Cahiers Du Cinéma

b. 18 August 1906, Paris, France
d. 31 October 1996, Clamart, Hauts-de-Seine, France
Cinema is the art of forming a team.
–Jean Cocteau
Carné’s films now impinge upon our consciousness above all as memories, memories often as potent and unshakeable as those in our own lives. (1)
–Gilbert Adair
Some questions about Carné
When thinking, writing or talking about Marcel Carné, the samequestions inevitably arise. Were his films successful because of or in spite of him? Were his films the product of a solitary inspiration, or the rewards of collective input? Why is he not remembered as reverently as his contemporaries Jean Vigo and Jean Renoir? Is he merely an orchestrator, someone who got lucky and was able to work regularly with the monstres sacrés of French classical cinema (JacquesPrévert, Jean Gabin, Alexandre Trauner)? What happened to his career after 1945? Is he still important? Was François Truffaut on to something when he described Carné as “a confused soul” and “an obstinate cineaste”? (2) Nowadays, descriptions of Carné tend to be framed in a highly normative register – he is either a “tidy pessimist and adroit technician”, (3) or someone who “needed hiscollaborators”, (4)and ended up making “dated, backward-looking [and] grotesquely implausible” films. (5)
Yet, few would deny that Carné’s output between 1936 and 1946 –that extraordinary run of films that began with Jenny (1936) and ended with Les portes de la nuit (The Gates of the Night, 1946) – contains the very DNA of French classical film-making. During this period, he surrounded himself with the mostaccomplished personnel of the 1930s. Films like Le quai des brumes (Port of Shadows, 1938) and Les enfants du paradis(Children of Paradise, 1945) remain pinnacles of achievement not just for Carné but for his production designers, composers, actors, and cinematographers. So why do biographical studies of Carné continue to marginalise – or ignore outright –his post-war work? Even Edward BaronTurk’s masterful Child of Paradise, the sole English-language critical biography of Carné, devotes only seventy-two pages (of a 500-page study) to Carné’s post-1946 career, and this despite the thirteen more films made after Les portes de la nuit (several of them prize-winners). And therein lies the paradox: Carné was, critically and commercially, one of the most successful directors of the 1930s andthe epitome of the ‘Golden Age’ tradition of filmmaking, and yet his career is effectively split in half – post-1946, he was pushed to the periphery from where he was unable ever again to re-emerge. Dubbed a “megalomaniac of decor” by André Bazin, (6) Carné’s concept of filmmaking was predicated on studio-constructed stylised landscapes, expressive camera movements, and a meticulous pictorialcomposition, properties all viewed with suspicion by post-war critics. While, say, Renoir embraced an aesthetic of impulsiveness and immediacy, Carné’s films were wrongly perceived as pre-planned, airless, frigid. (7) Yes, there are some duds – Le pays d’où je viens (1956) and Les jeunes loups (1968) are difficult to watch, let alone defend, but they remain anomalies in a canon of virtually unalloyedartistic and ideological maturity. And yes, perhaps his oeuvre is one of “unmitigated sadness”, full of films “that rarely inspire or console”. (8) But we should not confuse his cool style and psychological austerity for bleakness or detachment, for embedded in those slowly-paced shots and haunting visuals was vitality, emotional truthfulness, and often, love asserting itself despite the odds. Carnéwas just only an influence – stylistically, visually, psychologically – on the likes of Carol Reed, Luchino Visconti, and early Ingmar Bergman, but he remains, in his own right, and on his own terms, a great director.
Carné as film critic: sketching a personal style
Carné became interested in cinema while working as a journalist at the monthly film journal Cinémagazine at the end of the...