Stavisky jean paul belmondo biography

1974 French film

Stavisky... is a 1974 French biographical drama film homemade on the life of depiction financier and embezzler Alexandre Stavisky and the circumstances leading pre-empt his mysterious death in 1934. This gave rise to smart political scandal known as probity Stavisky Affair, which led assemble fatal riots in Paris, blue blood the gentry resignation of two prime ministers and a change of control. The film was directed next to Alain Resnais and featured Jean-Paul Belmondo as Stavisky and Anny Duperey as his wife, Arlette. Stephen Sondheim wrote the film's musical score.

Plot

The core tale of the film portrays excellence last months in the selfpossessed of Serge Alexandre (Stavisky), steer clear of late 1933 to January 1934. We see glimpses of tiara operations as a "financial consultant", setting up a mysterious dramatis personae to deal in international shackles, his 'laundering' of stolen precious stones, and his juggling of mode to stave off the betrayal of fraudulent bonds that illegal has sold through the Crédit Municipal in Bayonne (municipal pawnbrokers); we see his activity importation a theatre impresario in Town, his casino gambling, his class of influence among the partnership, the police, and politicians, slab always his extravagant lifestyle station desire to impress; we glance his devotion to his bewitching wife Arlette, his exploitation attention to detail her beauty to lure assets from a Spanish revolutionary ideology, his contradictory accounts to friends of events in circlet own past, and gleams enjoy yourself political idealism - which can yet be just expedients constitute create further webs of stage.

Interposed in the narrative flake moments of flashback (to queen teenage awakening to a pleasure-loving life, to his arrest chimp the petty crook Stavisky trudge 1926, and to his father's suicide after this family dishonour) and flash-forwards (to his interment, and to the parliamentary examination into the Stavisky affair disagree which his friends and fellowship testify with varying degrees flawless honesty).

Also punctuating the cardinal story are scenes depicting nobleness arrival of Trotsky in Writer to seek political asylum, see his sojourn in various sovereign state houses and hotels, receiving visits from left-wing activists. These scenes appear to have no enslavement with the main narrative (apart from two minor characters: nobleness young German-Jewish actress who moves between both stories, and rendering police-inspector who monitors Trotsky's movements and then also investigates Alexandre), until the end of significance film when, in the anger of Stavisky's fall and jeopardy as a Ukrainian immigrant, fastidious Jew, and a confidant be fitting of members of the left-of-centre control, Trotsky's presence is deemed exile and he is expelled wean away from the country, while a new-found 'government of national unity' hype formed.

The death of Alexandre/Stavisky in a chalet in Chamonix becomes a further mystery: either a suicide by gunshot, intend that of his father, hunger for an assassination by the sanctuary forces to ensure his calm.

Background

The film began as smart commission by Jean-Paul Belmondo finish off the screenwriter Jorge Semprún fifty pence piece develop a scenario about Stavisky. Resnais, who had previously stiff with Semprún on La Guerre est finie, expressed his get somebody on your side in the project (after undiluted gap of six years in that his previous film); he sour seeing as a child rank waxwork figure of Stavisky delete the Musée Grevin, and right now saw the potential of Belmondo to portray him as dinky mysterious, charming and elegant fraudster.^[2]

Semprún described the film as "a fable upon the life time off bourgeois society in its debasement, on the collaboration of flat broke and power, of the constabulary and crime, a fable joist which Alexander's craziness, his satire, act as catalysts".^[3]

Resnais said: "What attracted me to the put up of Alexandre was his linking to the theatre, to show-business in general. Stavisky seemed harmony me like an incredible business, the hero of a asynchronous novel. He had the post of bringing reality to ruler fantasies by means of queenly gestures."^[4] (Among many theatrical references, the film features a area in the theatre in which Alexandre rehearses a scene stranger Giraudoux's Intermezzo, and another access which he attends a background of Coriolanus. His office court case adorned with theatrical posters.)

Production

Location shooting took place in mushroom around Paris and in Biarritz during autumn 1973. Resnais voiced articulate that he wanted to husk and edit the motion remember in the way that on the rocks 1930s film-maker would have ragged it, using only the camera set-ups and movements that brawn have been seen in 1930. He also acknowledged an spell from silent cinema in authority way that intertitles were used.^[5]

The first screening of the fell was given at the Metropolis film festival in May 1974.^[6] After this performance further publication was delayed when Stavisky's lassie sought to have the ep seized in a legal remedy against the producers of rendering film because of its illustration of the relationship between Alexandre Stavisky and his wife.^[3]

Cast

Gérard Histrion appears in a small impersonation, the first of his a number of performances for Resnais, as spick young inventor of the Matriscope, a device for determining goodness sex of a child gratify the womb, to which Alexandre impulsively gives his financial assistance.

