The Story of a Cheat

It's no exaggeration to call Sacha Guitry the Noel Coward of France. On the contrary, it's an understatement. Playwright, artist, essayist, screenwriter, film director, theatrical impresario, star of stage and screen and all around bon vivant and cultural wit, Guitry was one of the most famous--and prolific--artistic personalities in France between the World Wars. And yet, after directing and starring in more than 30 features between 1935 and 1957, his legacy is practically unknown in the United States, even to film buffs and Francophiles, in part because he never dabbled in Hollywood like fellow stars Maurice Chevalier and Charles Boyer and Jean Gabin, in part because his witty French confections didn't travel stateside. Presenting Sacha Guitry, a four-disc set from Eclipse (the budget-minded imprint from Criterion), reveals just how creative, innovative and clever a filmmaker he was. Consider it a reintroduction to one of the most important and influential French filmmakers of the thirties. Guitry came to cinema from the theater, where his witty plays were the toast of the town and his man of the world/man about town performances made him the very model of continental sophistication. Initially dismissive of film, he resigned himself to the movies as a way of bringing his plays to a wider audience. The Story of a Cheat (1936), adapted from his only published novel, was not his first film but it was the first to leave behind the stiff theatrical style of his earlier stage adaptations and take on the new artform on its own terms. Framed by Guitry as the titular cheat scribbling his memoirs in an outdoor café, the film is a series of flashbacks with the writer/director/actor's droll narration as its sole soundtrack. The running commentary offers a tongue-in-cheek defense of his life of crime as the inevitable outcome of his unique education in the school of life and self-effacing insights to the skewed moral metaphysics ("What have I done to the Lord that people constantly solicit me to engage in crime?") of a reluctant scoundrel turned professional cheat. The invention begins in the opening credits, a visual introduction to the cast with Guitry's playful narration acknowledging the contrivances of this brand of cinematic theater, and is carried through the entire unconventional project. If Guitry is not particularly cinematic in the visual sense--his images are literal and often flatly staged, shot as if against a theatrical backdrop--his sophisticated approach to storytelling and point-of-view is a revelation. He uses optical wipes, stop-motion and fast-motion techniques and cuts scenes at a furious clip, yet his narration makes it all seem to unfold at the leisurely pace of a conversation. His technique is so smooth that you barely notice the mechanics, even as he satirizes and plays with film conventions and expectations. When he finally steps in to the role of the mature Cheat, taking over from his younger incarnation, he gives himself a magnificent entrance: he shaves off a bushy beard grown by the young version of himself and reveals the change of actor, reacting to the new face with a droll comment and a wink at the audience. The filter of his commentary frames the action, deftly played out as snappy silent movie sequences with narration in the place of intertitles (he even provides the dialogue for the characters miming his remembrances), as a kind of self-indulgent tall tale from a man romanticizing a misspent life into an unbelievable adventure of incredible twists, unlikely opportunities and ironic turns of fortune which, when all is confessed, just may be true after all. The Pearls of the Crown (1937), one of Guitry's rare original scripts (written in collaboration with the prolific Christian-Jaque, of Fanfan la Tulipe fame), is an even more intricately cut gem, an epic in miniature with a whimsical sensibility. The tale (the result of "scrupulous research and wholesale invention" the credits helpfully inform us) bounces through history and around the globe to trace the journeys of seven perfect pearls given to Catherine de Medici by Pope Clemet VII as they change hands over the centuries. Written to commemorate the coronation of King George VI of England, it was also an effectively trilingual film, a story told in French, English and Italian, the languages often ricocheting off one another in some cleverly designed scenes that play out without the need of subtitles. Guitry plays no less then four roles (of an estimated two-hundred character who wind through the sprawling narrative) in this rapidly-paced pageant of royal pacts, diplomatic deals and amorous asides, but his primary role is that of raconteur. He's an accidental detective who recounts this intricate tale to his wife (Jacqueline Delubac, Guitry's real-life wife at the time) and teams