Lumiere d'ete (1943)

 Jean Gremillon's "Lumiere d'ete"

I was a bit distracted watching Jean Gremillon's "Lumiere d'ete" last night but it was still able to entice and intrigue me. It centers on a young woman named Michele who arrives at a shimmering palatial glass hotel at the top of a remote Provencal mountain. There, she awaits her alcoholic painter husband to arrive. With his arrival, the cast of characters are caught in a love pentangle between her, her dilettante husband, the wealthy and obsessive Patrice, Patrice's lover Cri-Cri (who owns the hotel), and the mine worker Julien. Like many other French films at the time, "Lumiere d'ete" was a subversive film that commented on the current state of French society during the occupation by the Nazis. 

The hotel, The Guardian Angel Hotel, along with Patrice's Chateau Cabriere, are elegant bourgeois estates that house amoral and selfish proprietors. They stand atop a hill while the labor workers below work at their construction site for a dam that is being built.  The Guardian Angel Hotel's proprietor, Chi-Chi, closely resembles Coco Chanel, the wealthiest person in France at the time, whom also supported the Nazis. The Chateau Cabriere's owner, Patrice, represented France's nobility. He closely resembles a Nazi in his fondness for rifles, his riding uniforms, and his unyielding selfishness to attain what he desires without any consideration for anyone else. The people working on the dam in the below pass are hardworking and straightforward people who seemingly represent the common people of France and the Resistance movement. All the while, Michele's husband, Roland, is an alcoholic, pretentious 'intellectual' who represents the artists and intellectuals serving the patriciate, just as Roland is hired by Patrice to paint rooms in the Chateau Cabriere. Through this tableau of characters, you see a representation of France and its people during the time of the Nazi occupation. 

Our protagonist, Michele, if anything represents the heart of France itself. That heart has to choose between the three men that love her - Patrice, Roland, and Julien. Just as the heart of France and the nation's devotions had to choose between the cultural elites, the royalists, and the working class. 

In the climax of the film, the characters attend a costume ball at the Chateau Cabriere. Cri Cri and Patrice dress as French nobility, Roland as the famously indecisive Hamlet, and Julien does not pretend to be anyone else other than himself. The scene was quite extraordinary, as the pace of the film erupted into a heightened smorgasbord of emotions and depravity, along with revelations of the true selves of the characters revealed. The scene is a dark portrayal of the hedonistic excesses of the ruling class and the danger that erupts for their insatiable appetites for their selfish desires. However, through the revelation of the characters' internal desires, it is Julien and the working class that wins the heart of Michele and wins the heart of France.