The Princess of Cleve

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Movie
German title The Princess of Cleve
Original title La princesse de Clèves
Country of production France , Italy
original language French
Publishing year 1961
length 108 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Jean Delannoy
script Jean Cocteau
production Robert Dorfmann
music Georges Auric
camera Henri Alekan
cut Henri Taverna
occupation

The Princess of Cleve is a film adaptation of the novel La princesse de Clèves by Marie-Madeleine de La Fayette , which was published anonymously in Paris in 1678. Directed by Jean Delannoy based on a script by Jean Cocteau .

content

On the evening of the wedding of the Prince of Cleve to the young Mademoiselle de Chartres, King Henry II gives a ball in honor of the couple, which he opens with the princess. The complex structure of the court is evident when the king moves in: on the one hand his wife, Maria de 'Medici with her court, on the other his lover Diana of Poitiers with her companions. After the dance is over, the king suggests that she dance with the next one who enters the ballroom. Then the Duke of Nemours appears, one of the most brilliant gentlemen at court, popular with women and famous for his skill as a tournament fighter. He is the French candidate in the circle of applicants for the hand of Queen Elizabeth and is due to go to England shortly. Nemours has just returned from a trip, doesn't yet know his beautiful dance partner, and he is also unknown to her. When asked by the king, Cleve introduces him to the princess as his wife. The two, as if enchanted by each other, react confused, and jealousy sprouts in Cleve. As members of the court , whose strict rules do not allow the princess to avoid an encounter with Nemours, they meet again and again, at receptions, after the hunt, in the ball game hall, on the tournament field. After a jeu de paume , the princess accidentally takes the duke's silk scarf, leaving behind the princess's scarf, which the duke wears on the tip of his lance as the color of his lady.

Vidame de Chartres, a cousin of the princess and close confidante of the queen, whose vengefulness is notorious and who jealously watches over him, falls out of the pocket of a letter from his lover. Should the letter get into the hands of the queen, his days at court are numbered. Bouffon takes the letter and tells the princess that Nemours received the letter from his lover. But Nemours can credibly explain to her that the letter belongs to the vidame whom he tried to bail out, and the letter is burned.

Thanks to Bouffon, the Queen has now heard of the letter, who desperately wants to read it. Cleve should get it. So Cleve asks Nemours and his wife to rewrite the letter from memory. In the hand, the letter turns into a concealed love confession of the two. Dismayed by herself, the princess protects against illness and goes to her country estate. When Cleve follows her, she confesses to him the reason for her behavior, namely her love for Nemours, and asks him not to send her back to the court. Nemours, who overheard the conversation, is overjoyed and tells the story to his friend Chartres, albeit without mentioning the names of those involved, who is telling the story to the court, which Cleves believes he has absolutely no knowledge of.

When Nemours rides hopefully to the Cleves' country house, he is clearly rejected by the princess, she will not break her loyalty to her husband. Bouffon, who followed him, now tells the husband that his wife had spent the night with Nemours. Cleve is deeply hurt, loses all courage to face life and dies a little later. After his death, for which she feels responsible, the princess refuses any contact with Nemours and retires to her country estate. When he finally receives a letter from her and rushes to her, he finds her dead and laid out in the garden pavilion.

production

After his great success in 1943 of The Eternal Bane with Jean Marais in the lead role, in which Cocteau had written the first screenplay for a Delaunnay film, Delaunnay contemplated a film adaptation of the Princess of Clèves, also with Cocteau's assistance . The project was abandoned in 1944 and only resumed 16 years later. Jean Marais, who was then supposed to play the role of the Duke of Nemours, now preferred to play the Prince of Clèves.

Delannoy's film is the only film adaptation of the novel as a period film to date . Delannoy paid attention to accuracy in terms of architecture, décor, clothing, hairstyles and what extends to the casting of the actors, who in the case of historical figures bear a striking resemblance to contemporary portraits. The costumes were designed by Marcel Escoffier , those of the Princess, Maria de 'Medicis and Diane de Poitiers by Pierre Cardin . Delannoy's long-time colleague René Renoux , with whom Delannoy worked for the first time in the film La Symphonie Pastorale in 1946, was responsible for the lavish film set .

script

Cocteau's script is based very closely on the novel, he has taken over some dialogues literally. However, there are also differences. He omits Cleve's first encounter with Mademoiselle de Chartres and begins the film with the wedding ball, at which Nemours and the princess meet for the first time. He introduces the character of the scheming Bouffon , who plays a disastrous role in the course of the film. Cleve is still quite young in the novel, while Nemours is portrayed as an already experienced man who is said to have had a good number of love affairs at court, even with several women at the same time. In the film, Cleve is 40 years old, his wife is around 16 and Nemours is a young man.

The end of the film deviates completely from the novel, in which the princess retires to a monastery after the final farewell to Nemours, the film ends with the spectacularly staged laying out of the princess in the pavilion, in which Nemours the decisive conversation between her and Cleve had overheard.