up with searchers from Britain and Italy to trace the three pearls still unaccounted for. Guitry teases the audience with its tongue-in-cheek storytelling and droll self-awareness as he takes us behind the scenes of throne room politics and plotting and romantic shenanigans and his whimsical episodes and delightful commentaries are never less than inspired. Arletty stars in the film's most outrageous scene, playing an exotic princess in bizarre blackface who speaks in an decipherable language created by running the soundtrack backwards. Désiré (1937), adapted by Guitry from his stage success, is a more conventional offering in the Noel Coward mode of elegant sex comedy. The usually aristocratic Guitry dresses down to play the title character, an elegantly professional and worldly valet with the habit of seducing his female employers. As such practices result in short-lived positions, he is determined to hold on to his new position as valet to a Odette (Jacqueline Delubac again), the kept mistress of an insufferable politician (Jacque Baumer), by resisting temptation. As a tour through the dreams of Désiré and Odette illustrate, temptation exerts a strong hold on both of them. Arletty co-star as the far-less uptight maid, who enjoys the chaos that the unresolved attractions unleashes across the social divide. Restricted largely to the various manor homes of the mistress, this is much more of a filmed theater piece than the previous films, directed at a measured pace that focuses on the banter and verbal by-play of the characters and the upstairs/downstairs comedy of the situation. But it is also full of winking asides, clever innuendo and knowing characters with healthy sexual appetites. The wit and wily performances are the attractions of this film. As the title suggests, Quadrille (1938) adds a leg to the romantic triangle to get a... well, romantic rectangle doesn't have the same ring to it, but it's better than square or triangle. Guitry is a sophisticated newspaper editor in a six-year romance with a stage actress (Gaby Morlay). Jacqueline Delubac is a freelance reporter who on the trail of the same story: an interview with an American movie star (Georges Grey) on a whirlwind tour of Europe. While the editor takes the opportunity to ask his respected (and quite lovely) colleague her advice on proposing to his long-time "live-in lover," the American is busy seducing her. It has a marvelously continental attitude toward sex and romance and the champagne dialogue that made Guitry famous on the stage ("A man doesn't cheat on his mistress," he muses while pondering his proposal). Guitry may not have the momentum of Lubitsch when it comes to the elegant sex comedy, but he is just as sophisticated and his characters are all worldly consenting adults who discuss sex in wittily frank exchanges that, even couched in metaphors and double entendres, wouldn't have passed American censors of the thirties. As wonderful as his words are, the performances carry the film, especially the weary resignation of Guitry as when he faces his lover's infidelity. There's almost a sense of relief beneath the stab of betrayal and he negotiates their break-up like a performance designed to save face in public while Delubac works behind the scenes attempting to reunite the couple. Like Désiré, it's an adaptation of a stage hit, but this is a snappier film, with deft crosscutting between the couples and more fluid dialogue scenes. In true Guitry form, the happy ending is not complete without a wryly cynical aside that reminds us of the rarified world that may only exist in Guitry's romantically cynical sensibility but blossoms in each of his films. Presenting Sacha Guitry reveals Guitry as a true auteur: his intricate narratives are endlessly inventive and creatively applied and his writing sparkles with comic invention, droll wit and continental sophistication. And as a leading man, he's a model of easy elegance and knowing experience, a man of the world who accepts the essential absurdity of modern life with a wry smile and sense of challenge. Like all releases from the budget-minded Eclipse imprint, there are no supplements to this set but for well-written and informative notes on each film by Michael Koresky. The films themselves, presented in a windowboxed format, are well mastered from generally strong prints and (but for brief moments or minor wear or damage) look and sound excellent for films over 70 years old. These films were previously released in France as part of an eight-disc set of Guitry productions. That offers some hope of a follow-up set some time in the future. On the basis of these films, Guitry is a director worthy of further research. For more information about Presenting Sacha Guitry, visit The Criterion Collection. To order Presenting Sacha Guitry, go to TC M Shopping. by Sean Axmaker