Marquitta (1927)
Directed by Jean Renoir

Film Review

Practically ruined after the commercial failure of his lavish period piece Nana (1926), Jean Renoir willingly agreed to direct this conventional melodrama for the production company La Société des Artistes Réunis.  Not only did it provide him with some financial security, it also allowed him to further develop his directorial technique, bringing some discipline to temper his creative impulses.  Whilst not his most inspired work, the film shows characteristics that would become more noticeable in his subsequent sound films - imaginative camera work, a love of character and a strikingly humanist approach.

Film Synopsis

Prince Vlasco becomes so enchanted by the street singer Marquitta that he leaves his present mistress and takes her as his lover.  Love blinds the prince to the fact that the singer comes from a social milieu that is way beneath his own.  Confident that he can make a respectable lady of her, he devotes himself to her education, improving her speech and her manners.  Vlasco is devoted to Marquitta, but when a valuable jewel of his goes missing he immediately suspects his lover and drives her away from him.  Some time later, Vlasco has lost everything - his money, his title, his self-respect.  Now a member of a troupe of dancers, he barely earns enough to live on.

Fate has been much kinder to Marquitta.  Now a famous singer, she enjoys the wealth and privilege that Vlasco once took for granted.  Moved by what has become of her former lover, Marquitta tries to comfort him and returns to him the jewel he believed she took from him.  Vlasco succumbs to another outburst of fury, and once again the ill-treated Marquitta takes her leave of him.  Sickened by the injustice of life, the former prince decides to end his days, but before he can do so Marquitta returns to him and convinces him that his ill-feeling towards her is undeserved...