French filmmaker Louis Valray’s 1930s features restored

Véra Korène

Louis Valray directed two independent features in France in the mid-1930s. Adapted from a play by Pierre Wolff, La belle de nuit is structured a bit like La Ronde, starting with a theatrical couple facing a crisis and progressing through several love affairs in various settings, all ending in betrayals of one sort or another. It stars Véra Korène, a member of the Comédie Française, Aimé Clariond and Jacques Dumesnil.

Valray uses some of the techniques of mainstream filmmaking in how scenes are written and structured, but also departs from them in unexpected ways. There’s a daring pan of working women at a bar that’s shot in tight, almost out of focus. A singer performs a number nonchalantly, almost contemptuously, the way Pert Kelton did in The Bowery. Subplots end abruptly, unresolved. The camera swings back and forth across a table in a restaurant, capturing three characters as their relationships change right before our eyes. (Dreyer would use a similar technique in Day of Wrath.) Valray cuts from a pet dog crying after its mistress to a train whistle, one of several audio edits that carry the movie from one location to another.

There’s a twist reminiscent of a film so famous to name it would give the game away, but it’s delivered in an off-handed manner that doesn’t call attention to itself. The movie as a whole is very much in the tone of Max Ophüls, if not quite his style (and that due more to budget issues than artistic vision). And while not everyone will accept its cold, even creepy, message (it was a box-office failure), it is a lot of fun to watch.

Frame enlargements from La belle de nuit. Copyright Lobster Films.

MoMA is screening it January 12 and 21. Valray’s second feature, Escale (Thirteen Days of Love), will screen the same days. The January 12 screenings will be introduced by Serge Bromberg. Since these are Lobster Films restorations, they will most likely be available on Blu-ray or DVD at some point.

This entry was posted in Film Festivals, Restorations and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.