L'Air de Paris (1954)
Directed by Marcel Carné

Film Review

The strange love of Marcel Carné

On the face of it, L'Air de Paris would seem to be Marcel Carné's most banal and inoffensive film.  A gentle realist melodrama securely anchored in the director's preferred working class milieu, it embraces many of the classic themes of populist French cinema of the time - sport, male friendship, class divisions and an ill-fated romantic entanglement.  In addition, it reunites two of the icons of 1930s populist cinema, Jean Gabin and Arletty, fifteen years after their last memorable pairing in Carné's poetic realist masterpiece Le Jour se lève (1939).  Of the fifteen films that the director made after WWII, this is the one that most feels like a continuation of his 1930s populist work, and it is the occasion when the post-war Gabin is closest to his pre-war incarnation as the flawed proletarian idealist.  It is also - as the title implies - a film about Paris and effectively evokes the changing character of the capital at a time when France was experiencing a period of unprecedented economic and social development - evidenced by frequent references to the city's growing immigrant population.  Roger Hubert's location photography includes some beautifully lyrical shots of the capital, ranging from the bustling Halles market and other working class districts of Paris to the more affluent neighbourhood of Île Saint-Louis.

With its apparently uncontroversial subject matter film and authentic slice of Parisian life circa 1955 L'Air de Paris could hardly fail to be a popular success, and so it was.  The film attracted an audience of two million spectators and was generally well-received by the critics.  It even won two notable accolades - the Best Actor Award (Volpi Cup) at the 1954 Venice Film Fesival for Jean Gabin, and the Prix Populiste du cinéma 1954 for his co-star Roland Lesaffre (in what would be the actor's biggest screen role).  This homespun tale of a young working class man torn between success as a boxing champion and less certain happiness with the bourgeois woman he madly adores would appear to be the very epitome of what the future critics of Cahiers du cinéma would contemptuously term the cinéma de papa, quality French cinema at its most mundane and uninventive.  And yet, look a little closer and you soon begin to see that there is far more to this modest little crowdpleaser than meets the eye.  Indeed, there are good grounds for considering L'Air de Paris as Carné's most personal and outré film - the one and only occasion on which he was able to engage directly with his identity as a gay man.  Throughout his life, Marcel Carné was incredibly discrete about his sexuality and he rarely - if ever - drew attention to it in his work or social life.  This set him well apart from other contemporary gay writers and directors, such as Jean Cocteau and Jean Genet, for whom their sexual identity was a crucial guiding influence in their art.   Cocteau's open love affair with the actor Jean Marais, his principal muse, was widely publicised and Genet's lurid allusions to sexual relationships between men brought notoriety to his literary works and his brazenly homoerotic film Un chant d'amour (1950).

By contrast, Marcel Carné's own idea of love between men was of the strictly Platonic kind, and this is reflected in the idealised heterosexual love affairs depicted in his films - particularly those of the 1930s (Le Quai des brumes, Hôtel du nord, Le Jour se lève), where romantic love between a man and a woman is portrayed as an act of transcendence, liberating the doomed, trapped male victim of Fate from his terrible predicament.  In L'Air de Paris, Carné takes the bold step of exploring the notion of transcendent love within the context of an intimate friendship between an ageing boxing coach (Jean Gabin) and his latest young protégé (Roland Lesaffre).  The casting of the two male leads is highly significant, as Gabin had played the romantic hero in two of Carné's aforementioned 1930s films and Lesaffre was the closest the director came to having a long-term lover (in the most rigidly celibate sense of the term).  When L'Air de Paris was first screened in the mid-1950s, public awareness of homosexuality was so limited that even if Carné had deliberately gone out of his way to give the film a queer subtext it would probably have gone unnoticed.  So subtle is the director's handling of the subject in the film that it is only within the last two decades that it has been picked up by film scholars and given the attention it merits, allowing us to examine his wider work in a whole new light.

Carné erotica

That L'Air de Paris's gay subtext remained for so long under the radar is all the more surprising given how much flagrantly homoerotic content it contains.  In one scene, Gabin is seen expertly massaging Lesaffre's highly muscled torso - not so shocking, you might think, given this is a film about boxing, but the camera does tend to favour Lesaffre, who appears totally naked apart from a pair of skimpy underpants.  Carné's glorification of Lesaffre's perfect physique is repeatedly emphasised throughout the film by having him appear practically nude on many occasions, lit in a way that gives him an ethereal, almost angelic quality (similar to the way in which Suzanne Cloutier had been filmed in the director's earlier Juliette ou La Clef des songes and a foreshadowing of the visiting 'angel' played by Gilles Kohler in the director's final fictional drama La Merveilleuse visite (1974)).  A highly sensual mid-shot of Lesaffre happily taking a shower is far longer in duration that it needs to be and feels pornographic in its intent, so unashamedly voyeuristically does it fix on the actor's manly prowess with his bulging biceps and impressive chest muscles.

