I have no particular sympathy with the writings of Roger Nimier, but his dialogue for ' Les Grandes Personnes ' is lucid and well written. The film is based on one of his novels, and it is a chilling world that he depicts superbly directed by Jean Valere whose film ' La Sentence ' is well worth tracking down. But in my opinion ' Les Grandes Personnes ' surpasses even that achievement. It shows in image after image the lack of heart, the lack of any sense of real loving among the so-called important people of the Paris elite of the time. And the film is timeless because these same kind of people still think Paris is a small world that belongs to them, and is their playground for emotional abuse. The first part of the film dominated by Micheline Presle, Francoise Prevost and Jean Seberg is extraordinary, and as much as I like Seberg both Presle and Prevost give their all in acting ability and then some. For a while I thought the film sagged a bit with the entrance of Maurice Ronet, but in his scenes with Seberg visiting all of the ' right ' parts of Paris I saw how hollow he was in his seduction, and also in film terms how Valere ( perhaps ) inadvertently mocked the world of Donen's ' Funny Face '. The calling of each other's names across the emptiness of so-called famous Paris places sent a chill through me. These scenes alone summed up the empty world of Hollywood's Paris and showed in bleached out black and white images the false notion of ' romantic ' decors. Then as the film progressed the breakdown of any sincere relationships hit hard and painfully accurately. Everyone is bruised in this film and the importance of their restricted lives shows a hell equal to Sartre's ' Huis Clos '. I have read that Nimier had a conflict with Sartre's writings, but the ' bad faith ' of this set of characters is existential in the extreme. Seberg's innocence is destroyed and the ending when she recognises the cold world around her made me want to turn away in horror from the screen. Why this masterpiece made at the height of the New Wave of French Cinema has not been championed as a great film is a total mystery. And a plus not to be ignored is Germaine Tailleferre's music, stronger than any Delerue or Legrand score so favoured by people like Demy and Truffaut. I would give this film more than 10 if I could.
