French Cancan

French Cancan

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Jean Renoir
Produced by Louis Wipf
Written by Jean Renoir
André-Paul Antoine
Music by Georges Van Parys
Cinematography Michel Kelber
Edited by Borys Lewin
Distributed by Gaumont Film Company
Criterion Collection
Release dates
 27 April 1954
Running time
 100 minutes
Country France
Italy
Language French

French Cancan is a 1954 French musical film written and directed by Jean Renoir and starring Jean Gabin and María Félix. Where Renoir’s previous film Le Carosse d’or had celebrated the 18th century Italian commedia dell’arte, this work is a homage to the Parisian café-concert of the 19th century with its popular singers and dancers. Visually, the film evokes the paintings of Degas and the Impressionists, including his own father Pierre-Auguste Renoir.[1] It also marked his return to France and to French cinema after an exile that began in 1940.[2]

Plot

Set in 1890s Paris, Henri Danglard is the owner of a cafe, which features his mistress, Lola, as a belly dancer. Losing money, Henri finds himself in Montmartre and finds that the old-fashioned can-can is still being performed there. Inspired, Henri comes up with a new business scheme that aims to revive the can-can, featuring a new dancer, Nini, a laundress he meets by chance.

Cast

Critical reception

François Truffaut reviewed the film in Arts magazine in May 1955 and called the film a milestone in the history of colour of cinema. "Every scene is a cartoon in movement [-] Madame Guibole's dance class reminds us of a Degas sketch." Whilst Truffaut did not consider it as important a film as Rules of the Game or The Golden Coach, he nevertheless praised it as an example of Renoir "as vigorous and youthful as ever." This affirmative response was not shared by Bernard Chardère however, writing in Positif, who criticised the music, the sets, even the final cancan scene. "The phoniness of the rue Lepic, with its vegetable carts and piles of artificial stones is painful to look at. The actors act. The audience gets bored. The dance rehearsals are Degas all right, but the kind that appears on Post Office calendars."[5]

References

  1. ↑ Jean Béranger and Howard B. Garey, The Illustrious Career of Jean Renoir, Yale French Studies No. 17, Art of the Cinema (1956) , pp. 27-37 Published by: Yale University Press. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2929115
  2. ↑ Janet Bergstrom, Jean Renoir's Return to France. Poetics Today Vol. 17, No. 3, Creativity and Exile: European/American Perspectives (Autumn, 1996), pp. 453-489 Published by: Duke University Press. Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1773418
  3. ↑ Robertson Wojcik, Pamela (2001). Soundtrack available: essays on film and popular music, Duke University Press. p. 137. ISBN 0-8223-2800-3
  4. ↑ Crosland, Margaret (2002). A cry from the heart: the life of Edith Piaf, Arcadia. ISBN 1-900850-50-8
  5. ↑ Truffaut,Arts, May 4, 1955, and Chardere in Positif, quoted in French New Wave, by Jean Douchet, p.27

External links