Without a tomorrow
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Without a tomorrow |
| Original title | Sans lendemain |
| Country of production | France |
| original language | French |
| Publishing year | 1940 |
| length | 82 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Max Ophüls |
| script |
Jean Villeme Jean Jacot Max Colpet Curt Alexander Max Ophüls |
| production | Gregor Rabinowitsch |
| music | Allan Gray |
| camera | Eugen Schüfftan |
| cut | Bernard Sejourné, Jean Sacha |
| occupation | |
| |
Without a morning is a French melodrama filmed in 1939 by Max Ophüls with Edwige Feuillère in the leading role.
action
Evelyne Morin, who works as an animation girl in a shabby Parisian cabaret, has seen better days. One day her eight-year-old son Pierre shows up with her after he has been kicked out of boarding school again. Evelyn is at a loss as to what to do now: In view of her way of life, she cannot possibly take the boy into her home. The following evening, she happened to meet her former lover, Georges Brandon, a Canadian, on the street again. She almost married him about ten years ago. Georges still loves Evelyne and asks the woman to go on a date. Georges' intentions are honorable, he would like to take them back to his Canadian homeland.
The stripper happily agrees, but hides her true circumstances and past from her former lover, as she fears that he might then withdraw his offer. Instead, Evelyne forges a plan that will end with Georges taking care of her boy. She designs an illusory world for him, rents an expensive apartment, plays the role of a grande dame and finally manages to have Georges look after her boy. In return, she is even ready to forego her own happiness in life and love. Because for her, Evelyne thinks, there is no tomorrow, especially since the greasy blackmailer Paul Mazuraud is giving her a lot of trouble. And so Georges finally leaves for Canada alone with Pierre.
Production notes
Without a Morning was Ophüls' last film made before the outbreak of war in 1939. Despite borrowing from “poetic realism” and a tendency towards fatalism typical of pre-war French films , it is regarded as a by-product of the Saarbrücken native.
As with most of his (mainly French) productions since 1933, Ophüls gathered a plethora of fellow emigrants around him: all of the scriptwriters were of German origin (and some wrote under French pseudonyms such as Jean Villeme and Jean Jacot); the Frenchman André-Paul Antoine was only responsible for the dialogues. Gregor Rabinowitsch produced the film, Eugen Schüfftan was behind the camera and Allan Gray composed the music. The only French in a central position behind the camera was the film architect Max Douy , who (together with the Russian exile Eugène Lourié ) designed the film structures. Henri Alekan was one of four simple cameramen who worked for chief cameraman Schüfftan.
The world premiere took place in Paris on March 22, 1940. The German dubbed first broadcast of the film was on April 17, 1979 on ZDF .
Reviews
“A film made by Max Ophüls after his emigration in France; In a breathless style, the cultivated staging overcomes the weaknesses of the sometimes flatly constructed fate. "
“The film: a promise. Ophüls transforms a dime novel into a work full of nuances and dramaturgical semitone steps, capable of both hinting at and hiding feelings. Paris, Montmartre, the La Sirène establishment, the rue Custine built in the studio. A woman working as an animator meets her former lover, from whom she wants to hide the life that she is forced to lead by all means. A lie of life in the sense of the word that ends in fog and nowhere. Soft shadows, diffuse shimmer and the white of the face by Edwige Feuillère. The light is iridescent, refracted, flowing, as mobile as the camera and above all a means with which the director can model - the faces of landscapes, the depth of the spaces, which often appear vague, ambiguous, as it were mobile. "
The “Dictionnaire du cinèma” saw some tendencies towards melancholy in Ophüls' late works immediately before the outbreak of war, such as Werther, Ohne ein Morgen and Von Mayerling bis Sarajewo .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Without a tomorrow. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ In Jean-Loup Passek: Dictionnaire du cinèma, Paris 1992, p. 489, it says: "quelques plages du mélancolie"
Web links
- Without a morning in the Internet Movie Database (English)