Lettres d'amour

Odette Joyeux and François Périer review the Révolution nationale

Claude Autant-Lara's Lettres d'amour is one of the director's better films, a lightweight romantic confection released to appease the filmgoers of Vichy and occupied France when it was released just before Christmas in 1942. The picture was Mr. Autant-Lara's first collaboration with screenwriter Jean Aurenche who based his script draft on his own novella. Messrs. Autant-Lara and Aurenche, along with co-writer Pierre Bost, would go on to work together on a number of films such as Douce, Devil in the Flesh, and The Red and the Black. Aurenche and Bost would emerge as France's leading screenwriting team, penning such acclaimed films as Forbidden Games and Gervaise. Lettres d'amour also is the second of four films directed by Autant-Lara that starred Odette Joyeux, films which first brought him renown as a director.

That said, I have been nonplussed by Mr. Autant-Lara's work after barely staying awake watching The Red and the Black in French class four decades ago. This was before I knew about the director's odious politics or grokked les politiques des auteurs. In fact, the first blast of the auteurs, in 1954, was François Truffaut's essay decrying the work of Aurenche and Bost. In the privacy of my own home, I observe the cultic rites of the auteurist and burn incense to the memories of Murnau, Renoir, Ford, and Mizoguchi, but it doesn't mean I can't enjoy the occasional film by a metteur en scène. I believe it is important regarding aesthetics not to be too doctrinaire. Autant-Lara's direction in Lettres d'amour does little to heighten any mood of romance or anything else, it merely functions to present his, admittedly first class, actors as they declaim. A good example are the not quite whip pans he employs in the courtroom scenes. Shots that ping pong from speaker to speaker. However, I suspect that the director was not fully responsible for what we see on the screen. Lettres d'amour feels like it was severely truncated in post-production. There are omissions and leaps in the narrative which unnecessarily confuse an already tangled plot.

The picture is set in 1855 during the reign of Napoleon III. The emperor is depicted having a chaste assignation with the film's heroine, Zélie (Odette Joyeux), while visiting the rural town where she works as a postmistress. The film primarily tells the story of the romance of Zélie and a young district attorney named François (François Périer). François has been having an affair with the wife, Hortense (Simone Renant), of the local prefect. A love letter between the two is unearthed during a legal proceeding and Zélie is wrongly branded with the scarlet A. François visits Zélie to thank her for her discretion, but is soon smitten and vice-versa. The road to true love has many obstacles, of course, but the goal is achieved. The film climaxes with a ball which reconciles the film's romantic conflicts, but also that between the aristocrats and the bourgeoisie. Reconciliation occurs as the characters check out that new dance craze, the quadrille. 🎀 I am a sucker for any film that concludes with a dance off.

Odette Joyeux

What ultimately won me over was the romantic byplay, full of thrust and parry, between Ms Joyeux and Mr. Périer. In her previous film for Autant-Lara, Le Mariage de Chiffon, Ms. Joyeux was miscast as a sixteen year old. ✂ Zélie, a young widow, is a much more suitable and knowing vehicle for her talents. Zélie is smart and attractive enough to be a coquette, but is too scrupulous to toy with a lover. Joyeux and Périer have that irresistible it in Lettres d'amour, a spark of romantic attraction that enables the hackneyed script to work. I associate Périer with the middle aged functionary roles I first saw him in (as in Le Samouraï and Z), so it was fun seeing him display some youthful charm and ardor. One of the other virtues of Lettres d'amour are the splendid costumes. Autant-Lara started in the film biz as a costume designer and performed that function on a number of the films he directed, so I'm sure he deserves some of the credit. I've never seen a woman look as graceful in a hoop skirt as Ms. Joyeux does when she is hurrying to her tête-à-tête with Napoleon III. The lion's share of the credit must go to the actual costume designer of Lettres d'amour. A gentleman named Christian Dior.

🎀 Mary Todd Lincoln danced the quadrille with Stephen Douglas at her husband's first Inaugural Ball in 1861.
✂ In three of the four films Joyeux made with Autant-Lara during the Nazi Occupation she plays a teenager.