It’s a world of rigor and solemnity, a world of devotion, isolation, and self-control. Most often shown within the stylish realm of studied gangsterdom, the cinematic province of Jean-Pierre Melville, realized in just 13 features, was generally consistent in tone, subject matter, and formal order. But it’s because this vision was so thoroughly entrenched in one prominent genre, that a film like When You Read This Letter (Quand tu liras cette lettre), Melville’s third, is regarded as such a discernible outlier. In any event, Melville himself dismissed When You Read This Letter as a mere commercial exercise, a means to the end of funding his own studio. And auteurist critics, just before establishing Melville as one of their pioneering exemplars, were also quick to sweep aside this purportedly blasé work of creative compromise. Contemptuous evaluations are unfortunate, for while When You Read This Letter does stand out from...
- 9/12/2018
- MUBI
Marc Allégret: From André Gide lover to Simone Simon mentor (photo: Marc Allégret) (See previous post: "Simone Simon Remembered: Sex Kitten and Femme Fatale.") Simone Simon became a film star following the international critical and financial success of the 1934 romantic drama Lac aux Dames, directed by her self-appointed mentor – and alleged lover – Marc Allégret.[1] The son of an evangelical missionary, Marc Allégret (born on December 22, 1900, in Basel, Switzerland) was to have become a lawyer. At age 16, his life took a different path as a result of his romantic involvement – and elopement to London – with his mentor and later "adoptive uncle" André Gide (1947 Nobel Prize winner in Literature), more than 30 years his senior and married to Madeleine Rondeaux for more than two decades. In various forms – including a threesome with painter Théo Van Rysselberghe's daughter Elisabeth – the Allégret-Gide relationship remained steady until the late '20s and their trip to...
- 2/28/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
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