A pretty, wealthy girl is about to turn 16 and men in their 40s start eyeing her for marriage in 1942's Le mariage de Chiffon. It's based on an 1894 French novel and set in he same period so maybe this attitude should be expected but it's still pretty jarring. The film is a romantic comedy that does occasionally succeed in being charming though mostly I'd say it does a pretty good, unintentional, job of demonstrating why its basic conception of romance is creepy as hell.
I tend to avoid passing judgement on how other people live their lives. Everyone's complex and I think it would be folly for anyone to presume to say they know all the ends and outs of another couple's relationship dynamics. But I really don't like the ideal presented by this movie and my dislike for it is only intensified knowing it was common.
It begins on a dark night in Paris in which a middle aged military officer, Le duc d'Aubieres (Andre Luguet), meets a pretty teenage girl in the street called Chiffon. Chiffon is played by Odette Joyeux who was actually in her '20s at the time, only 12 years younger than the man playing d'Aubieres.
She doesn't look like a teenager, either, especially not with those carefully sculpted 1940s eyebrows but Odette's performance conveys Chiffon's naivete and her strong will that operates from a worldview that has been carefully orchestrated by the adults in her life, one of whom is her uncle Marc (Jacques Dumesnil), another middle aged man who forms the third point in the film's love triangle (he's her uncle by marriage and not by blood).
d'Aubieres carries Chiffon to her home in that first scene because she's lost her shoe (actually, he's stolen it and stashed it in his pocket so he can have an excuse to hold her). They learn little about each other but d'Aubieres is smitten by the sight of her pretty bare foot.
Chiffon had decided to marry Marc when she was six years old but has given up on the idea because she knows about his affair with a prominent woman of society who's about the same age as him. There's a lot of comedy about the confusion surrounding her missing shoe and how it turns up again at a hotel where all three principle characters are staying and Marc's mistress just happens to have the same pair of shoes.
The crisis in the film involves the possibility that it will be left up to Chiffon to decide whom she will or will not marry. Her angry mother, tragically, controls the family wealth, not her kindly father, so it's up to d'Aubieres, Marc, and the family butler to discreetly arrange things so that Chiffon ends up marrying the right middle aged man. That means one of the men is left out of the equation in the end and the pathos of the film's conclusion is wrapped up in his noble sacrifice--despite his desire to be the custodian of Chiffon's physical and mental life, he will allow another man to assume that role after the men have passed around a page from Chiffon's diary that they believe makes the true object of her affection clear.
Maybe that's a fantasy you can enjoy. I wouldn't even say that if you enjoy the fantasy it means it's what you want in your real life. But my personal dislike for this relationship dynamic kind of kills the movie for me. Mind you, I find it just as tiresome when the woman is the dominant partner, as is often the case in modern depictions of relationships. I don't find it attractive as a fantasy though (it ought to go without saying) I don't altogether object to its depiction in fiction, whether for psychological exploration as in the case of the domineering man with the meek German wife in Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander or the case of the domineering wife of the constable in The Lower Depths.
Le mariage de Chiffon is available on The Criterion Channel.
No comments:
Post a Comment