Alexandre Astruc

Alexandre Astruc, b. Paris, 1923 1948: Aller-Retour (s); Ulysse et les Mauvaises Rencontres (s). 1952; Le Rideau CramoisilThe Crimson Curtain (s). 1955: Les Mativatses Rencontres. 1958: line Vie. I960: !M Proie fioiir I'Ombre. 1961: [.'Education Sentwnen-talc 61. 1963: Le Puitfs et le Penduk (s). 1964: Evariste Gallois (s). 1966: La Longue Marche, 1%8: Flantmen sur l'AdriatiAstruc is a fascinating example of a man from literary culture identifying his true allegiance to the movies. He holds a special place in the still small library of worthwhile cinema theory, even if his own films rarely live up to all his admirable principles. Une Vie, though, is a perfect collaboration of Maupassant's novel, Astruc's treatment, the photography of Claude Renoir, Roman Vlad's music, and the presence of Maria Schei], Christian Mar-quand, Ivan Desny, Pascals Petit, and Antort-ella Lualdi. Rather out of fashion today, not even the considerably inferior quality of Astruc's other work can prevent it from some future rediscovery. It justifies the man as surely as Night of the Hunter does Charles Laughton. Une Vie is the demonstration of a view of cinema—la camera-stylo—that is a most fruitful critical bond between classical and modern cinema.
Astnic was a critic, a novelist—Les Vacances (45)—and assistant to Marc Allegret on Blanche Fury (47). In 1948, in £cran Francois, he wrote a short article, "The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: La Cam era-Stylo." It argued for a new appreciation of the language of film:
... the cinema will gradually break free from the tyranny of what is visual, from the image far its own sake, from the immediate and concrete demands of the narrative, to become a means of writing just as flexible and subtle as written language.. . . We have tome to realise that the meaning which the silent cinema tried to give birth to through symbolic association exists within the image itself, in the development of the narrative, in every gesture of the characters, in every line of dialogue, in those camera movements which relate objects to objects and characters to objects. All thought, like all feeling, is. a relationship between one human being and another human being. . ..
That can still claim to be the most important critical theory the cinema has yet produced. It led Astruc to the identification of a pantheon that was shared by most of the Cahien group and that enriched the films they made-. Eisen-stein, Welles, Kenoir, Bresson, von Stroheim, Murnau. Hawks, Mizoguchi, Hitchcock, Lang, and Rossellini.
At the same time, it was not difficult to detect the young novelist at work, who looked forward to the cinema's achieving the autonomy of, say, Sartre, Camus, or Faulkner, Astruc's own films showed that in la camdra-stylo he remained very conscious of the pen. His movies relied not only on literary models, but what was often an academic demonstration of his theories. For example, Le Rideav Cramoisi is a very cold film, more engaged by the abstract realization of human connection than actually involved in it. Astruc is capable of passages of extraordinary beauty and utter clarity, but the heart is often left behind. No surprise that he once listed Anthony Mann's Men in War as a favorite film, for in that film Mann achieves an eerie detachment through cinematic grace. Une Vie works because of Maria Schell's insistent emotionalism—a quality that has marred other films, but brings a touching plaintiveness to Une Vie. Elsewhere, Astruc's films have the distinction of blueprints; by contrast, Renoir's sire untidy houses. It is a serious limitation, but Astruc's theory is still correct and vital. No student of the movies should neglect it or leave Une Vie unseen.


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