Boulevard (1960)
Directed by Julien Duvivier

Drama

Film Review

Abstract picture representing Boulevard (1960)
The contrast between the styles of the French New Wave and the old guard of quality French filmmakers is brought into sharp relief when one compares this 1960 film from Julien Duvivier with François Truffaut's contemporaneous Les 400 coups. Both films star the young Jean-Pierre Léaud (who could be described as the Marlon Brando of French cinema) playing a rebellious adolescent with a knack of getting himself into trouble, and both are set in a renascent Paris that has finally shaken off the yoke of post-war gloom and austerity.  Beyond that, the films could hardly be more different.

The spontaneity and raw authenticity which Truffaut brings to his film are far less discernible in Duvivier's.  Boulevard is made according to the old rules - polished performances, a conventional narrative and a cinematographic approach which had hardly changed since the 1930s.  The film is technically well made, but in comparison with Truffaut's, it fairly soulless, never attaining the emotional impact of Les 400 coups.  It doesn't help that most of the characters in the film are the most grotesque stereotypes, including a shrewish step-mother that looks like something Hans Christian Andersen created and a pair of Parisian artists who clearly never missed a day at the Quentin Crisp school of in-your-face campness.

Immaculately coiffeured and tidily dressed, Jean-Pierre Léaud resembles a sanitised version of the Antoine Doinel character he played in Truffaut's film.  You can imagine the difficulties Duvivier must have had in trying to control Léaud and get him to deliver a "conventional" performance.  The actor looks as if he has been hermetically sealed in a straitjacket for much of the film.  It is no surprise that the bulk of his film work for the next decade or so would be for the New Wave directors whose innovative style matched perfectly his expressive, idiosyncratic approach to acting.  Interestingly, the part of the boxer Dicky was originally offered to the virtually unknown young actor Jean-Paul Belmondo, but he declined and instead chose to work on Jean-Luc Godard's A bout de souffle, a wise move as it turned out.  Boulevard serves to show how out-of-touch and out-of-date the old guard filmmakers were becoming and how much French cinema needed of a shot of revitalisation.
© James Travers 2008
The above content is owned by frenchfilms.org and must not be copied.
Next Julien Duvivier film:
La Chambre ardente (1962)

Film Synopsis

Driven away from home by his shrewish stepmother, 15-year-old Jojo finds a place to live by himself, a tiny garret room overlooking the Place Pigalle.  When he is not worrying about money, which he finds hard to come by, Jojo thinks only of women, which for some reason have acquired a sudden fascination for him.  He is particularly interested in Jenny, a striptease artist in a nearby nightclub, but she treats him like a child and already has a boyfriend, a boxer named Jimmy.  After this first disappointment in love Jojo contemplates suicide but then he finds he has a friend in Marietta, a girl nearer his own age.  Jojo's saga of misfortune ends when his stepmother goes away, allowing him to patch things up with his father.
© James Travers
The above content is owned by frenchfilms.org and must not be copied.


Film Credits

  • Director: Julien Duvivier
  • Script: René Barjavel, Julien Duvivier
  • Cinematographer: Roger Dormoy
  • Music: Jean Yatove
  • Cast: Jean-Pierre Léaud (Georges 'Jojo' Castagnier), Monique Brienne (Marietta Benazzi), Pierre Mondy (Dicky), Magali Noël (Jenny Dorr), Georges Adet (Monsieur Arthur), Jacques Duby (Giuseppe Amato), Jean-Marie Amato (Le clochard), Mag-Avril (La vieille Joséphine), Betty Beckers (Une danseuse), Anne Beguet (Marie Castagnier), Robert Dalban (Le forain), Raoul Delfosse (Le serveur de la buvette), Gérard Fallec (Roger), Pierre Frag (Julius Rosenthal), Robert Pizani (Paulo), Jacques Herlin (Le garçon de café), Bob Ingarao (Louis Arnavon), Jean-Louis Le Goff (Le policier en civil), Marcellys (Le clown), Maryse Martin (Mme Duriez)
  • Country: France
  • Language: French
  • Support: Black and White
  • Runtime: 95 min

The very best of French film comedy
sb-img-7
Thanks to comedy giants such as Louis de Funès, Fernandel, Bourvil and Pierre Richard, French cinema abounds with comedy classics of the first rank.
French cinema during the Nazi Occupation
sb-img-10
Even in the dark days of the Occupation, French cinema continued to impress with its artistry and diversity.
The best French war films ever made
sb-img-6
For a nation that was badly scarred by both World Wars, is it so surprising that some of the most profound and poignant war films were made in France?
The very best American film comedies
sb-img-18
American film comedy had its heyday in the 1920s and '30s, but it remains an important genre and has given American cinema some of its enduring classics.
Kafka's tortuous trial of love
sb-img-0
Franz Kafka's letters to his fiancée Felice Bauer not only reveal a soul in torment; they also give us a harrowing self-portrait of a man appalled by his own existence.
 

Other things to look at


Copyright © frenchfilms.org 1998-2024
All rights reserved



All content on this page is protected by copyright