Note :
this review is my participation to The
Wonderful Ingrid Bergman blogathon hosted by the wonderful Virginie at The Wonderful World of
Cinema.
Elena et les hommes
aka Paris Does Strange Things (Jean
Renoir, 1956)
Polish countess Elena falls in love to a French
radical party's candidate, a general, in pre World War I Paris, but another
officer pines for her.
This French
Technicolor fresque about a time where gallantries and polite high society was
manners and courtship, we follow the Polish princess Elena, a superb 41
years old Ingrid Bergman who looks
like her mid twenties, as a debonair woman ready for amusement and
entertainment.
Bergman seems
to be in her element as a princess in a Renoir world of Paris and high society.
She shines on the screen and her presence is elegant, naive, sexy, and
lovable. It was her first film after her departure from her husband Roberto
Rossellini and we see her as a new woman. She seems liberated and despite
having been broken from this relationship she is still a star and the camera
simply loved her.
Elena and Her Men, is not Bergman’s one-woman show
despite the presence of Jean Marais
and Mel Ferrer. It is a Jean Renoir
film and another vignette of his Paris and his France. His films are a visual
storytelling of his land and the way people lived and were during his
child life. Most of Renoir’s stories are influenced by his childhood in Paris
and his later films were his reconnection with his motherland. However, it was not
his best depiction of the nostalgia of a memory and the story seems to be too much
centered on Bergman’s character and not enough on the politics of France and
the implications it could have done.
The story and
its treatment is too light for us to really care for the issue of anything but
Elena. While Renoir’s most celebrated films had the lenght and depth to reach for
greatness, Elena and Her Men is a
nice little love story on a political back drop.
As a huge fan of Jean Renoir and Ingrid Bergman I would suggest to give it at
least a watch because both were at turning points of their career having
already legendary credits they have had superb careers. For classic film
lovers, Elena and Her Men is a
delight and may not be a great film but a nice Technicolor eye candy.
