La Kermesse rouge (1947)
Directed by Paul Mesnier

Film Review

If director Paul Mesnier is remembered at all today it is most likely to be for his early Louis de Funès comedy Bébés à gogo (1956) or his adaptation of Jules Renard's famous novella, Poil de carotte (1952).  La Kermesse rouge, one of his earlier films, is perhaps more deserving of attention, mostly on account of its spectacular ending depicting the Bazar de la Charité fire of 1897.  This notorious conflagration was started by the projectionist equipment of the Lumière brothers' recently invented cinématographe, which was being exhibited at the event.  The fire claimed 126 lives, the most high profile victim being the Duchess of Alençon, sister of the Empress Elisabeth of Austria.  The spectacular ending of Mesnier's film is brilliantly staged and anticipates the disaster movie of later decades.

The film's other point of interest is its authentic recreation of Belle Époque Paris, a halcyon time of peace and prosperity that would be brutally torn asunder by the outset of the First World War.  So effective is the film in evoking the languorous harmony of the Belle Époque that the dramatic climax genuinely does come as a shock.  It is as if the calm, ordered world so vividly rendered by the impressionist painters has suddenly been overtaken by demonic forces,  plunging us into what looks like a scene from the Apocalypse.  It is one of the most horrific sequences of any French film of this era, its impact heightened by the realisation that a character that we have fallen in love with (a proto-feminist artist played by Andrée Servilanges) is being burned alive out of camera shot, and that nothing can save her (her fate having being revealed right at the start of the film).

La Kermesse rouge is a lavish production, scripted and directed with more care than flair, and its main asset is an excellent cast, headed by Albert Préjean, the actor who (arguably) profited most from Jean Gabin's absence during the years of occupation.  In his youth, Préjean was the working class romantic lead of choice but he was always at his best when cast as a socially and morally ambiguous character, such as the one he plays here - a free-spirited Bohemian who, once he has given in to bourgeois complacency and professional jealousy, becomes an object of contempt and ridicule.  In one of her career highlights, Andrée Servilanges is perfectly suited to play opposite Préjean, her character's transformation from flighty society belle to committed artist emphasising the gradual moral decline of her far less honourable lover as he undertakes the reverse journey.

Germaine Kerjean and Jean Tissier equally give great value in roles to which they are eminently suited, the one a prissy society matriarch, the other a flamboyant artistic type you can easily imagine rubbing shoulders with Matisse and Toulouse-Lautrec.  Watch very closely and you may catch a glimpse of the popular musician Gilbert Bécaud, here making his screen debut as a pianist at the age of 19.  It's hard to account for the present obscurity of La Kermesse rouge - with its full-bodied evocation of the Belle Époque and its utterly horrific denouement it certainly makes an impact.

Film Synopsis

Paris in the 1890s.  When Agnès Bonnardet falls in love with a struggling Montmartre painter, Claude Sironi, her aristocratic relatives waste no time in acting to thwart a mésalliance that will bring disgrace on the family.  Agnès has other ideas, however.  Having evaded the clutches of her interfering relatives, she joins Claude's artistic circle and it isn't long before she herself has embarked on the career of a painter.  Some years after their marriage, Claude and Agnès have begun to drift apart.  His inspiration failing, Claude has by now fallen out of favour with the art world, whilst Agnès has no difficulty selling her canvasses.  As no one else will buy her husband's paintings, she buys them herself, a deception that infuriates Claude when he discovers the truth.  Jealous of his wife's success, Claude substitutes one of his own paintings for one that Agnès intended to auction at the Bazar de la Charité.  The event takes place on 4th May 1897 and will end in tragedy...