Review of Les visiteurs du soir [Blu-ray] - Criterion Collection

"It isn't worth a single tear. It's nothing but a story invented to amuse the Devil."

"Could you be the cause of all these troubles?"
"What do you expect? No-one loves me. I amuse myself as best I can."

Overshadowed outside France by both that other Medieval romantic fantasy and its director's Les Enfants du Paradis but revered in its homeland as one of the great films of the war years, Marcel Carne's Les Visiteurs du Soir has been particularly hard for non-French speakers to see for years: not released on video and unseen on UK TV for three decades, it's only with Criterion's largely unheralded DVD and Blu-ray release that many will have got the chance to finally see his tale of demons and marvels. While it doesn't cast as magic or as poetic an ethereal spell as Cocteau's La Belle et la Bete, it's still an impressive fable whose added resonance for a Nazi-occupied population is easy to see even if Carne and co-writer Jacques Prevert always insisted that no anti-Nazi subtext was intended, the Medieval setting simply the easiest way to get around the German censors.

The plot is simple: two minstrels arrive at a castle, whose occupants are celebrating the betrothal of the Baron's daughter initially unaware that the two visitors (Arletty and Alain Cuny) have been sent by the Devil to sow discord by loving and destroying them and leaving the Devil to pick up the tab. Not that they don't have plenty of raw material to work with: despite the jollity of the banquets and the lack of work for the executioner, the castle is almost underpinned by sadness. The Baron (Fernand Ledoux) is still mourning his lost wife, the servant girl all too aware that her plainness ensures the page she loves won't even look at her and the groom (Marcel Herrand) is more interested in songs of hunting and killing than of love, confused by his bride-to-be Marie Dea's kindness towards unfortunates and dismissing her dreams because "Dreams are dangerous and useless. I never dream myself." For all the elegance and fairytale settings, it's a cruel world where love is a weapon to make people tear themselves apart: "It isn't worth a single tear. It's nothing but a story invented to amuse the Devil." It's a game the envoys have played so many times they're working from the same script, telling each new victim "As soon as I saw you, I knew why I'd travelled so far. I thanked Heaven for leading me to you."

Yet the envoys aren't ethereal symbolic figures but have their own tortured dysfunctional relationship of recriminations and mockery, revisiting their failed and false romance on their victims. Arletty enjoys her work, particularly if it means leading men to their death or to the very place she has come from, but Cluny is increasingly tortured by the deal he has made with the Devil, even more so when he genuinely falls in love with the bride-to-be. From then on the film becomes a battle for hearts and souls as Jules Barry's Devil enters the fray, appearing everywhere at once to mislead, corrupt or gently scold the mere mortals. It's easy to see why so many saw him as Hitler incarnate, making empty promises and offering those who collaborate with him every comfort but never able to still the pure hearts that defy him. He's a cheerful soul, certain of his eventual victory and uncomprehending of the notion of resistance, but thanks to Jacques Prevert's dialogue he doesn't get all the best lines - most of those, surprisingly, go to the lovers, true or false.

It's a surprisingly lavish production for a French wartime film, Trauner's design and Roger Hubert's photography giving it a deceptively simple and attractive look for a film filled with betrayal, hopeless longing and torment. It generally favors simpler special effects than you might expect from a period fable, but at their best, such as when the envoys stop time to steal a tryst with the groom and bride-to-be, they're quietly effective. At times the film threatens to lose its grip and some of the dungeon scenes with a distressed Cluny stray perilously close to bad acting, but the spell is never broken and its easy to see why the film found such a special place in French cinema with its own brand of dark magic and cruel love. Oh, and look out for a young Simone Signoret and Alain Resnais as extras in the banquet scene.

Aside from the customary booklet there's also a 37-minute talking heads documentary with friends of Carne and Prevert and film historians that provides much information and anecdotes about the film's tortuous development - Carne had been having trouble finding a project that would pass the German censors after getting out of his contract with the German-backed Continental Films while Jacques Prevert and composer Joseph Kosma had been collaborating on an unrealised version of Puss in Boots - and its difficult production, which was complicated by wartime shortages (fabric for the costumes was almost impossible to find while the food in the banquet scenes had to be sprayed with toxic chemicals to stop the starving extras eating it), Vichy bureaucracy (because it was shot in both Occupied and Unoccupied France), anti-Semitic laws (both Kosma and production designer Alexander Trauner had to use fronts because it was illegal for Jews to work in French films) and scheduling (Jules Berry was making three films at the same time, shooting one in the morning, one in the afternoon and another in the evening and couldn't remember his lines), and surprisingly rapturous reception from both right and leftwing critics.

It even covers the problems of exhibiting films in wartime - newsreels were shown with the lights on and a gendarme in attendance to stop the audience booing the Nazis, while only a limited number of tickets were sold to ensure that the nearest air raid shelters didn't get filled up, making it's hugely successful run - it was the biggest French hit of the war years - all the more remarkable. It's not particularly strikingly made, but it tells the stories in a pleasingly straightforward fashion and puts the film in its historical perspective even if the transfer is obviously taken from a video master. The film's original French trailer fares worse in the picture quality stakes, looking like it was mastered from a juddery dialup internet download, but the transfer on the film itself is a beautiful restoration job with clear, sharp detail, plenty of depth and no obvious signs of digital tinkering. However, do be aware that the Blu-ray version is Region A-locked.