Ettore Scola – La nuit de Varennes (1982)
NYT – Janet Maslin
THE great historical pageant that is Ettore Scola’s ”La Nuit de Varennes” unfolds with supreme ease. It begins with a series of casual coincidences and weaves them brilliantly into a vision of one of the most important moments in French history, a vision not the least bit limited by the specifics of its place and time.
The time is the French Revolution, and the occasion is the flight of the royal family from Paris to the small town of Varennes, where they will be captured and sent back to their deaths. But the feeling is utterly modern, or perhaps it’s timeless. The key issues of the film are the issues of any era. And the humor and generosity with which Mr. Scola presents them are correspondingly enduring.
”La Nuit de Varennes” begins as an Italian theatrical troupe offers re-enactments of Revolutionary scenes to the people of Paris, two years after the fact. It quickly shifts, with a rhythm and reason that are all its own, to the night of the King’s flight as it introduces Nicholas Edme Restif de la Bretonne (Jean-Louis Barrault), the writer who documented many of the events of the Revolution, and one of a number of historical personages who will follow in Louis XVI’s wake.
During a scene in a bordello, sketched by Mr. Scola with an earthy humor that figures throughout the film, Restif learns from a maid at the Royal Palace that the King may be attempting to escape from Paris. He follows along and soon becomes part of a group of travelers that includes one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting (Hanna Schygulla), the wealthy industrialist De Wendel (Daniel Gelin), an Italian opera singer (Laura Betti), a wealthy widow (Andrea Ferreol), a prissy hairdresser (Jean-Claude Brialy) and others. Also eventually in the group, last but hardly least, are Casanova (Marcello Mastroianni) and Thomas Paine (Harvey Keitel).
All sides of the day’s issues are represented within this entourage, with the foremost ideological rift between the progressive Restif and Casanova, now an elderly gentleman who declares: ”I miss the sweeter times of yore, when all was harmony and light.” However, ”La Nuit de Varennes” is not a film about conflict, and it has no villains. It approaches the forces at work in the revolution even-handedly – with compassion for the peasants whose uprising is about to begin, and also with regret about the violent change that is on its way. Mr. Scola sees change as something that is forever necessary and forever incomplete, which means that only one or two characters in the film regard the imminent revolution with any overriding idealism. Idealism in this film is very much a young man’s attitude, and most of the characters are old enough to have a broader, more tolerant world view.
The historical characters speak in the voices that might be expected of them (Casanova: ”On his throne or not, no king ever made me miss a meal”), but they’re never in any danger of becoming puppets. The screenplay, by Mr. Scola and the late Sergio Amideo, never overstates the historical importance of any one event or individual. And so it accomplishes the small miracle of letting these figures exist, in equal measure, as characters within this story and as archetypes or legends. The small talk here is never small (the industrialist, telling a fellow voyager about the day he saw a worker fold his arms and refuse to do his job, calls this ”the most terrifying sight I ever saw”). But it is wonderfully casual at some times, quietly resonant at others, and always exquisitely delivered. If ”La Nuit de Varennes” offered nothing more than the ensemble acting on display, it would be major and memorable on that basis alone.
Of all the fine performances here, Mr. Mastroianni’s is the most dazzling, because he plays the vainest of men without bringing any of his own vanity to the role. This Casanova is on his last legs, rueful about the ways in which his body now disappoints him and yet forever interrupting conversations to powder his nose. He’s also a wonderfully gallant figure, and never one of whom the film makes fun; the friendship that develops between Casanova and Restif is one of the most moving things here. Miss Schygulla, whose lady-in-waiting is filled with serene faith in the crumbling order, brings an astonishing composure to her performance, and in her last scene Mr. Scola uses that quality stunningly. Mr. Keitel, Mr. Barrault and the rest of a cast that also includes Jean-Louis Trintignant are superb too. Mr. Trintignant plays the timid deputy mayor of Varennes who keeps the royal family in his home, worrying about his hospitality even as he agrees to have them sent back to Paris.
Mr. Scola’s direction of ”La Nuit de Varennes” isn’t overly elegant or schematic, and the film is all the fresher for that. His style is flexible without the slightest trace of gimmickry. When he sees the need for an odd lighting effect or a historical footnote, he simply tosses these things into a narrative that is otherwise simple, beautiful and straightforward. So Casanova can interrupt the story to tell us, while wearing a wool bonnet and sipping soup or tea, why he wasn’t very well known at the time the action takes place (his fame, he confides, came with the memoir ”published after my death, which, as you all know, occurred in 1798”). And the key figure of Restif can, at the end of the film, stride out of the past and into the present – which, as a representative of a work that both encapsulates and transcends history, is most assuredly where he belongs.
La.nuit.de.Varennes.1982.576p.BluRay.AAC.x264.mkv General Container: Matroska Runtime: 2 h 31 min Size: 2.60 GiB Video Codec: x264 Resolution: 964x576 Aspect ratio: 5:3 Frame rate: 24.000 fps Bit rate: 2 346 kb/s BPP: 0.176 Audio #1: French 2.0ch AAC LC @ 114 kb/s
https://nitro.download/view/8851EC7829812CF/La.nuit.de.Varennes.1982.576p.BluRay.AAC.x264.mkv
Language(s):French
Subtitles:English, French
