Les enfants terribles (1950)
Country: FR
Technical: bw 100m
Director: Jean-Pierre Melville
Cast: Nicole Stéphane, Edouard Dermithe
Synopsis:
The tempestuous and jealous love between brother and sister appears both to draw unaccountable loyalty from those around them and drive themselves inexorably along the path to self-destruction.
Review:
Frigid adaptation of a novel by Jean Cocteau, with the author's unmistakeable tones interrupting to comment on the action along with fragments of Bach and Vivaldi. Melville at times has the principals speak their lines directly to the camera but we get no closer to them as human beings; they remain, as suggested by the title, petulant, capricious children. Perhaps by dint of its wordiness or the lack of dramatic coherence in its episodic construction (snowball-induced illness, barely specified; sojourn by the sea over before begun; marriage to rich American interrupted by death, etc.), the film is among the most soporific in the respected canon. However, that there is talent and vision at work here is beyond question, and the oddly effete Dermithe (adoptive son of Cocteau) and tomboyish Stéphane must constitute the most memorably apt piece of casting imaginable. Gilbert Adair drew inspiration from the film in his novel The Dreamers, later filmed by Bertolucci.
Country: FR
Technical: bw 100m
Director: Jean-Pierre Melville
Cast: Nicole Stéphane, Edouard Dermithe
Synopsis:
The tempestuous and jealous love between brother and sister appears both to draw unaccountable loyalty from those around them and drive themselves inexorably along the path to self-destruction.
Review:
Frigid adaptation of a novel by Jean Cocteau, with the author's unmistakeable tones interrupting to comment on the action along with fragments of Bach and Vivaldi. Melville at times has the principals speak their lines directly to the camera but we get no closer to them as human beings; they remain, as suggested by the title, petulant, capricious children. Perhaps by dint of its wordiness or the lack of dramatic coherence in its episodic construction (snowball-induced illness, barely specified; sojourn by the sea over before begun; marriage to rich American interrupted by death, etc.), the film is among the most soporific in the respected canon. However, that there is talent and vision at work here is beyond question, and the oddly effete Dermithe (adoptive son of Cocteau) and tomboyish Stéphane must constitute the most memorably apt piece of casting imaginable. Gilbert Adair drew inspiration from the film in his novel The Dreamers, later filmed by Bertolucci.
Country: FR
Technical: bw 100m
Director: Jean-Pierre Melville
Cast: Nicole Stéphane, Edouard Dermithe
Synopsis:
The tempestuous and jealous love between brother and sister appears both to draw unaccountable loyalty from those around them and drive themselves inexorably along the path to self-destruction.
Review:
Frigid adaptation of a novel by Jean Cocteau, with the author's unmistakeable tones interrupting to comment on the action along with fragments of Bach and Vivaldi. Melville at times has the principals speak their lines directly to the camera but we get no closer to them as human beings; they remain, as suggested by the title, petulant, capricious children. Perhaps by dint of its wordiness or the lack of dramatic coherence in its episodic construction (snowball-induced illness, barely specified; sojourn by the sea over before begun; marriage to rich American interrupted by death, etc.), the film is among the most soporific in the respected canon. However, that there is talent and vision at work here is beyond question, and the oddly effete Dermithe (adoptive son of Cocteau) and tomboyish Stéphane must constitute the most memorably apt piece of casting imaginable. Gilbert Adair drew inspiration from the film in his novel The Dreamers, later filmed by Bertolucci.