Lumiére d'Eté

Madeleine Renaud and Pierre Brasseur

Jean Grémillon's Lumiére d'Eté (Summer Light), from 1943, is a gripping romantic melodrama and political allegory filmed in Vichy France during the Occupation. The main setting of the film is a remote hotel presided over by Cricri, a woman of a certain age played by Grémillon's frequent collaborator, Madeleine Renaud. Cricri has been set up in her position by her aristocratic lover Patrice (Pierre Brasseur), but Patrice seems bored by Cricri and is stringing her along till he finds a better prospect. Patrice is manipulative and has a fetish for firearms. We eventually learn that he killed his wife in a hunting "accident" in which Cricri was complicit. Into this perverse ménage arrives Michèle (Madeleine Robinson) who has traveled to the country from Paris to have a rendezvous with her artist boyfriend Roland (Pierre Brasseur). Roland does not prove to be heroic like his namesake of yore. An unrepentant drunk, he proves to be more interested in his own self-pity than in Michèle. Patrice invites Roland to stay at his chateau, ostensibly to decorate his walls, but really because he has designs on Michèle. Michèle also draws the attentions of Julien (Georges Marchal), a construction worker at a local dam project. All the characters converge at a masked ball at the chateau, a bravura sequence, which ends in tragedy.

The wartime allegory of Lumiére d'Eté is not hard to parse. The characters try to ignore the explosions that reverberate from the dam construction, much as Vichy France tried to ignore the distant guns of the ongoing conflict. Predation lurks in the background as an eagle menaces lambs. Intimations of sexual predation are also present with mentions of Leda and the swan and Susannah and the elders. Patrice is the arch fascist of the film and it is this portrait of a languid and cruel patrician that rankled authorities enough to suppress the film during the Occupation. The indolence of the Vichy supporting upper class is contrasted with the labor of the working class toiling at the dam site. The drama climaxes with communal action thwarting a singular evil. Michèle and her hunky proletarian lover hike out towards the hinterlands at film's end, presumably to join the Resistance. 

Madeleine Robinson

The script of Lumiére d'Eté, by Jacques Prévert and Pierre Laroche, especially its depiction of sexual and class conflicts. has drawn many comparisons to The Rules of the Game; with justification. Lumiére d'Eté is not in the same league as Renoir's film for reasons besides originality, but precious few films are. Patrice's shooting gallery is a little too similar to Marcel Dalio's mechanical birds, at least metaphorically. I also feel that Grémillon fails to flesh out his supporting characters in stock roles as well as Renoir does. Both Raymond Aimos (Ernest) and Léonce Corne (Tonton) are fine supporting actors, but they can't elevate their characters above a one dimensional level. Grémillon's film does have one attribute that surpasses The Rules of the Game, its exterior scenes. The roughhewn construction site is a vital counterpoint to the refined excesses of Patrice's chateau and Cricri's hotel, ironically monikered The Guardian Angel. 

The three males leads of the film are fine, though Pierre Brasseur is prone to burlesque in his many drunk scenes, but this film belongs to its leading ladies. Madeleine Robinson's Michèle is fertile innocence juxtaposed with the barren experience of Madeleine Renaud's Cricri. Michèle has an array of suitors while Cricri is bereft. Both performances are beautiful and touching. Robinson is given one of the most radiant entrances (see above) in cinema as she walks up towards The Guardian Angel surrounded by a gorgeous vista. A creature of nature in its realm, to which she returns at film's end. Cricri, like the pets in the film (birds and crickets), is a creature in a cage entirely dependent on the largesse of her owner. Happily, Renaud would receive a much less masochistic role in her next role for Grémillon, the aviatrix in Le ciel est à vous. All in all, Lumiére d'Eté is a first rate picture, worthy of more exposure.