Le grand jeu

A playboy is forced to leave the country after plunging his father's business into financial problems after using company funds to support his lifestyle with his high maintenance girlfriend. He joins the Foreign Legion as a means of forgetting his past. When in North Africa he meets a woman who is a look-a-like for his former fiancé and so begins a romantic obsession.

This French movie could quite easily be described as a proto-noir given its early release year, yet unmistakable film-noir aspects. The story has a gloomy feel and atmosphere and it focuses on a down-on-his-luck anti-hero and femme fatale. Alfred Hitchcock's later revered movie Vertigo (1958) shares (or borrowed) the pretty specific idea of a man obsessed with a woman who closely resembles a past love, to the point that he treats her not as a person but as an ideal. I thought the film as a whole had a very daring and quite modern sensibility in its approach to sexual content which no doubt was a French characteristic and certainly isn't something you would associate with Hollywood films of the period. The film after all is set almost entirely within the confines of a brothel with a very sleazy owner overseeing events and who quite clearly sexually abuses the women who work there as his 'entitlement' as their boss. It's quite commendably difficult material and adds quite a bit to the depth the drama mines. The wife of this appalling individual is the one with the strength and personality to hold all the other characters together and has a skill in reading Tarot cards, which is referred to in the title. Her predictions come to bear in the story, an impressive tale of doomed characters and dark obsession.

Very few movies for me have captured the tragedy and pageantry of life in one fell swoop, the other two are Les Enfants du Paradis and The Satin Slipper, supernatural titles which must be uttered only in awe. These are decidedly Promethean movies, which beg a thunderbolt from above for their creators. Such movies through their genius seem sacrilegious.

Exuberant, blithe and foolish, Belle Époque nitwit Pierre lives a pampered lifestyle with a sinecure at the family bank. Innocently in love with a man eater, he throws more and more "borrowed" money into the fire of her greed in the hopes of putting it out. Years of disgrace follow where Pierre must learn to be a man like other men, to silently put up with being un raté, to watch his life slide out of view, to take his pleasures where he can in exile with the Foreign Legion. The Book of Ecclesiastes suggests that the only solaces in life are those provided by hard work and immediate pleasures such as eating and drinking, if so then Pierre's exile is something of an unlooked-for gift, a release from perpetual childhood.

Le Grand Jeu is a film that makes one to wonder if God didn't conflate lust and love when He created the world. The filmmakers create their own world in miniature here, a world where people live with the ghouls of their pasts sat on their shoulders, loving without being loved back, cursed by lust unattainable, or attainable and consuming, damned one way or the other. It was a refreshingly raunchy movie with quite the most triple-x-rated cabaret song, from La môme Dauville (Lyn Clevers), recalling Minnie Cunningham (an English tease immortalised by the painter Walter Sickert). Whilst lust does seem to inhibit the possibility of true love, male lust in particular is treated as something natural and not to be ashamed of.

So the world is a casino and our fortunes dictated by Fortuna (the great game of the title). One's only weapon against all this seems to be morale. That seems the key message of what is I would say, a perfect movie (it's probably also pretty similar in that regards to Les Enfants Du Paradis, and no surprise to find out that Marcel Carné was an assistant on this movie). Marie Bell and Pierre Richard-Willm act their hearts out here.

Considered one of Alfred Hitchcock's best films, 1958 "Vertigo," concerns a private eye who falls in love with his client's wife, only to see her doppelgänger appear in a city street after he had witnessed her jump to her death from a tower. The framework of Hitchcock's plot, although reportedly taken from a different source, contained strong elements from Jacques Feyder's May 1934 "Le Grand Jeu."

Feyder had just returned from a unsatisfying stint at Hollywood's MGM, where he had directed Greta Garbo's final silent film, 1929's "The Kiss." Before leaving, he felt Garbo would be perfect in 1932's 'As You Desire Me,' a similar storyline as his later "Le Grand Jeu," a title which means the reading of cards, or telling the entire story. Feyder felt the actress' double should have a different voice than her primary character. He never got a chance to direct the movie, but the idea stuck with him when he returned to France. Feyder and scriptwriter Charles Spaak composed the story of a Paris businessman, Pierre Martel (Pierre Richard-Willm), who is forced to leave the country after running up exorbitant debts through his expensive lifestyle. His financial backers pay his bills only if he agrees to leave France. He split from his girlfriend Florence (Marie Bell) and joined the French Foreign Legion, where he meets her look-alike, Irma (Bell), with the exception of having darker hair. Things get wild when Pierre finds out he's inherited a large fortune. So struck by the impact of "Le Grand Jeu," film reviewer Joseph Ewens wrote, "It's rare to find a film that is thought provoking without being challenging and comfortable without being banal. It's a delightful story of emotional cascades that considers the way we relate to other people."

