La Danse de mort (1948)
Directed by Marcel Cravenne

Film Review

August Strindberg's 1900 play The Dance of Death (a.k.a. Dödsdansen) is given a suitably dour rendering in this stifling post-war melodrama, the third of four films directed by Marcel Cravenne.  Like his brother Georges Cravenne, famous for creating the Césars Awards ceremony, Marcel Cravenne is best known for his television work, to which he devoted himself for thirty years, beginning with the American series Foreign Intrigue (1952-1955).  Although overshadowed by his subsequent work as one of France's most prolific television directors, Cravenne's films for the cinema have a distinctive feel and some, La Danse de mort being a case in point, deserve to be much better known than they are.  Cravenne was not only a skilled technician he also had a penchant for character detail, as this film amply bears out.

Just as Strindberg had conceived his original play, La Danse de mort is the blackest of black comedies, a darkly humorous portrayal of a marriage that has turned murderously sour.  In one memorable scene, the wife (Denise Vernac) attempts to kill her husband (Erich von Stroheim) by accelerating the tempo to a dance he is happily performing for the amusement of a guest.  The malicious intent can be felt in every note that the wife hammers out on the living room piano and what begins as an amiable entertainment soon becomes a sadomasochistic duel to the death.  Both Von Stroheim and Vernac (who were incidentally real-life partners at the time) bring a harrowing realism and depth to their portrayals, so whilst their characters are hideous grotesques bordering on cartoonish insanity we are compelled to sympathise with them both.  This is what marriage can do to you, if you happen to be stuck in an island prison for years on end with nothing to do other than shoot the occasional escaping detainee.

Cravenne not only directed the film (with admirable flair), he also scripted the adaptation of Strindberg's play, in collaboration with Jacques-Laurent Bost (brother of the famous screenwriter Pierre Bost) and Erich von Stroheim, who was once a great film director in his own right (author of such films as Blind Husbands (1919) and Foolish Wives (1922)). The brutally dysfunctional relationship between the two main protagonists, Edgar and Théa, is emphasised by the austere fortress setting, which becomes the bleakest of metaphors for a loveless marriage.  A piercing sense of hopelessness permeates almost every frame of this film, and we cannot help but feel the excruciating despair of the two people who long for escape, to put an end to a union that is more insufferable than any prison sentence.  And then, just when the wish is granted, murderous loathing gives way to abject desolation and, in a moment of blinding revelation, we see just why the mutually destructive couple were unable to part.  They really were in love - Strindberg's idea of a joke.

Film Synopsis

A proud military man, Edgar is now the director of a prison fortress located on a small island in the Adriatic.  He runs the prison with an iron hand and is prepared to shoot dead any prisoner who attempts to escape.  He is as much a prisoner on the island as the men in his charge, and so is his wife Théa and daughter Rita.  Married for over twenty-five years, Edgar and Théa have grown to hate one another and each longs for the other to die.  Knowing that she can never escape, Théa encourages Rita when she falls in love with a political prisoner and is ready to lend her support when the couple decide to flee the island.  Edgar's strained relationship with his wife further deteriorates when an old friend of hers, Kurt, arrives at the fortress and advises its governor that he will soon die unless he changes his mode of living.  This is just the piece of good news Théa has been waiting for...