The Life Cinematic

"I have always preferred the reflect of the life to life itself." -François Truffaut

January 12, 2005




This is the sort of odd little film I'd never have reason to watch if I didn't make such an obsessive point of watching every film made by my favorite actors. In this case, Joan Crawford brought Reunion in France to my attention, a pretty conventional American war propaganda film, just convoluted enough to stand out from the crowd.

Crawford can't pass for a French woman and for much of the film she merely strikes the standard Joan Crawford poses and wears the standard Joan Crawford look. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, when your entire reason for watching a film is a single star's iconography. There are scenes in which she shines, but neither the film nor her performance transcend her image... Mildred Pierce it ain't.

It's hard to fault a film for its simple characterizations and overt political messages when you realize it was released in 1942 and had some part in turning the American audience's attention to the war in Europe. But to a modern viewer, it is a bit grating to see Germans portrayed as animals, the French as courageous but bumbling, and the lone American as the reticent hero. And it's also somewhat alarming that the Americans, British and French are aligned by the fact that in this film they speak English at all times, while the Germans occasionally speak their own language, without subtitles, as if to suggest they are creatures of an entirely other species.

The script yanks the viewer around a bit too much not to feel emotionally betrayed at the end, asking us to believe ugly lies about characters and at a moment's notice decide they are fully redeemed. I don't know which couple we're really meant to root for, but Michelle is too willing to whore herself out for the cause to understand her motivations. And if the ultimate message is that love must be sacrificed for country, well, Casablanca did it much better. Still, at the very end, they hope we'll believe it's not a sacrifice at all... It's too much emotional manipulation for too shallow a payoff.

Still, it's an interesting story, even if after the first hour it forgets what it's meant to be about. Recommended for history buffs and Joan Crawford fans (and John Wayne fans... I suppose they must exist).