... and ev'ry hope's a dream. This is late Duvivier but fleeting glimpses of the style remain, like sepia snapshots seen under water, Duvivier has always depicted the richness of the milieu, the overlooked characters who people it unobtrusively like insects under stones. Jean-Pierre Melville beat him to it in the case of Pigalle, depicting it vibrantly in his Bob, Le Flambeur a little earlier but Duvivier is no less telling if no longer original. The top billing of Jean-Pierre Leaud was off-putting, carrying with it as it does the baggage of pretentiousness associated with Truffaut but the superior director Duvivier succeeds in getting Leaud to act natural and shed the Truffaut-inflected mannerisms and so turn in a respectable performance that makes us forget within minutes the excruciating 400 Yawns. Academics and their ilk will be out wet-dreaming each other at Duvivier's framing of Leaud on the roof-top with the Sacre Coeur above him and the sleaze of Pigalle below (Heaven-Hell, geddit) but the non-pseuds among us will accept it a face value. Not top-drawer Duvivier but even bottom-drawer Duvivier outguns Godard who doesn't POSSESS a top drawer or even a bottom one. Unpretentious and entertaining what more, after all, can a film aspire to.
Review of Boulevard
