La Dixieme Symphonie, 1918
This film starts with a bang, literally, as a woman named Eve (Emmy Lynn) murders her lover's sister. That lover, Fred Ryce (Jean Toulout), then blackmails Eve with the threat of revealing her crime. Eve manages to pay off Fred in exchange for her freedom, and years later she is living with a loving husband and daughter, Claire. But when Claire falls for, you guessed it, Fred, Eve must decide what to do about the situation.
This was a unique viewing experience, as the film was available on YouTube but not with subtitles. All of the inter-titles were in their original French. So I watched the film with Google Translate open on my lap, quickly typing in the titles so that I could understand what was happening. Sometimes, as Fred's lines would reveal themselves I would be like "What . . . if . . . I call . . the . . . Courts-----OH WHAT A BASTARD!!".
Anyway, I liked this film overall. Fred is a wonderfully hateable villain. From his manipulations of Eve in the beginning to his underhanded courtship of Claire, it's an awesomely smarmy character. Something that I struggled with a bit was how to feel about Eve. Something I struggled to translate were the handwritten letters shown in the film, so it was unclear to me what Fred said that induced Eve to murder his sister. But aside from that, I was largely sympathetic to Eve. She doesn't want to get caught for her crime, and it pains her to keep a secret from her family.
The film is very impressionistic, and there are some really neat images throughout. When Fred realizes the power that he has over Eve, the film cuts to an image of a hand closing on a small bird. There are little touches like this throughout. The title of the film refers to a symphony that Eve's husband writes about how women are untrue after he comes to believe that Eve is cheating on him. There is a long sequence of him performing this piece and Eve's reaction to watching him.
I did think that the very ending of the film was a little weak. It wants to preserve the "purity" of the characters of Eve and Claire and I almost wish they had concluded the story a different way. I actually liked where the film was going with Claire, who
WARNING: spoilers below
pulls a gun on Fred and declares that she's not going to let him live to take on her father in a duel
pulls a gun on Fred and declares that she's not going to let him live to take on her father in a duel
.
If you speak French you'll probably have an easier time of this than me. My only real complaint with it was that it seemed to move in stops and starts. It begins with such a stark and sordid sequence that some of the later domestic sequences feel a bit slow.