Rendez-vous de juillet (1949)
Directed by Jacques Becker

Film Review

When he began shooting his fifth full-length film Rendez-vous de juillet in February 1949, Jacques Becker could not have imagined the phenomenal impact it would have on French cinema in the decade that followed.  Becker's sole preoccupation was to deliver an authentic portrayal of that stratum of society that had been almost totally neglected in European cinema up until this time - young people about to embark on their adult lives.  Marc Allégret's Entrée des artistes (1938) was one of the few French films that had given a realistic representation of modern youth prior to this, and this may well have been one of the main inspirations for Becker's film.

Immediately prior to this, Jacques Becker had made a far more sombre work, Antoine et Antoinette (1947), which depicted a young couple struggling with the privations of post-war austerity.  The contrast between this film and Rendez-vous de juillet could not be greater, and shows the dramatic change in mood in France as rationing started to be phased out and American-style consumerism began to take off.  Becker concludes France's bleakest decade of the 20th century with his most upbeat and infectiously exuberant film, in which the young generation look forward to the future with unbridled optimism, imagining that anything is possible.  No wonder the film was so popular with the young: it snatched the Zeitgeist like a hungry cheetah felling a passing antelope and instantly excised the pall of gloom that had hung over French cinema for almost a decade with a burst of Charleston-drenched euphoria.

Rendez-vous de juillet was not only a box office hit (with an audience of 1.8 million in France, it was one of Becker's most commercially successful films), it also found favour with the critics and won the coveted Prix Louis-Delluc in 1949.  More significantly, it was to have an enormous influence on the next generation of filmmakers in France, in particular the auteurs of the French New Wave, many of whom would be similarly preoccupied with the problems and aspirations of the young.  As a critic, François Truffaut was one of Becker's keenest admirers, and Becker's realist, intimate style of filmmaking is evident in many of his early films.  Jacques Rozier's Adieu Philippine (1962) may be the most obvious homage to Rendez-vous de juillet, but the first films by Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette and Eric Rohmer also bear the imprint of Becker's youth-oriented film to a greater or lesser extent.  Another filmmaker to make his mark in the late 1950s was Marcel Camus, who worked on Rendez-vous de juillet as an assistant director; he would win an Oscar and the Palme d'Or at Cannes for his 1959 film Orfeu Negro.

A glance through the credits of Rendez-vous de juillet reminds us that there was another Nouvelle Vague in the 1950s - an insurgence of a new generation of talented actors who would change the landscape of French cinema as much as the iconoclastic, rule-breaking directors.  Daniel Gélin had his first important role in this film, and would become a major star as a result.  Maurice Ronet made an impressive screen debut, monopolising our sympathies with a younger version of the conflicted character portrayals that would form the mainstay of his remarkable screen career.  Nicole Courcel and Brigitte Auber were two other notable newcomers who proved their talents here in the principal female roles, but whilst Courcel's career flourished, Auber's soon waned, but not before she had had a brush with the Master of Suspense, Hitchcock, in To Catch a Thief (1955).

With the crowded wine cellars of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, throbbing with jazz, the anthem of youth, providing a suitable setting for several keys scenes in the film, Jacques Becker foisted on an unsuspecting cinema audience an essay on youth culture that could hardly fail to impress with its vitality, truth and modernity.  It was whilst working as an assistant to Jean Renoir that Becker acquired his penchant for realism, and it is his striving for authenticity in all of his films which most marked him out from his contemporaries.  Rendez-vous de juillet is the closest that Becker came to making a documentary, and some would argue that is essentially what it is - the most truthful incursion into the mindset of the young adult that a French filmmaker had so far attempted.

Film Synopsis

In his early 20s, Lucien Bonnard has made up his mind to become a celebrated explorer, but his bourgeois parents are insistent that he abandons these wild delusions and instead settle for a more conventional career like banking.  After a row with his father, Lucien leaves home and sets about trying to arrange transport for his next expedition to Africa.  Meanwhile, his girlfriend Christine Courcel is nurturing ambitions of her own; she intends to become a famous actress, and is ready to do anything to achieve this result.  With her friend Thérèse, she gets a part in a stage play and allows her director to take advantage of her naivety.   Just when Lucien's dreams are so close to being fulfilled, he discovers that Christine has been unfaithful to him...