Sans lendemain

Edwige Feuillere

Max Ophuls' Sans lendemain is a very good melodrama that premiered in 1939. Kino Lorber has released a disc of the film under the title There's No Tomorrow, but a more literal translation would be Without Tomorrow. The film was shot during the invasion of Poland which sparked what we now know as World War 2. The film premiered in Algiers, presumably out of harm's way, and was commercially released in France of 1940. This was during the brief "phony war" before the German army launched its Blitzkrieg through the Ardennes forest in May, forcing French surrender in 45 days.

Because of this historical background, one cannot help but sense a mood of dour pessimism. Like The Rules of the Game and a host of other late thirties French films, Sans lendemain has an overriding sense of impending doom. It's heroine, Evelyn, played vigorously by Edwige Feuillere, must sacrifice her son and lover because of her shame at being a showgirl and paid escort. She puts her two beloveds on a ship to Canada during its final reel, an option many in France wished they had at that time.

Evelyn's concealment of her vocation is her primary motivation in the film. Ophuls stresses this theme by shrouding his frame with screens, scrims, curtains, and drapes. After an introductory nightclub sequence replete with topless dancers, we find Evelyn reuniting with an old love, Georges, who, dollars to donuts, we believe is the father of her ten year old. Evelyn cannot reveal the depraved circumstances of her current lifestyle, so she ends up gulling her lover and surrendering her own freedom to a procurer.

Feuillere and George Rigaud

If this all sounds like a paean to self-sacrificing mother love, akin to Stella Dallas, that is exactly what it is. Ophuls was fortunate that his leading lady is every bit as adept and compelling as Barbara Stanwyck was in Stella Dallas. I've only seen Feuillere in Olivia, where she is also superb, but I can't wait to sample her prewar output. Georges Rigaud is only adequate as Georges, another in a long line of callow, unconsciously smug leading men in Ophuls' films whose cluelessness dooms their female partners. Rigaud smiles too much, an attempt at facile charm, but is no worse than Louis Jourdan. The supporting players, as usual in an Ophuls film, are exemplary.

The production values of Sans lendemain are outstandingly typical for a Gregor Rabinovitch (Le Quai des brumes) production. The wonderful sets were designed by Max Douy and Eugene Lourie, the team behind The Rules of the Game. If Sans Lendemain has a fatal flaw, it is the cobbled together feel of the script. At least seven sets of hands labored on the finished project, the result is not exactly up to the standards of Stefan Zweig, Arthur Schnitzler, and Guy de Maupassant.