair's Le Dernier Milliardaire. That said, there are, amid some stillborn bubbles of wit, a small cluster of absolute knockout jokes.