L'Ange de la nuit (1944)
Directed by André Berthomieu

Film Review

One of the films that stands out in the long and uneven career of director André Berthomieu is this gently poignant melodrama, made during the dark days of the Occupation.  L'Ange de la nuit brings together an extraordinary ensemble that includes a dazzling array of fresh talent (including several actors who would become major stars of French cinema in the following decade), one greatly admired character actor (Pierre Larquey) and one of the great legends of star and screen (Jean-Louis Barrault).  The story it has to tell (based on a stage play by Marcel Lasseaux) is simple to the point of banal and yet Berthomieu's sympathetic rendering of it, assisted by some exemplary performances, makes it exquisitely moving, all the more so when you consider the desperate era in which the film was made.

Jean-Louis Barrault earned his place in posterity with his unforgettable portrayal of the mime artist Baptiste in Marcel Carné's Les Enfants du paradis (1945) but before then he was already recognised as one of France's greatest living actors.  L'Ange de la nuit gave Barrault ample scope to demonstrate his talents and he is devastatingly convincing as a struggling sculptor coping with both blindness and self doubt after France's short-lived war against Nazi Germany.  Starring longside Barrault is an exquisite Michèle Alfa, who has never looked as engaging as she does here.  How vividly and truthfully does Alfra convey the emotional conflict of a young woman torn between the man she truly loves (a dashing Henri Vidal) and the man she cannot walk away from.

Ultimately, despite the abundance of young talent around him, it is Pierre Larquey who quietly steals the film as the kindly carpenter who selflessly supports a group of hard up students.  He is at his best in the scene in which he consoles Barrault and tries to persuade him he has a brighter future ahead of him (ironically, as the horror of war and permanent disability lie in wait just around the corner).  This sequence may look like an obvious attempt by the film's authors to lift the spirits of the French nation in its darkest hour but it genuinely does touch the heart and provides one of the great moments in 1940s French cinema.  When Pierre Larquey says things are going to be all right, there is not a soul in France who will doubt him.

Film Synopsis

Paris, 1939.  A group of impoverished students open a restaurant in the Latin Quarter, and give each other moral and material support, assisted by their kindly landlord Père Heurteloup.  One day, one of the students, Claudie, returns with a destitute young woman named Geneviève and she is soon accepted as a welcome member of the group.  Two of the students, the group's treasurer Bob and a sculptor named Jacques, take a liking to Geneviève, but then war is declared.  In the ensuing tumult, Bob goes missing and Jacques returns, now a blind man...