Over on his excellent Shadowplay blog, David Cairns has decided to take an unusually active hand in promoting the work of French auteur Julien Duvivier: by giving away DVD-Rs of his 1939 film La Fin Du Jour (The End of a Day) free to all who request it:
In a daring rear-guard action to promote the reputation of defunct French film director Julien Duvivier, Shadowplay is GIVING AWAY DVD-Rs copied from a decomposing late ’80s VHS off-air recording “borrowed” from the Lindsay Anderson Archive in Glasgow. I will personally send a copy to everyone who asks for one. The quality of the disc will be shit. The quality of the film is unspeakably superb.To the best of my knowledge, the film is not available on DVD or VHS in the U.S., and foreign copies are distinctly lacking in English subtitles.
Having never seen any Duvivier myself, I'm eager to take a look at his work. The New York Times review of La Fin Du Jour from 1939 is aglow with love for it:
[T[he story of the film is that of a home for old actors, a reliquary of glorious memories, a restless tomb for dreams that never were fulfilled. It is a sentimental film, as such things must always be; but it is droll, too, and almost cruelly objective. Charles Spaak, who wrote it; Julien Duvivier, who directed it, and the fine cast that played it have stoutly resisted the theme's inherent tendency toward self-pity and self-ridicule. Nothing would have been more banal or bathetic than an actor's home filled with mirror-posing Hamlets or dear old ladies bent over yellowed scrapbooks. Simply for the record, and as a tribute to Gallic self-control, there are none of them in the film...To take advantage of this shockingly generous offer, head on over to the Shadowplay blog and drop a line in the comment thread. (And a nice "thank you" wouldn't be out of place, either.)
Duvivier's understanding of [his characters] is too thorough, too temperate, too sympathetic to permit him to shape their drama deliberately into farce or into melodrama. To see it as a whole one would also have to recall the beautifully happy old couple who sat hand in hand through the film, speaking of their children and grandchildren and deciding finally to get married.To see it whole one would have to hear the speeches at the protest meeting, when all the guests voted to demand a radio in every room and two free stamps a week, not realizing the home was about to be closed through lack of funds. To see it whole one would have to follow Duvivier's camera through the empty corridors at night, with ghostly applause echoing everywhere -- the echo of a hundred taunting dreams.
LINKS:
Shadowplay: The Willfully Eccentric Film Blog of David Cairns
Shadowplay: The Great Duvivier Giveaway
