LILIOM (1934)

This is a French movie, directed by the German Fritz Lang, and based on a Hungarian play which also became the basis for a popular American musical (CAROUSEL by Rodgers and Hammerstein) which is famous these days mostly for being considered anti-feminist. Even as a kid, I had a hard time buying the plot of the musical; the main character is a no-good carny turned small-time crook who smacks his wife around, dies, goes to Heaven (!?), and returns to earth several years later to make amends at his daughter's graduation; he still winds up letting his anger get the best of him and smacks his daughter, who still loves him because, in the words of the abused wife, "It is possible for someone to hit you, hit you hard, and it not hurt at all." This early non-musical version isn't as irritating, partly because Charles Boyer can get away with being a sympathetic shit better than Gordon MacRae could. We can see a little of what is attractive about his character--I'm not normally a Boyer fan, but he is exuberant here--although it's not clear to me why Julie (Madeleine Ozeray), seemingly a delicate young thing, falls so quickly for the rough-edged Liliom. At the carnival where the two meet, Julie is accused of being a whore by Liliom's boss (played by Florelle) who herself has a thing for him. Liliom is fired from the carnival, and he and Julie wind up living together. Life is no picnic for either of them, but when Julie gets pregnant, Liliom tries to pull off a robbery to get some money; things get bungled and he stabs himself to death rather than face the ignominy of capture (in a nice detail, Julie feels the thrust of the knife herself even though she is nowhere near the robbery). He is sent to Heaven (by two ominous looking celestial "policemen"), and as in the musical, gets a chance to come back to earth years later. Heaven here is a sly parody of the earthly police bureaucracy which we saw in action earlier, and this sequence is the best in the movie. I still can't quite wrap my mind around the message about hitting not hurting; yes, I know that romantic love can make us simple and stupid, but this still doesn't seem like a very redemptive message. Still, this was interesting to see if only for the set design and the shadowy, expressionistic look. The DVD print from Kino appears to have been taken from a tape source rather than celluloid, so it's far from perfect, but it may be the best that is possible. [DVD]