TENDER ENEMY

France, 1936, 69 minutes, Black and white.
Simone Berrieay, Jacqueline Daix.
Directed by Max Ophuls.

is a mid-thirties French film by celebrated German director, Max Ophuls. He made films in both Germany and France and also in the United States after World War II - The Exile with Douglas Fairbanks Jnr and Maria Montez, two James Mason films, Caught, The Reckless Moment and the celebrated Letter From An Unknown Woman with Joan Fontaine. He also made the famous La Ronde and Lola Montes with Martine Carol. This film illustrates his pictorial style, his romantic love for conventional situations and making something different of them. It also Illustrates French film making styles of the thirties.

1. The work of Max Ophuls in the twenties and thirties in Germany and France, America in the late forties, his return to France in the fifties? A significant and acclaimed director? His treatment of romantic themes, sentiment with a dash of satiric realism? Sketching of characters?

2. The brevity of the film and its screen play: quick establishing of situations, characters and types, changing of moods, the use of comedy and sentiment, flashbacks? The blend of feelings of sadness and laughter? A satisfying resolution? The pointing of the moral?

3. Film-making in France in the thirties: black and white photography, montage techniques, special effects? The editing and pace? The use of ghosts for the fantasy touch?

4. The Gallic tone of the film - French sentiment and romance blended with realism? The explicit moralizing?

5. The introduction to the situation: the opening of the gate, the betrothal, the plane and Jacques, the mother, the carnation? The establishing of the party - with questions in the offing?

6. The entry of the ghosts, the father and his reaction, the betrothal, the speeches, success? The four years and the flashbacks? Wealthy fashion, the extravagance of the wife, the circus and the eloping? The regrets of the father? Other women? His death? the victim? His still being a hale and hearty ghost?

7. The circus performer - his act, the romance, the elopement, sending the wife back but her husband gone? Illness? The Riviera? Death?

8. The revelation about the captain, the story, the shot?

9. Annette, innocent, the arranged marriage, greed, fickleness, the eloping, her daughter and unhappiness? Her relenting and making decisions to help her daughter? Her memories of her own bitter experience?

10. The daughter, her fiance and uncle, her sadness, the happy escape?

11. The comedy with the servants counterpointing the focus on the main characters?

12. The moralizing about true love and arranged marriages with their disastrous consequences? The criticism of the formal expectations of society and pressures on marriages?

13. The flavour of the French light touch? The very earthly ghosts? The humanity of the characters and learning by mistakes? The happy moral of the good deed done by the ghosts?