LETTRES D’AMOUR (1942)

The townspeople of the village of Argenson are excited about a visit from Emperor Napoleon III—they have erected a grand Triumphal Arch on the road into town, though when the mail coach goes under it, the arch comes tumbling down. The town officials are a bit put out by the Emperor's unexpected absences as he goes off flirting with Zelie, a businesswoman and widow of three years (she was only married three months) who is just now putting her mourning clothes away. The Emperor assumes her experience has been "three months of happiness, three years of regret," but she says it's more like "three months of regret, three years of happiness," and assures him she is "rich, free and happy." We soon discover that the town is split into two factions: the Shop (led by Zelie) and Society, exemplified by the prefect's wife Hortense. Despite this tension, Zelie and Hortense are friends, and tied together by the fact that Hortense is engaged in a long-distance affair with Parisian attorney Francois, and she has him send love letters to her but addressed to Zelie who passes them along. But things are about to get more complicated when Francois is appointed to the position of DA in Argenson, with an assignment to cuckold the prefect who himself cuckolded the previous DA. Not to mention that one of the love letters has gone astray. There are many merry mix-ups leading up to the climactic ball where Hortense plans on humiliating the Shop folks by having the Society folks learn to dance the quadrille, leaving Zelie and her friends on the sideline. However, Zelie gets wind of this and hires the same dance master to teach her and her Shop friends the same dance.

This French film is a delightful confection, not quite farcical but certainly comically complex, which manages to mock class, ambition and the sexes all at once. Despite its real-world concerns with gender and class, its tone is generally light as meringue; produced during the German occupation, anything stronger would surely have been censored. Speaking of censoring, this film, with its many adulterous flings, would never have passed Hollywood code muster, but that fluffy tone mixed with mildly naughty content is part of what makes this quite watchable today. I'd never heard of any of the actors, but there are at least two wonderful discoveries here: Odette Joueux as Zelie and Francois Perier as Francois, both of whom are talented and attractive, and both pictured above. The director, Claude Autant-Lara, is probably best known today for the original 1947 DEVIL IN THE FLESH. I saw this as part of a 4-DVD set of films that Autant-Lara directed during the occupation, and I hope to get around to the others soon. My favorite line, during the final ball: "We dance on a volcano of cordiality!" [DVD]