Lumière d’été

EN

"For us, it was obvious that Grémillon was the greatest French filmmaker of the 1930s-50s, alongside Renoir."

Jean Douchet

“Filmed in the zone libre during the Occupation, Lumière d’été went from being a censored, cursed film to becoming a major work of French cinema. Grémillon, staying as close as possible to the truth of his characters, portrays the clash of two worlds, within which an intimate drama unfolds. A dance of passionate love, carried by the poetry of the dialogues, written by Prévert and Pierre Laroche.

Censorship, production difficulties, a shoot in the zone libre under the Occupation, names like Trauner – a Jewish set designer –omitted from the credits, and a very poor reception upon its release... Lumière d’été cemented Grémillon’s reputation as a cursed filmmaker. And yet, this parable, with its anti-collaborationist subtext and layered details, contains the very essence of his cinema – a social, transparent, sometimes timeless film, detached, almost dreamlike. Grémillon captures the confrontation of two worlds, within which an intimate drama takes place. “Grémillon reworks the relationships between people in a unique way and stays as close as possible to their truth,” explained Jean Douchet. Here, it is both the integrity of the characters striving for a simple and noble goal (Michèle and her love) and their weakness and humanity, along with a striking portrait of a woman.

Selected for the Festival du film maudit in Biarritz in 1949, Lumière d’été managed to win over cinephiles through the poetic realism of Prévert and Laroche’s dialogues and the performances of its actors. Henri Langlois recognized its value; after appointing Grémillon as president of the Cinémathèque française, he fought to acquire the film and produce valuable copies, finally breaking the curse.”

Cinématheque française1

“The 1940 capitulation of France to Germany had a serious effect on French cinema. For one thing, many of the industry’s major players emigrated to the United States, including directors Jean Renoir and Julien Duvivier and actors Jean Gabin and Michèle Morgan, while others, such as the Jewish production designer Alexandre Trauner and composer Joseph Kosma, went into hiding. Some, however, including Jean Grémillon and Marcel Carné, continued to work as best they could under the newly formed, collaborationist Vichy government. These filmmakers tended to steer clear of touchy subject matter, with comedies (like Jean Boyer’s Romance de Paris), fantasies (Jean Delannoy’s Eternal Return), and dramas set in what seemed to be a safely distant past (Carné’s Les visiteurs du soir) becoming the order of the day. Grémillon’s Lumière d’été (1943) doesn’t fall into any of these categories—and there’s nothing benign about its portrayal of bitter class warfare in the guise of an overpopulated romance. In fact, the film it most resembles is The Rules of the Game, Renoir’s 1939 poetic realist class satire, which was summarily banned by the Nazis when they took power. Lumière d’été – which itself bears traces of poetic realism in its moody fatalism and sympathy with the lower classes –was destined for the same fate; the censors read it as an attack on the establishment, as well as too cynical a view of human nature to show to an already disturbed populace under occupation.”

Michael Koresky2

“Of all the directors I’ve known in my life, he was, in my eyes, the most talented, the one who combined the greatest intelligence with the greatest sensitivity.”

Charles Spaak3

• 1“Lumière d'été (Jean Grémillon, 1942) - La Cinémathèque française”.
• 2Michael Koresky, “Eclipse Series 34: Jean Grémillon During the Occupation,” Criterion, 24 July 2012.
• 3Charles Spaak cited in: Nick Pinkerton, “Songs of the Exile,” Metrograph.