Two Films from Europe

In photographing Zola’s L’Assomoir, the men behind Gervaise could have stressed either the sweet tale or the sour atmosphere; to have preserved both was an achievement. But they did something more, which no one could reasonably have predicted. They caught the spirit not only of this novelist, but of all the realist-romantics who have dominated modern French letters—a spirit that in Zola, Baudelaire and Gide alike, shows a basic kinship transcending period and school. That is why Gervaise is a diabolic movie.

The romantic plot concerns the Woman whose downfall is men whose downfall was drink. The story is advanced by violent and repulsive accidents, fights, rapes, vomitings, delirium and death. The scenic background of the tale—almost, we might say, its plumbing—ds made up of the sewers, shops, tables and beds, which are spat, bled, or vomited upon.

GW

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Garry Wills

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In photographing Zola’s L’Assomoir, the men behind Gervaise could have stressed either the sweet tale or the sour atmosphere; to have preserved both was an achievement. But they did something more, which no one could reasonably have predicted. They caught the spirit not only of this novelist, but of all the realist-romantics who have dominated modern French letters—a spirit that in Zola, Baudelaire and Gide alike, shows a basic kinship transcending period and school. That is why Gervaise is a diabolic movie.

The romantic plot concerns the Woman whose downfall is men whose downfall was drink. The story is advanced by violent and repulsive accidents, fights, rapes, vomitings, delirium and death. The scenic background of the tale—almost, we might say, its plumbing—ds made up of the sewers, shops, tables and beds, which are spat, bled, or vomited upon.