Nuit de décembre (1940)
Directed by Curtis Bernhardt

Film Review

Before moving to Hollywood, where he helmed a string of minor classics including Conflict (1945) (with Humphrey Bogart) and Possessed (1947) (with Joan Crawford), Curtis Bernhardt directed a handful of films in France, most of which are now all but forgotten.  Immediately before making his Hollywood debut with My Love Came Back (1940), Bernhardt crowned his brief career in France with Nuit de décembre, a delicate melodrama which feels like an overture to the many fine films that were to come.  The fairly anodyne plot is taken from a novel by Bernhard Kellermann, whose best known work, Der Tunnel, had already been adapted for cinema by Bernhardt, as both a German and French language film (with Jean Gabin starring in the French version, Le Tunnel (1933)).

Nuit de décembre's main virtue is that it brings together two of the leading lights of 1930s French cinema, Pierre Blanchar and Renée Saint-Cyr, and under Bernhardt's adept direction both actors impress with performances that rate as being among their best.  As he demonstrated in his memorable portrayal of Raskolnikov in Pierre Chenal's Crime et châtiment (1935), Blanchar is most in his element when playing complex, tortured individuals, and in Bernhardt's film he gives an admirable interpretation of a good man who becomes soured by a love affair that goes badly wrong (for reasons which are never explained).  Blanchar's transformation from suave young pianist to embittered and tyrannical music maestro is as poignant as it is dramatic, and it can be argued that he never again delivered a screen performance of this quality.

What goes for Blanchar goes equally for his delectable co-star Renée Saint-Cyr, who does an excellent job of delineating between the two characters she plays in the film, the one a mysterious object of desire with a fay charm, the other a tangible modern woman, real and prosaic.  Tragic to think that after the war this great actress would be mostly relegated to supporting roles in less worthy films, including many directed by her son, Georges Lautner.  Jean Tissier, another actor who was greatly in demand in this era, is a welcome addition to the cast, which includes some notable stars-in-the-making in minor roles: Bernard Blier, Dora Doll and (blink and you'll miss him) Serge Reggiani.  Mainly on the strength of its performances, Nuit de décembre has stood the test of time better than many French film melodramas of this period, and even if it pales in comparison with Bernhardt's subsequent Hollywood offerings, it is highly recommended, a bleak sonata on the cruelty of love and the fragility of illusions.

Film Synopsis

In 1919, Pierre Darmont, a world-class pianist, falls in love with an attractive young woman named Anne, but after a night of passion she mysteriously walks out of his life, never to return.  Twenty years later, Pierre is at the height of his fame, but he is also a bitter man, unable to carry on a long-term relationship with any woman he is attracted to.  Then, one day, he meets Hélène, who is the exact double of the woman he lost his heart to twenty years previously.  Realising that Hélène reciprocates his feelings, Pierre asks her to marry him.  Then her adopted father intervenes with the devastating news that Pierre is in fact Hélène 's father...