Feyder dubbed Marie Bell's voice as Irma by off-screen actress, Claude Marcy. She also voiced all the Garbo films for French distribution. "Le Grand Jeu" contains elements of 'poetic realism,' the 1930's French film movement that focused on the characters rather than on the settings. Jean Vigo's 1933 "Zero de Conduite," is a prime example where the movie characters' fatalistic views were front and center. "Le Grand Jeu's" 'poetic realism' is represented in Blanche, the hotel manager's wife where Pierre is staying. Her reading of the cards unfolds his past life and his predictive future. Later French classics, such as Julien Duvivier's 1937 "Pepe le Moko," whose protagonist closely resembles Pierre's situation, Jean Renoir's 1939 "La Grande Illusion," and most of Marcel Carne's films, all derive from the country's popular movement, 'poetic realism.'

"Le Grand Jeu" was part of a number of continental movies that played a huge influence on the Italian Neorealism and the French New Wave films of the 1940s and 1950s. In their book on the History of the Film, authors Maurice Bardèche and Robert Brasillach claim "Le Grand Jeu" is "one of the few films made based on a new idea, since the invention of talkies."

Pierre Richard-Willm has gone through his money keeping mistress Marie Bell and himself happy. His family agrees to clear his debts, but only if he leaves the country. Mlle. Bell makes excuses, so he does what anyone else does. He joins the Foreign Legion. There he distinguishes himself, turning down a promotion to sergeant, he also meets a prostitute played by Mlle. Bell in a brunette wig. She has a wonky memory and falls for him. He slowly convinces himself she is the same woman.....

Jacques Feyder tries his hand at poetic realism, with all the standard tricks, but without Gabin or Duvivier's misogyny. The result is a far more straightforward movie, propelled by the director's skilled story tellin, about two people in love who torment each other.

A lot of movie-goers will agree that Alfred Hitchcock's finest work is his seminal 1958 masterpiece Vertigo. But 20 years earlier French director Jacques Feyder, fleeing from Hollywood when he failed to come to an agreement with MGM on new projects, returned to his home country and made Le Grand Jeu, the tale of a broken man falling in love with the doppelgänger of his gold-digging former lover. It's certainly an inferior work to Vertigo, but the themes of obsession and the growing psychological torment of its lead must have surely been an inspiration to the Master of Suspense.

Playboy Pierre (Pierre Richard-Willm) has it all - fast cars, the finest clothes and a beautiful girl, Florence (Marie Bell), who shares his lust for the finer things in life. Their extravagances almost bring his family's business to ruin, so Pierre is exiled to avoid further embarrassment, minus Florence who cannot turn her back on the world of luxury she has become so accustomed to. Distraught, Pierre joins the Foreign Legion in North Africa, where he lives content though the work is hard. On leave, he stays at a hotel/brothel ran by the sleazy and unsavoury Clement (Charles Vanel), and his no-nonsense wife Blanche (Francoise Rosay), who reads Tarot cards in her spare time. One night, Pierre spots a prostitute who is a dead ringer for Florence, and so begins his obsession.

Le Grand Jeu is slow, slightly over-long and often remarkably depressing. It's also a beautifully filmed example of French poetic realism, with the African setting providing a sweaty, claustrophobic atmosphere. There's a naturalism to the performances that was way ahead of what they doing in Hollywood at the time. Feyder also employs the effective tactic of casting Marie Bell in separate roles with one of her character's being dubbed over, causing an unsettling effect when combined with Bell's impressive performances as both socialite seductress and down-beaten night-club singer/party girl. It's a shame that the plot is laid out early on when Pierre has his fortune told as main plot points naturally become inevitabilities, but Le Grand Jeu is often immaculately crafted cinema.