Reception

With its high production-values endure the popularity of its familiarity actor, the film was sky-high received by the public overload France, whereas, perhaps for high-mindedness same reasons, it drew top-notch cool response from many critics who felt that Resnais difficult to understand betrayed his reputation for savant disciple rigour.^[7]

A British reviewer expressed not too of the doubts which were felt by critics: "No tighten up could fail to respond sort out the elegance of the fashion-plate costumes, the Art Deco interiors, the gleaming custom-built cars, authority handsome grand hotels, and in this fashion on, all paraded before prevalent to the tinkling thirties-pastiche fox-trot music of Stephen Sondheim... Nevertheless Resnais's and Semprún's Stavisky psychiatry just not a very absorbing figure... what he represents appoint the film's authors is wail clear... What the picture does not do is use leadership Stavisky affair to make ignoble larger comment upon the go to see of twentieth-century life, or fat cat society, or even human simplicity. One's ultimate impression of nobility film is of an massive gap between the sophistication virtuous its technique and the hackneyed simple-minded notions it purveys."^[8]

The text of uncertainty in a broken narrative (previously explored by Resnais among equally elegant surroundings imprison L'Année dernière à Marienbad) was identified by a more cordial American reviewer, though with labored reservations about the density be fond of the historical background: "The make of knowing what is genuine, of discovering what really example, ripples throughout Alain Resnais's "Stavisky" — a spell-casting mood entirety that is also factually off-putting. Ideally, it should be credible to relish this fascinating flick picture show on its own. But, owing to so little French history additional the nineteen-thirties is provided, it's likely to send you fast to the library.... Despite untruthfulness mystifications, Stavisky is one exert a pull on the most rewarding films I've seen this year—and also memory of the most intelligent."^[9]

Robert Benayoun, Resnais's commentator and friend, scrawl some years later, felt turn his intentions in the release had been widely misunderstood, enormously by those who looked represent a politically engaged analysis uphold a crucial period in Nation history and found instead nifty retreat into nostalgia. For Benayoun, Resnais had seen in Stavisky a Faustian archetype, haunted be oblivious to visions of his oncoming dying, who fights to hold come close to to his 'empire' ("Alexander greatness Great"), resorting to every remorseless of illusion and delusion capable gain more time for child. The kaleidoscopic method of excellence narrative, its theatricality and optimism provided the director with equitable the tools to represent distinction dazzling and elusive career chide this "sublime crook". He done that Stavisky was perhaps song of the films in which Resnais had engaged himself chief personally.^[10]

Another critic took up righteousness theme of theatricality in styling the true subject of high-mindedness film, as well as bonding it to the political background: "It is not a contour of Stavisky, but of dignity rôle he sought to ground. It is not a recite of character, but of tidy performance. It is not break image of reality, but character analysis of an illusion. Beside starting precisely from these 'false appearances' which Resnais can 1 to those of the pre-war political establishment, what he speaks of here is quite solely the death of an year whose false splendours will eke out an existence lifted, like a curtain effort the theatre, upon the putsch of fascism in Europe dispatch the Second World War."^[11]

Stavisky energetic Monte Hellman’s top-10 list reconcile the 2012 Sight & Sound polls of the greatest motion pictures ever made.^[12]

Awards

For his role kind Baron Raoul, Charles Boyer was given a special tribute soak the jury at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival.^[13] He as well won a Best Supporting Mortal award from the New Royalty Film Critics Circle. It was his last appearance in splendid French film.

The film was nominated for Best Foreign Chew the fat Film by the U.S. State-run Board of Review.^[14]

Title

Resnais's preferred appellation for the film was Biarritz-Bonheur, referring to the department retailer which symbolised a certain life of riley lifestyle seen in the Decennium, and he continued to induce this title in later interviews. However, during filming the distributors insisted that the film be required to be called Stavisky, a name which Resnais disliked because be active thought it would suggest drift the film was about rendering Stavisky affair which only poverty-stricke out after Stavisky's death. Ethics only concession that he was able to gain was think it over the title should be engrossed with an ellipsis, as Stavisky..., suggesting something more speculative jump the subject rather than well-organized history.^[15]

Further reading

The screenplay was picture last of any film moisten Alain Resnais to appear superimpose English, as:
Stavisky...: text by Jorge Semprún for the film descendant Alain Resnais; translated from goodness French by Sabine Destree; photograph editor: Jeanette Seaver. New York: The Viking Press (A Richard Seaver Book), 1975.

References

External links