La Maison sous la mer (1947)
Directed by Henri Calef

Film Review

The war may have been won but there was precious little sign of joie de vivre in France in the years immediately following the end of hostilities in 1945.  A realisation of the material cost of the conflict coupled with the humiliation of the Occupation and the scarcity of resources were hardly conducive to a mood of optimism, so it's no surprise that the majority of films made in France at this time are pretty grim and austere-looking.  It was more economical to make films on location rather than hire and equip studios, so a sizeable portion of French cinema suddenly acquired a new look, not too far from the neo-realist style that had become the trademark of Italian filmmakers such as Roberto Rossellini and Luchino Visconti.

Henri Decoin's Les Amants du pont Saint-Jean (1947) and Jacques Becker's Antoine et Antoinette (1947) both exemplify this sudden lurch to gritty realism, a dramatic turn away from the poetic realist aesthetic that had been so much in vogue prior to the war and the polished melodramas that had been popular during the Occupation.  La Maison sous la mer is another, less well-known, film of this era that adopts a similarly realist approach, adorning a routine (and somewhat dated) melodrama of doomed love with the harsh realities of everyday life in a poor Normandy mining community.  Comparisons with John Ford's Wales-situated How Green Was My Valley (1941) are readily drawn, although the later French film offers somewhat more in the way of regional and period authenticity.

The film was directed by Henri Calef, a Bulgarian born filmmaker who had previously enjoyed a staggering commercial success with Jéricho (1946), an impressive war film celebrating the work of the French Resistance during WWII.  Prior to this he had worked as an assistant to Pierre Chenal on the proto-noir classic Le Dernier tournant (1939) and Serge de Poligny on the haunting La Fiancée des ténèbres (1945) - two films with a distinctive noir realism that would impact greatly on Calef's own work, most effectively in his sombre psychological dramas Ombre et lumière (1951) and Les Amours finissent à l'aube (1953).  Adapted from a pretty mediocre novel by Paul Vialar, La Maison sous la mer is a comparatively minor work in Calef's oeuvre.  Its banal subject matter and archetypal characters prevent it from achieving anything like the impact of the director's later work, but it is a noteworthy film for several reasons - not least of which is the fact that it marked the screen debut of Anouk Aimée, the future star of the Oscar-winning French romance Un homme et une femme (1966).  Credited simply as Anouk, the elfin ingénue makes her presence felt in an eye-catching minor role.

La Maison sous la mer is most memorable for its graphic depiction of its time and place - an impoverished Normandy mining town in the depression era.  Photographer Claude Renoir deserves the lion's share of the artistic credit for the film, as he presents us with not only some stunning images -  the raw coastal landscape, the brutally claustrophobic mine interiors and the wondrous submarine caves - but also some stark visual testimony of what life was like for most ordinary people at the time.  Not since Albert Capellani's Germinal (1913) would French cinema audiences have had such a harrowingly true-to-life depiction of the lot of mineworkers and their families.  The sight of miners being transported to work in perilously balanced buckets on a flimsy cableway (an ominous signpost to the film's horrific denouement) provides the most potent symbol of the hazardous nature of a miner's life, one that was typically nasty, brutish and short.

The film's other great asset is its stellar cast, headed by the leading lady of the day, Viviane Romance.  Having grown accustomed to playing the proverbial 'bad girl' - the usual crop of vamps, tramps and prostitutes - since the mid-1930s, Romance was now struggling to re-define her screen image.  Undeterred by the failure of Abel Gance's Vénus aveugle (1941), she persevered and succeeded admirably in her portrayal of more sympathetic characters, culminating in her greatest achievement in Raymond Bernard's Maya (1949).  La Maison sous la mer gave Romance the opportunity to make this timely transition in a role that was calculated to evoke both contempt and pity in the spectator - a Madame Bovary type who betrays her devoted, hardworking husband for a passing affair with a handsome drifter that is so obviously bound to result in her downfall (literally as it turns out).  A so-so script prevents Romance from being entirely convincing in the role but her performance is nonetheless compelling, and whilst we are driven to condemn her character for her unwifely conduct, we cannot help but feel the anguish of a romantically minded woman who is desperate to escape from the crushingly mundane life that fate has allotted her.

Improbably cast as Romance's unprepossessing husband is Guy Decomble, a stony-faced character actor with a long and distinguished career.  A frequent collaborator of Louis Daquin (Le Voyageur de la Toussaint, Premier de cordée, Patrie), he is best remembered today for playing the severe school teacher in François Truffaut's Les 400 coups (1959).  Decomble's character is unattractive both in appearance and behaviour - it is hard no know which makes him appear more contemptible, his casual ill-treatment of his wife or the show of cowardice he puts on when he gets stuck on the cableway.  As the lover-boy Romance loses her heart to, Clément Duhour (the actress's real-life husband at the time) would seem to exemplify the romantic hero of the classic French melodrama, but even his character has a nasty thuggish side to him - first he forces his lover to choose between him and her husband, and then he casts her off without a word upon discovering the identity of her husband.

And herein lies the central flaw in the film - neither of the two male protagonists is sufficiently likeable for us to want to engage with them and see things from their perspective.  Rather than being a victim of fate, Romance's Flore is too obviously a sacrificial lamb on the altar of male self-interest.  Neither of the two men in her life is capable of responding to her emotional needs and so, like Flaubert's tragic heroine, she is destined to tumble into the abyss between the seemingly safe ground of past and future security that they occupy.  If only one of the two options presented to Flore had some prospect of future joy we might sympathise with her flight.  Alas, both are such blatant chimera, mere illusions of happiness.  We cannot weep when the pathetic rejected Flore falls to her death - partly because the effect is so unconvincingly realised, but mainly because extinction seems to be the best she can hope for.  The twinge of pain that invariably slams into your gut when you take in the concluding moments of a Carné-Prévert poetic realist offering is totally lacking here.  This fault aside, La Maison sous la mer is an unusual, imaginatively crafted piece that is well worth seeing, if only to gain some awareness of what life was really like in France in those dismal years of pre- and post-war austerity.

Film Synopsis

Flore, a good-looking woman in her early thirties, leads a contented but pretty humdrum life in the northern French town of Flamanville.  She has nothing to reproach her husband Lucien for.  He endures the penuries of life as a miner in the nearby iron ore mines to buy her all the little luxuries he can afford.  Soon, he hopes to provide her with a home of their own - a hard task given the scarcity of housing in the district.  Flore is out walking one day when she meets an attractive young man named Constant.  He has recently left England to find work in the mines.  Unbeknown to Flore, Constant has already gained the respect and friendship of her husband.  Keeping from the handsome stranger that she is married, Flore embarks on a passionate love affair with him. They meet up regularly in their adopted house beneath the sea, a spectacular uninhabited grotto.

When Constant learns that his lover is married, he insists that she must choose between him and her husband.  Flore cannot bear to be parted from Constant, so she tells Lucien that their marriage is over.  Outraged by this betrayal, both by his wife and by the man who has gained his confidence, Lucien heads off to work to confront his rival.  Shocked by the revelation that Flore is married to Lucien, Constant chooses friendship over love and makes up his mind to take the next ship back to England.  Flore is sent into a panic when her husband returns to her with this news.  She hurries off and climbs into one of the cable-car buckets used for transporting the miners to the mines.  Seeing the ferry pull out of the harbour she cries out to attract her lover's attention.  In doing so, she tips the bucket and plunges into the sea.