La fin du jour/Конец дня/The End of the Day (France, 1939)(Kultura, 23:50)
-- Kudos to Kirill Razlogov for airing this v. good Julien Duvivier drama about the perils of memory and the price of nostalgia in the deteriorating social circumstances of between-the-wars France. As Soviet studios were busy producing faux-historical dramas of various stripes (see tonite’s “Lenin in 1918”) and National Socialist Germany was cranking up antisemitic propaganda ("Süss the Jew"), French cinema of the late ‘30s could still devote itself to a finely-honed psychological drama of aging actors in a retirement home who must find a way to co-exist – which sounds trivial next to the authoritarian regimes’ Great Big Ideological Movies, but don’t be fooled. You’ll learn more about human nature from these long-in-the-tooth Gallic troupers than you will from their Soviet and Nat’l Socialist competition, and by a long shot. The judges of America’s National Board of Review clearly thought so, naming “The End of the Day” its Best Foreign Film for 1939.
-- Kudos to Kirill Razlogov for airing this v. good Julien Duvivier drama about the perils of memory and the price of nostalgia in the deteriorating social circumstances of between-the-wars France. As Soviet studios were busy producing faux-historical dramas of various stripes (see tonite’s “Lenin in 1918”) and National Socialist Germany was cranking up antisemitic propaganda ("Süss the Jew"), French cinema of the late ‘30s could still devote itself to a finely-honed psychological drama of aging actors in a retirement home who must find a way to co-exist – which sounds trivial next to the authoritarian regimes’ Great Big Ideological Movies, but don’t be fooled. You’ll learn more about human nature from these long-in-the-tooth Gallic troupers than you will from their Soviet and Nat’l Socialist competition, and by a long shot. The judges of America’s National Board of Review clearly thought so, naming “The End of the Day” its Best Foreign Film for 1939.
The Kult Kino rubric means viewers will get an earload of astute analysis in the opening monologue from Razlogov, who for 16 years now has been providing Russian viewers with an invaluable service: identifying, summarizing and explaining actors, directors and national film schools that a Soviet movie lover could only read about (if that) and the average interested new-millennium Muscovite might have trouble finding on DVD. Razlogov puts every film in best-foot-forward context – so you know something of Visconti’s camera angles, say, or the subtexts lurking in early Kurosawa before they can sneak past you.
So tune in tonite and gitcha-seff some solid erudition on Duvivier and French film of the ‘30s. Such "small" movies as this one can indeed be, what’s the word, magnifique.
p.s. Indeed, Razlogov is so erudite, knowledgeable and compelling in these show-openers – he’s a professor of “culturology,” after all – that you’ll think he’d make a great dinner guest. Well, I actually had lunch with him once…and could hardly get a word in edgewise for 45 minutes. So my advice is stick to cocktail parties with KR.
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