L'Équipage (1935)
Directed by Anatole Litvak

Film Review

Whilst the Ukrainian-born director Anatole Litvak is best remembered today for the films he made during his prolific time in Hollywood - classics such as All This and Heaven Too (1940), The Snake Pit (1948),  Decision Before Dawn (1951) and Anastasia (1956) - his early career in Germany and France was just as artistically inspired and included work that is among his finest.  Of the half a dozen or so films that Litvak made in France, two stand out as particularly well-crafted pieces of cinema and best illustrate his unique brand of film romanticism - L'Equipage (1935) and Mayerling (1936) - two high class melodramas that compare favourably with the director's subsequent Hollywood achievements.

Unlike Mayerling, which had an international release and is considered a landmark in European cinema, L'Equipage appears to have been intended exclusively for a French home market and is consequently one of Litvak's lesser known works.  The film's comparative obscurity is also partly down to the fact that a few years later Litvak himself remade it in America as The Woman I Love (1937) (the film that marked his directing debut in Hollywood), casting his wife Miriam Hopkins in the principal female role opposite Paul Muni.  Although technically superior, the American remake lacks the warmth and humanity of the original, which, on the strength of its three lead performances alone, deserves to be considered one of the finest wartime dramas in French cinema.

L'Equipage is based on Joseph Kessel's popular 1923 novel of the same title, which had previously been adapted by Maurice Tourneur in 1928.   As well as being a very successful novelist, Kessel was also a highly competent screenwriter and wrote the script for Litvak's film, which could explain why the characters are so convincingly drawn and why their personal dramas are so keenly felt by the spectator.   It helps that the three principals are played by three of French cinema's finest actors of the period  - Annabella, Charles Vanel and Jean-Pierre Aumont - each of whom gives a performance of exceptional power.  Aumont is particularly impressive as the idealistic young soldier who is visibly torn between a passionate love for his ideal woman and loyalty to his comrades in arms - a conflict that would have had a much greater resonance a few years later when another generation was plunged into an insane global conflict.  The tortured Aumont is perfectly complemented by the almost wraith-like Annabella, who provides an intriguing variant on the classic femme fatale, a naive woman of passion who appears oblivious to the havoc she causes.  Annabella and Aumont would appear together in only one other film,  Marcel Carné's Hôtel du Nord (1938).  In contrast to Aumont's emotionally intense performance, Charles Vanel gives a far more restrained turn that exposes, very subtly, an even more complex personality - one that, despite the onslaught of his wartime experiences, remains profoundly human and sensitive.

Although L'Equipage is primarily a melodrama which concerns itself mainly with the moral dilemma faced by the three leading protagonists, it still manages to offer a pretty convincing depiction of combat in the First World War.  The battle sequences may last a few minutes but they are stunningly realised and vividly convey the frenzy and savagery of modern warfare.  Most impressive are the dogfights featuring authentic German and French aircraft of the period, which provide the film with its nerve-wracking denouement.   These brief dramatic interludes are all the more effective in evoking the ugliness of war for the calm which pervades the rest of film.  Armand Thirard's soft focus black and white cinematography has something of the dreamlike fairytale quality that he would subsequently bring to Litavak's Mayerling.  The warm chiaroscuro has a romantic feel that initially appears appropriate but then suddenly takes on a cruelly ironic nature when the hero's idyllic romance is transformed into a crisis of conscience.  This is a film about shattered illusions - a noble war that turns out to be a senseless massacre, a perfect romance that is shown to be a misguided folly, and a marriage that proves to be a complete sham.   How revealing that Litvak should present Kessler's vision of human frailty to us as a modern fairytale, in which the only ones who live happily ever after are those who still cling to their childish delusions.

Film Synopsis

France, 1916.  An idealistic young man Jean Herbillon enlists in the French flying corps, unaware that his chances of survival are less than that of an infantryman.  On the eve of his departure for the front, he meets an attractive young woman, Denise, and knows instantly that she is the love of his life.  On joining his company, Jean receives a cordial welcome from his brother officers and is teamed with Lieutenant Maury, an experienced pilot who soon wins the newcomer's confidence and respect.  When Jean goes off on leave, Maury asks him to deliver a letter to his wife, Hélène.  Jean is astounded when he discovers that Hélène and Denise are the same woman...