"La chambre verte" is one of the most strange, if not the strangest work of Truffaut. An adaptation of the novel "The beast and the jungle" by Henry James, it deals with one of the most uncomfortable topics for a film; death. Or, actually, what happens to those that are left alive, when a person from their intimate environment dies.
Julien Davenne, the hero (played by Truffaut himself), is obsessed with death, since the loss of his dear wife, Julie. While everyone tells him to forget her, and move on, he finds it disrespectful to her memory to do so. Instead, he decides to build a chapel, where he will honour his "dead". People he had once known, family, friends that perished in the war. There is even a photo of an unknown German soldier, whom Davenne had killed during the fightings of World War One. To Davenne, death makes no discriminations, he takes everyone, and it's the duty of the living to remember the dead, otherwise, they'll be forgotten.
Having no one as family, except for a child, unable to speak, communicating with him only with signs, and his caretaker, an old lady, Davenne shares his opinions and worries with a young woman (Nathalie Baye). She is shocked by what she hears, at first, but later comes to understand the motives behind Davenne's way of thinking.
Which are those motives? In my opinion, Truffaut tried to present with this film a portrait of the French Lost Generation. Those, who would have been young enough to go fight in World War One. Few of them returned, since France had some of the highest casualties in that war. The war to end all wars. It didn't end them, but it ended relationships, friendships, families. In the film, Davenne laments that his now deceased wife waited for his return from the front for four years. Unfortunately, she didn't get to enjoy their being together for long. Death got her first.
After the First World War, the world was shocked by the disaster, and the death the conflict had brought. And, so, art became obsessed with death. The artists of this Lost Generation rejected the conservatism of their predecessors, it being an element of a pre-war era of carelessness. In their works, they portrayed the death of those seen in the front, or other topics, in an abstract manner. In that way, they wanted to show the madness of war.
What does all this have to do with the film? Davenne is also a member of this generation. One of the lucky ones, that didn't die. But, for him, Julie's loss is kind of a spiritual death. He is as fixated with the concept of death as those artists. Through his chapel,first located in the titular green room in his house, he makes his own attempt at dealing with this stream of deaths the war brought. For him, everyone death deserves to be remembered. But, for a society wanting to move on, this behaviour is abnormal. Why would one want to remain in the past, in a past so traumatic? Truffaut gave his answer through the film.
History, as saddening as this is, would justify Davenne. Because, for all the fun and prosperity that France and the world experienced in the Roaring twenties - in France, tellingly known as "Les années folles" , the crazy years- the next decade's end would bring with it the most catastrophic war human history has ever witnessed. And, then, no one could escape thinking about death. It would simply be everywhere.
