L’important c’est d’aimer (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Jul 31, 2024
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
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Director
Andrzej ŻuławskiRelease Date(s)
1975 (June 16, 2024)Studio(s)
S.N. Prodis (Film Movement Classics/Vinegar Syndrome)- Film/Program Grade: B
- Video Grade: A-
- Audio Grade: A-
- Extras Grade: B
Review
The great German-French actress Romy Schneider considered her leading performance in L’important c’est d’aimer (That Most Important Thing: Love, 1975) the best of her career. It’s hard to argue that point, though personally I find her work in La Piscine, The Things of Life, Max and the Junkmen and others equally superb. Moreover, I like those films much more than That Most Important Thing. Part Fellini-esque in its fascination with grotesques and Satyricon-like orgies, part Bergman-like for its psychologically fragile, unhappy women and its love for the theater, the film is rather pretentious and trendy, with some painfully bludgeoning symbolism. At its core is an examination of destructive romantic-sexual relationships, but its heavy-handed eccentricities get in the way of any real insight, though Schneider undeniably acts her out, so something is revealed, at least emotionally.
Schneider is Nadine Chevalier, a once respected actress reduced to low-budget sexploitation movies. Photographer Servais Mont (Italian poliziotteschi star Fabio Testi, dubbed into French) sneaks onto the set, snapping a few photos of Nadine in the act before being discovered, the camera negative retrieved by the film crew, and Servais beaten for his trouble.
For no clear reason she invites Servais into her home the next morning, where she lives with her movie-buff lay-about husband Jacques (singer-songwriter Jacques Dutronc). Even more unexpectedly she allows Servais to photograph her there. There is a strong, obvious attraction between the two, though Nadine clearly has psychological problems and general unhappiness.
Servais is not much happier, working as a photographer for gangster Mazelli (Claude Dauphin), who has him shoot images of France’s elite in uncompromising sexual acts for extortion purposes. Servais believes the way to Nadine’s heart is by secretly financing a theatrical production of Shakespeare’s Richard III to feature Nadine, so Servais gets further, more deeply in debt with the oily Mazelli.
Rehearsals for Richard III begin, its transvestite director and his cast of misfits not far removed from Ed Wood’s stock company. Playing the title role is volatile, conceited, and unpredictable Karl-Heinz Zimmer (Klaus Kinski, in an admittedly ingenious bit of casting). Nadine, however, is emotionally fragile both on the stage and in the presence of her husband and potential lover.
If indeed love is that most important thing, I didn’t learn much about it from Żuławski’s film. Servais is obsessed with the unhappy Nadine, who is stuck in a dead-end relationship with husband Jacques, but the film offers few clues about the cores of their feelings toward one another, what Servais hopes to gain by financing Nadine’s return to the stage, why she’s so unhappy, and no clues at all about the cheerfully irresponsible Jacques. Schneider’s big dramatic scenes in the picture—there are four or five of them—are impressive insofar as they’re obviously deeply felt and emotionally honest (the naturally beautiful Schneider symbolically striped of any makeup), yet they seem detached from a film more interested in its collection of colorful oddballs and their eccentricities, and the director’s interest in the visual quality of the orgies Servais films for his gangster boss, and the soft-porn sex scenes of the movies Nadine stars in.
The picture undeniably has its share of humiliation and degradation, and an air of total collapse and great tragedy hangs in the air, but for me it just seemed utterly unfocused. There is, for instance, a marvelous bit of mad Kinski’s mad actor going ape-shit when the reviews for Richard III are published, and he channels his rage toward unwitting passersby at a local pub. The heavy-handed symbolism (a scene where Jacques is drafted briefly into a rehearsal, the mirror-like scenes bookending the film (the latter of which had me exclaim “Oh, come on!” in disgust) is clumsy and obvious. Though considered by some of the one best films of the entire 1970s, I just wasn’t buying it.
The Film Movement Classics Blu-ray, licensed from Studio Canal, is an impressive new digital transfer in 1.66:1 widescreen. The image is impressively sharp with accurate color and contrast, and the LPCM 2.0 mono, offered in both French with optional English subtitles and in an English-dubbed version, are above average. Region “A” encoded.
Supplements consist of a 16-minute interview with the filmmaker (who died in 2016) and a trailer, both in standard-def. Also included is a 16-page full-color booklet featuring a new essay by writer Kat Ellinger, who admires the film more than I do, and makes a good case for its significance.
As a longtime admirer of Schneider’s talent, I was impressed with her work in the film and other scattered scenes and little moments, but overall the film version of L’important c’est d’aimer left me cold.
- Stuart Galbraith IV