La Vie de Chateau
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C Film: B-
How about
a comedy about World War II on the shores of Normandy, circa 1944? Yes, that is the tale told in Jean-Paul
Rappeneau’s La Vie de Chateau
(1965), which immediately brings up the point of if this is funny or ever
was. The film stars Catherine Deneuve as
the woman of the house who continually is the one who knows the most about what
is going on. Well, almost.
There is
the young man (Pierre Brasseur) who is stealing apples and is also dumb enough
to leave them around half-eaten. She is
the first to catch him, but does not give him away. There is her dysfunctional father (Philippe
Noiret) and then there are the occupying Nazis.
They are not quite the cartoons of TV’s Hogan’s Heroes, but are too nice and ultimately not to be
believed. Is this offensive? Is this anti-Semitism? Is this the French being insensitive? We cannot say a definitive “yes” to any of
those, but the film is really not that funny, so they make matters worse.
The
Allies have discovered that the Chateau is one of the only places the Nazis
have not taken over, so it becomes an invasion target. The humor never really kicks in, and when you
consider Stanley Kubrick’s Dr.
Strangelove was released the same year, that speaks to how out of touch
this film was by its first release.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.66 X 1 image is not bad, as far as it is from a clean
print, but the Gray Scale is slightly off.
Video Black could be a bit darker too, but otherwise, the cinematography
by Pierre Lhomme does well in capturing Miss Deneuve. She is one of the only reasons we keep
watching. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
shows the age of the old optical mono soundtrack, but it is in better shape
than many monophonic films from the same period. Michel Legrand’s awkward score sounds good,
but one wonders if he actually cut it in stereo and if those recordings still
exist. If so, they would have remixed
with the rest of this sound nicely. Extras
are not much, including brief filmographies and DVD-ROM weblinks, but also
include trailers for five of Deneuve’s films including this one.
Ultimately,
the film was a Prix Louis Delluc winner, but it has not aged that well
overall. It is, at least, a time capsule
of a cinema past. Call it a curio that
is professionally done, noteworthy for its cast and crew.
- Nicholas Sheffo
