L'Envers du paradis (1953)
Directed by Edmond T. Gréville

Film Review

Edmond T. Gréville began his prolific career as a director and screenwriter by working as a trainee assistant to Abel Gance on Napoléon (1927), so it seems fitting that one of his last films should so strongly evoke another of Gance's films - Paradis perdu (1940).  Like Gance's film, L'Envers du paradis laments the brevity of life, love and happiness, but in a somewhat more subdued and ironic manner, typical of Gréville's more understated style of cinema.  Almost from the outset, impending death is seen to linger over one of the characters, but, as any student of French literature will know, love is stronger than death and a happy ending is assured, in spite of the tragedy which we know must come.  It's not so much a case of Paradise Lost as Paradise Found, the pathway to Eden revealed to each of the protagonists in subtly different ways.
   
L'Envers du paradis may lack the oppressive mood of Gréville's earlier films but for all its sunny southern France setting - more than vaguely reminiscent of Marcel Pagnol's idyllic Provence - there are dark undercurrents at work beneath the smiling Côte d'Azur sky.  Scenes of youngsters partying and playing pétanque are intercut with quiet portraits of the protagonists reflecting solemnly on the hand that has been dealt them.  For each of them - a failed writer, a disillusioned sea captain, a stressed out Parisian and a teenage girl with a terminal illness - life lacks meaning until the fateful day when a brutal murder presents itself.  Suddenly, life has value and three of the protagonists fall over themselves to take the rap for the killing whilst the fourth, overwhelmed by compassion, is driven to betray his principles because he cannot bear to bring about an unhappy outcome.  The quality of mercy is not strained, here it the great redeemer, giving all who succumb to it noble sway a taste of paradise that guides them out of their personal Hell.

The idyllic love affair between the writer Blaise and doomed adolescent Violaine is starkly counterpointed by the more sordid relationship between Blaise and Michèle, a purely animalistic coupling of ill-matched egoists that inevitably ends in disaster.  Gréville's trademark eroticism is palpably felt in Jacques Sernas's tempestuous scenes with Dora Doll, the latter at her most sultry and sensual - no wonder she was so often cast as the femme fatale in many French movies of the 1950s.  In one shot (daring and provocative for its time), Doll's hungry talons are seen clawing at Sernas' naked hairy torso, imply a brutal physicality to Blaise's relationship with Michèle that is totally lacking in his affair with Violaine, which is portrayed as a thing of divine beauty, despite the obvious disparity in their ages.  The love that the retired captain O'Hara has for Violaine is on an altogether higher spiritual plane - one that makes his attempt at self-sacrifice far more comprehensible than Blaise's abrupt willingness to inculpate himself.

Gréville's mise-en-scène is of an entirely more sophisticated and expressive kind than what we find in his subsequent films, which show an all too obvious attempt to move with the times.  Here his work is made easier by the cast of remarkable performers he has at is disposal, headed by the great Erich von Stroheim, still a compelling presence in the dwindling twilight of his remarkable career.  Although he received top billing, von Stroheim appears in only a handful of scenes, but in every one of these scenes he is unutterably beguiling, having lost none of his power to steal our attention and our sympathies.  The actor's strained attempts to speak French (something he never quite mastered, in spite of the fact he made most of his films in France) lend an exquisite poignancy to his performance, suggesting a man who, unable to express his deeper feelings, appears eaten up by his life's regrets.  His character is a tragic wreck of a man who, having lost all of his illusions, has but one solace left to him - to act as guardian angel for the one person he genuinely loves.  It's a very different portrayal to the one that the actor gave in Gréville's earlier Menaces (1940).  Von Stroheim's life partner Denise Vernac also appears in the film, in a few touching scenes.

The star of the film is the 21-year-old Etchika Choureau, extraordinarily captivating in her first screen role as the wraith-like heroine Violaine.  Choureau wasn't just stunningly beautiful, she was also a highly sensitive and skilful actress and, having made her name in France, it was only a few years before she was making a promising debut in Hollywood, in William A.Wellman's The Young Invaders (1958) and Lafayette Escadrille (1958).  Choureau's career was cut short in the late 1950s when she took a break from acting to pursue a short-lived love affair with the crown prince of Morocco.  A few years later she gave up acting altogether, one of the great lost talents of French cinema.  Choureau's handsome co-star Jacques Sernas enjoyed a far longer and busier career, although he devoted most of his efforts to Italian cinema, featuring in several sword and sandals epics and some worthier films such as Fellini's La Dolce vita (1960), in which he poignantly played a fading film star.

L'Envers du paradis is not one of Edmond T. Gréville's better known films, although it probably deserves to be, given the artistry of its mise-en-scène the quality of its script and authenticity of the performances.  We can accept Gréville's slightly eccentric use of flashback around the part of the film where the murder takes place since this forces us to reserve judgement on the protagonists as we see things from their perspective.  In the manner of a classic film noir, a precognition of death haunts this as it does much of Gréville's work, giving it an eerily poetic quality.  Thirteen years later the director was killed in a road accident, just a few years after completing his final film, prophetically titled L'Accident.

Film Synopsis

Badly in need of a few weeks of rest in tranquil surroundings, a Parisian named Gabriel Dautrand arrives in a small rural town in the south of France.  One of the first people he meets is a retired sea captain, William O'Hara, who warns him that once he has settled he may never want to leave.  Certainly the region has its charms, but there are undercurrents of something darker.  A murder is about to be committed and Gabriel is sure to be caught up in it.  The victim is Michèle, the habitually drunken mistress of a struggling writer, Blaise d'Orliac.  Unbeknown to Michèle, Blaise has been carrying on a secret love affair with Violaine Roumégoux, a teenager who, owing to an incurable medical condition, has only a few months left to live.  The affair is known only to O'Hara, who is also secretly in love with Violaine and wants only to see her happy.  When Michèle is shot dead, Violaine draws the obvious conclusion that she was killed by Blaise and creates fake evidence that will lead her to be charged with the murder.  What does it matter if she is arrested and condemned?  She knows she will soon be in her grave, whatever happens.  O'Hara has no intention of letting either Violaine or Blaise take the blame for Michèle's death.  He puts a second bullet into the dead woman's body and hands himself over to the police, certain that he will give Violaine the chance to live out her last few weeks in happiness...