Château de Chambord
Château de la Bourdaisiere

Locations

Filming began on August 2, 1960, lasted until mid-November and was performed in the studios in Billancourt as well as in the Château de Chambord , in the Château de la Bourdaisière in Montlouis-sur-Loire as Cleves' residence in Coulommier and in the royal park of Marly-le- Roi ( Yvelines department ).

Publications

The film premiered on March 3, 1961 at the Cinéma Marivaux in Paris. In Germany it was released in cinemas on October 27, 1961. Jean Marais was dubbed by Klaus Sonnenschein . The film was shown for the first time on GDR television on September 17, 1971 under the title Princess Cleve . The film was released on DVD in France on September 10, 2010.

reception

The film was a considerable success in France with around 3.4 million visitors. It looked different with professional film criticism. Delaunnay's film came out when a paradigm shift was in full swing in French cinema . Representatives of the Nouvelle Vague rejected the traditional French cinema and preferred to work outside the studios with the innovative, easier-to-use cameras and independent of the cumbersome machinery of the studios. They propagated an auteur cinema in which the personal style of a director could develop and become unmistakable, films break away from literary models and become more personal and individual. In his article “ Une certaine tendance du cinéma français ” from 1954, Truffaut , then just 21 years old, had massively attacked commercial cinema in France. Next to Jean Renoir , Delannoy was the target of his attacks , of whom he wrote that the worst of Renoir's films was still better than the best of Delannoy, and Godard also shared Truffaut's views. Delaunnay's understanding of film was fundamentally different from auteur cinema: “The only way to make a good film today is to have a good subject,” he said in a 1951 interview with the New York Times, “[...] that forces you to to go beyond yourself. "

In connection with Sarkozy's statement on the subject of “the princess as material for high school graduation”, a critic in 2008 named the film “une adaptation” kitschisime ”du roman [...] réalisée au cinéma par Jean Delannoy, en 1961, avec la sublime Marina Vlady dans le rôle de Mademoiselle de Chartres et le magnifique Jean Marais dans celui de Monsieur de Clèves. "

The lexicon of international films judges: "Filmed from a screenplay by Cocteau with very neat aesthetic coolness - a style that nonetheless allows the inner drama to be felt".

literature

  • Françoise Denis: La Princesse de Clèves: Lafayette et Cocteau, deux versions , in: The French Review. Vol. 72, No. 2, December 1998. pp. 285-296
  • Martina Stemberger: La Princesse de Clèves revisited . Re-interpretation of a classic between literature, film and politics. University of Vienna, 2016. (Adaptation and abridged version of the habilitation thesis Vienna 2016.) Tübingen: Narr 2018.
  • Martina Stemberger: Classical Cinema. Transmediating La Princesse de Clèves . In: Romance Studies. Vol. 34, No. 4. 2017. pp. 209–225.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c The Princess of Cleve. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed October 13, 2019 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  2. ↑ La Princesse de Clèves et Madame de Lafayette Jalons, August 4, 1960, accessed October 9, 2019
  3. ↑ Quotation: "[...] Herr von Clèves is of such high rank, possesses so many good qualities and shows such unusual cleverness for his age [...]", from: Madame de Lafayette: The Princess of Clèves . Translated by Julia Kirchner. Insel Verlag, Frankfurt a. M., 1967, p. 33.
  4. ^ Princess of Cleves [La princesse de Cleves] (Archive of 14 original photographs and ephemera from the 1961 film). Retrieved October 12, 2019 (English, film by Delannoy, Jean (director); Madame de La Fayette (novel); Jean Cocteau (adaptation); Jean Marais, Marina Vlady, Jean-François Poron, Annie Ducaux (starring): Cinedis , Paris - Royal Books, Inc., ABAA).
  5. ↑ La Princesse de Clèves On: fnac.com, accessed October 10, 2019
  6. ↑ La princesse de Clèves (1961) de Jean Delannoy Seleni, Des Lumière au Septième Art, March 9, 2011, accessed October 17, 2019
  7. ↑ Quoted from: Anita Gates Jean Delannoy, French director , The New York Times, June 19, 2008, accessed October 14, 2019
  8. ↑ Anita Gates: Jean Delannoy, French director , accessed October 17, 2019
  9. ^ "The only way to do a good movie today is by taking a good subject. I forces you to go beyond yourself ”, quoted from: Anita Gates: [1] , The New York Times, June 19, 2006, accessed October 9, 2019
  10. ↑ German: "A kitsch version of the novel by Jean Delannoy from 1961, with the sublime Marina Vlady in the role of Mademoiselle de Chartres and the great Jean Marais as Monsieur de Clèves" Théâtre-récit: Un enjeu médiatique pour Sarkozy Affinité élective, accessed on October 14, 2019