Mirages de Paris (1933)
Directed by Fyodor Otsep

Film Review

The burgeoning popularity of the stage operetta in the early 1930s provided a massive boost to the film industry on both sides of the Atlantic as it made the transition to sound cinema.  Filmmakers were not slow to take advantage of the introduction of synchronised sound to tap into the huge public demand for the kind of frivolous light entertainment that offered a welcome escape from the grim realities of the Depression era.  In France, operetta stars such as Henri Garat and Jean Gabin made their entry into cinema on the back of this craze, through such films as Louis Mercanton's Il est charmant (1932) and René Pujol's Chacun sa chance (1931) - as did many others whose names are now lost in the mists of time, notably Jacqueline Francell.  Francell's screen debut opposite Raimu in Marc Allégret's romantic comedy La Petite chocolatière (1932) was followed by Mirages de Paris, a feisty musical comedy that made good use of her talent as a dancer and singer, although her screen career did not extend beyond the 1930s (apart from her contribution as narrator to Sacha Guitry's controversial 1944 documentary De Jeanne d'Arc à Philippe Pétain).

Mirages de Paris was a surprising departure for its director, Fyodor Otsep, who had started out as a screenwriter in his native Russia (collaborating with the great Yakov Protazanov on The Queen of Spades (1916) and Aelita (1924)) before making a name for himself as a director with Der Mörder Dimitri Karamasoff (1931), arguably the best screen adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky's classic Russian novel The Brothers Karamazov.  Otsep also made a French version of the novel, Les Frères Karamazov (1931), and this film's popularity in France earned him an invitation to work at the prestigious Paris-based company Pathé-Natan to direct even more ambitious films.  Mirages de Paris was the first of five films that Otsep made in France before he was lured to Hollywood at the onset of WWII.  (His American career was cut short by his premature death in 1949.)   An exuberant comedy of the kind that French cinema audiences most craved at the time, Mirages de Paris feels somewhat out of place in Otsep's mostly sombre oeuvre but the director brings to it the same bold imaginative flair and commitment that would benefit his subsequent, far more serious offerings for Pathé-Natan - Amok (1934) and La Dame de pique (1937).

Fyodor Otsep's zany penchant for visual metaphor - one of the defining motifs of early Soviet era cinema - is apparent throughout Mirages de Paris and is used to devastatingly funny effect in some places.  Most memorable is the scene in which the heroine Madeleine and her beau François become intensely amorous in the latter's garret apartment.  Their inflamed passion is implied by cutaway shots of a kettle coming to the boil and the lid suddenly flying up into the air - just before François's present sweetheart - Juliette - shows up unexpectedly.  François's dampened ardour is cheekily suggested by a surreal shot of the kettle lid jumping into the air of its own accord and fitting itself snugly on the kettle.  At the start of the film, the tyrannical nature of the fearful directrix of Madeleine's boarding school is made apparent as she scours the school grounds for the missing student.  So intimidating is this fiend in petticoats that the garden's proudly erect Phallic fountains are reduced to a limp timid trickle in her presence!

Sophisticated montage techniques - which Otsep's contemporary Sergei Eisenstein had used to great dramatic effect in his films - are likewise marshalled for comic effect, with inter-cutting between the plot-strands seamlessly achieved by a careful alignment of virtually identical shots.  Accelerated montage brings a wildly anarchic feel to the dizzying sequence in which Madeleine gets caught up in a raid on a jewellery shop - the result resembling a mad full-on collision between the worlds of Eisenstein and Mack Sennett.  Camera motion - a comparative rarity in a sound film of this era - is also used to great effect, the most striking example being a long tracking shot that follows the heroine as she leaves the theatre and finds herself alone and dejected in the unwelcoming streets of the city where she had hoped to find fame and fortune.  This sequence has more than a touch of Chaplinesque poignancy about it.  Otsep's immense visual flair helps to keep the gags coming, building to a crescendo with the outrageous finale in which a popular opera singer is humiliated by the mob and ends up running on a revolving stage in a delirious comedy punchline worthy of the great silent comedians of the previous decades.

Mirage de Paris's bountiful mélange of slapstick and musical numbers would certainly have made it a hit with the cinema-going public of its day, but what makes it particularly worthy of interest today is its acerbic commentary on the entertainment industry of its time.  It seems that the celebrity culture and delusions of instant fame are not recent phenomena - these were just as widespread among the populace even in the early 1930s!  Without the full force of the publicity machine behind you it seems you can't get anywhere - talent alone is no guarantee of success.  So says the seediest character in the film - an unscrupulous promoter who preys on starry-eyed wannabes, offering them support only if they are already rich enough to pay for it.  Madeleine's obsessive pursuit of stardom sends her on a fraught Alice in Wonderland-style adventure that brings her success through pure happenstance.  Mistaking a lowly support artiste (Roger Tréville) for a great opera singer (Marcel Vallée) she is soon caught up in a tangled web of misunderstandings, including her own supposed suicide!  The mob come to her rescue and it all ends as any fairytale should - with our heroine getting both love and fame, just as the cinema-going public demand.  The sheer absurdity of the plot as it gallops from one improbable situation to another reaches Ionesco proportions on occasions, yet the satire is as sharp and mercilessly cutting as the blade on the most scrupulously maintained guillotine.  Mirages de Paris is a comedy delight - not just one of the most entertaining films of its kind in French cinema of the 1930s, but also one of the most brazenly witty and involving.  It would be some years yet before Hollywood would turn the camera on itself and offer a satire of comparable mischief and astuteness.

Film Synopsis

Convinced that she has what it takes to become a great star of the stage Madeleine Duchanel runs away from her strictly run provincial boarding school and heads for the bright lights of Paris.  It doesn't take long for her to discover that there is far more to stardom than talent.  Without publicity she hasn't a hope, a dodgy theatrical agent assures her having demanded a small fortune for his services.  Lacking the money even to pay for one night's accommodation in the big city, Madeleine is left downhearted but still hopeful that something may turn up.  And so it does - in the form of a handsome young theatrical named François.  Mistaking this unknown performer for the great opera singer Tonnerre, a man he scarcely resembles, Madeleine wheedles her way into his affections, but a promising romance is suddenly nipped in the bud by the unexpected appearance of François's present sweetheart, Juliette.  The latter's jealousy results in a chaotic scene when François returns to the opera house and fails to make it onto the stage in time for the climax of an opera in which Tonnerre is the main attraction.  Leaving the theatre, François runs into Madeleine a second time and invites her back to his garret apartment overlooking the Seine.

Once again, a romantic escapade is stymied by the impromptu arrival of Juliette, who is so incensed that she throws all of Madeleine's few worldly possessions into the river.  This leads the police to believe that the young woman has committed suicide and an investigation is soon under way.  Fleeing François's flat, Madeleine manages to get herself mixed up with a gang of crooks as they carry out a nocturnal raid on a jeweller's shop.  To thank her for the distraction she unwittingly creates, one of the robbers hands her an item of jewellery, which allows her to get a room in a low-class boarding house.  The news that Madeleine has drowned in the Seine reaches the ears of the crooks she helped earlier.  By way of revenge, they sabotage Tonnerre's next performance, just before he is picked up by the police after being denounced as the young woman's killer.  Madeleine is then arrested for the theft of the jewel she gave to her landlord and then fails to convince the investigating magistrate that she is the same woman who supposedly drowned in the Seine.  The mix up is finally cleared up when François persuades Madeleine that he is not Tonnerre and the two go on to become the toast of Paris.  With her name up in bright lights across the capital, Madeleine has finally achieved her ambition.