Far more suggestive than all of this, however, is the centre-piece boxing scene in which Gabin manages to get his right hand well down Lesaffre's trunks as he (presumably) massages his lower stomach during a rest break in the match.  What is more bizarre is that the same shot was reproduced in a photographic still that was widely used to promote the film on its first release.  This photograph appeared in Cinémonde, the most widely read French film magazine of the time, and was even used on the cover of Studiocanal's 2001 release of the film on DVD - perpetuating an image of Jean Gabin as an habitual man-groper.  At the time of making L'Air de Paris, Gabin did have some concern over how some of the film's depictions of male intimacy might be misinterpreted.  He refused point-blank to put his hand on the back of Lesaffre's neck in the closing scene depicting his character's reconciliation with the boxer.  Concerned over his public image, the actor's reaction was unequivocal: 'No way.  I don't want to look like a queer.'

In view of such explicit signs of physical intimacy in the film it is hard not to read a deliberate gay subtext into the relationship that develops between the two male characters Victor and André.  The fact that Gabin and Lesaffre had, for many years, been the closest of friends is something that Carné uses to the fullest extent to heighten the impression of a close sentimental bond between their characters.  It was in the months leading up to the Liberation in 1944 that Gabin and Lesaffre first met whilst serving in the French marines (les Fusiliers Marins, which played a crucial role in the Normandy Landings).  (Before this, Lesaffre had been actively engaged in the French Resistance from his mid-teens).  And it was when he called on his old comrade-in-arms five years later, during the filming of La Marie du port, that Lesaffre first came into contact with Carné.  The handsome blond-haired ex-marine made such an immediate impression on the director that he used him as an extra on this film, and then gave him a small role in his next film, Juliette ou La Clef des songes.  This was followed by a more substantial part in Thérèse Raquin (1953), on the strength of which Lesaffre ended up being paired with Gabin in L'Air de Paris.  It was the perfect role for the 26-year-old, still inexperienced actor, who had loved boxing from the age of 14 and had frequently participated in championships whilst serving in the Marines.  Lesaffre's immense skill as a boxer is apparent in the film's one major set-piece filmed over a four-day period in the Central Sporting Club de Paris, a major sporting venue in the Faubourg-Saint-Denis.  In a scene that compares well alongside those in more celebrated boxing movies (Rocky, Raging Bull, Cinderella Man), Carné and his camera crew capture not only the drama of a fiercely competitive boxing spectacle but the almost manic public enthusiasm for the sport.  Carné employed Lesaffre in all but two of his subsequent films and the actor showed his undying gratitude towards the director by remaining his most faithful companion and supporter, right up until his death in 1996.

Love me, love me not

It was the success of Carné's noir-realist drama Thérèse Raquin (1953) that led the Italian film producer Cino del Duca to make him an offer he could not refuse - his full financial commitment on any subject of the director's choosing.  This freedom allowed Carné to indulge not only his keen interest in professional boxing - the most popular sport in 1950s France - but also his desire to work again with Jean Gabin and Arletty, the actors who had featured in some of his greatest and most successful films.  After a career dip in the 1940s, Gabin was fast regaining his popularity in France (helped by Carné's La Marie du port), whilst Arletty was still struggling to win back the affection of the cinema-going public after being censured at the time of the Liberation for her overt love affair with a German officer during the Occupation (a man who just happened to be a close confidante of Hermann Göring).  The long overdue Gabin-Arletty rematch and boxing subject matter would be sure to give Carné another popular hit, but these also provided a smokescreen for him to sneak in some more personal concerns, such as his interest in an idealised Platonic love between two men.  In its depiction of an older man coaching a promising youngster to sporting success, L'Air de Paris allows its director to offer up his closest attempt at a self-portrait, with Gabin effectively serving as his screen alter ego, enacting a veiled copy of Carné's involvement with Roland Lesaffre.  The film may look like a highly personal work but it was in fact adapted from a novel (La Choutte) written by Jacques Viot, who had served as a screenwriter on Carné's earlier films Le Jour se lève and Juliette ou La Clef des songes.

L'Air de Paris is carefully written (by Carné in collaboration with Jacques Sigurd) to lead the spectator to think that the narrative's central conflict is between Victor's well-meaning aspirations for the young boxer André and the latter's romantic interest in a bourgeois model who is clearly way out of his league.  On top of this, there is a second triangular intrigue involving Victor's wife Blanche (Arletty, excelling in what is easily her best post-WWII role).  The latter's dreams of a long-deserved peaceful retirement on the Riviera are frustrated by her husband's involvement with yet another 'poulain', and she makes no secret of the fact that she regards the beefcake André as an annoying rival.  Blanche is the only character in the film who seems to be aware of the depth of the attachment that is developing between Victor and André (even they themselves seem blind to the fact that they are falling in love).  Compare the genuine tenderness in the way the two male characters interact and exchange glances with the flagrant antagonism, if not outright contempt, Victor shows for his devoted wife.   At one point, Blanche tells her rival that friendship, like love, is a one-way street.  It is the most heartfelt moment in the film, revealing how much the poor neglected woman has suffered in loving a man who hasn't come close to reciprocating her feelings for him.  But it also hints at something darker - a quiet acceptance of the fact that her husband is prone to becoming emotionally infatuated with his handsome young protégés.  She alone sees the love that dare not speak its name.

Les Amours impossibles

Going by their working class accents, mannerisms and general appearance, Blanche and Victor are socially well-matched but on the emotional front they are poles apart, their marriage resembling an on-going boxing match in which the two make a habit of trading face punches and body blows.  By contrast, the lovers André and Corinne (Marie Daëms at her most seductively elegant) would seem to be sentimentally perfectly matched but they are separated by a social gulf that can never be bridged.  He is a working class labourer, she is a bourgeois model, and never the twain shall meet.  The fatalistic image of their initial meeting - where they are separated by railway tracks - is one that stays with you as you watch the film.  Their love affair is of course doomed to fail but it isn't their obvious class separation that drives them apart.  Corinne knows she is up against a rival that she cannot beat - not just André's future prospects as a championship boxer, but also the young man's unbreakable attachment to his coach.  This is an almost exact reversal of the situation at the end of Julien Duvivier's La Belle équipe (1936), where the classic vamp (Viviane Romance) comes between two close buddies (Jean Gabin and Charles Vanel) and ultimately destroys their perfect friendship.  Duvivier's interest in the male-male bond is strictly homosocial not homosexual, and Carné's film can be interpreted in exactly the same light, the only difference being that the connection between the two male protagonists is strong enough to resist and break the destructive heterosexual impulse.  Whereas Duvivier's film (at least, the version the director preferred, not its 'cop out' alternative foisted on him by his producer) ends in the bleakest terms, Carné concludes his drama with a cheering re-affirmation of the transcendent power of male friendship.  In doing so, he hints that there is another kind of intense emotional connection that can exist between two men, deep love without desire - what Lesaffre refers to as 'homosensuality not homosexuality' in his insightful 1991 autobiography Mataf.

L'Air de Paris's subtle portrayal of a particular form of gay love is in marked contrast to what we find in Carné's subsequent comedy, Du mouron pour les petits oiseaux, which serves up a cruder, far more stereotypical representation of the homosexual man played by Jean Parédès.  In one of the less successful elements of this film, Parédès plays an ardent man-hunter who is merely a crass extension of the hideously camp archetype he plays in L'Air de Paris, the flamboyant couturier Jean-Marc.  Just why Carné bothered to include such grimly homophobic gay types in his films is hard to fathom (particularly as he clearly has not the slightest sympathy for them), but in the earlier film it may have been a conscious attempt to deflect attention away from the intended nature of the relationship between Victor and André.  Simone Paris's distinctly unlikeable Chantal serves a similar purpose, as Corinne's jealous housemate who shows a nasty streak of lesbian possessiveness.  By presenting such blatant examples of queer caricature (the limp-wristed male dressmaker and fiercely unsympathetic androphobe), Carné was able to protect himself from any charge of a gay framing of the relationship of the two central male characters.  French cinema audiences were not yet ready for a normative depiction of homosexuality and it would be another decade for a single sex love affair to be treated in a sympathetic vein - by Jean Delannoy in his extraordinarily daring film Les Amitiés particulières (1964).

Film Synopsis

Victor Le Garrec was once a professional boxer but his dreams of sporting glory have come to nothing.   Now in his mid-fifties, he contents himself with a lesser ambition - coaching young amateurs in the hope of one day finding a true boxing champion.  His long-suffering wife Blanche has ambitions of her own, to leave Paris and settle in Nice for a long and peaceful retirement, but she knows Victor has no intention of falling in with her plans - not now that he has taken another potential prize-fighter under his wing.  André Ménard is Victor's latest protégé, a 24-year-old railway worker who has both the physique and the enthusiasm to make a successful career as a boxer.  The coach is confident that, with his support, André is set for championship success.  Appalled by the squalid appearance of the young man's present living quarters, Victor insists that he moves into his more comfortable Parisian abode, but in doing so his already fractious relationship with Blanche comes under further strain.  After a gruelling training programme, André begins to repay his coach's confidence in him, emerging from his first public fight with a triumphant victory.

What Victor doesn't yet know is that his promising discovery has other matters on his mind than professional success.  He has fallen hopelessly in love with Corinne, a glamorous society model who has succumbed to his macho good looks and proletarian charms.  From the moment he first saw Corinne in a passing train when he was working on the railway tracks André knew she was his ideal woman.  A chance meeting subsequently led to their embarking on an intense love affair which threatens to totally derail André's boxing ambitions.  Naturally, Victor is unhappy with this turn of events.  To see a mere woman get between his talented acolyte and sporting glory is more than he can bear.  In the end Victor has no choice but to give his young friend an ultimatum - he must choose between his future as a championship boxer or a less fulfilled life as Corinne's husband.  André knows there is only one thing he can do.  Rejecting Victor and his dreams of sporting success, he returns to Corinne, only to find that she has already left Paris.  The distraught woman could not bear to get in the way of André's brilliant future prospects, and so she chose to end their affair, leaving her lover heart-broken.  André's desolation is short-lived, however.  As he wanders the lonely darkened streets, Victor suddenly appears from nowhere and assures him that he has a great future ahead of him.  As they walk off together, André's head is once more filled with thoughts of boxing glory.