The Red and the Black

There is no good reason to slip on down to the Brattle this week; any book would be easier going. The Red and the Black deals exam period diversion a death blow. Claude Autant-Lara has allowed himself to be carried away with the pathetic figure of a poor downtrodden peasant of the French Empire. He fails to recall that Stendahl saw Julien Sorel's answer to constricting French society as understandable, but not laudable. Sorel is no hero of the poor, he is simply the unfortunate of his age.

Certainly, Stendahl had no intention of showing Julien exciting this mortal coil to the unconstrained accompaniment of a chorus of screeching voices, dominated by vibrating sopranos who soar higher and higher. Again, Stendahl had no intention of letting the weather conspire with the gods on the day of Julien's execution to show cloudiness and blue, the spacious firmament. Sorel strode to his death all right, but not to the majestic rumble of five symphonies' worth of kettle drums.

For all this, the movie starts off well enough; it is, at the beginning, an almost excellent satire of the social climber, given bite by the implication that the climber's position is not so much his own fault as that of society. And some of society's offenders appear more sharply in this light than they do in the book. The gruff nature of M. de Renal, for one, is brilliantly emphasized, providing a clear motive for Julien's well meditated social ascent. Then, too, the seduction scenes are fine stuff, exhibiting some well coordinated pussyfooting from bedroom to bedroom.

But, M. de la Mole's admonition to his daughter and Julien, "Don't be so romantic, you are both fools," is all too apt. There is a limit to the number of sighs, passionate leers, and little boy looks that even the French can get by with. There is also a limit to an audience's toleration of the naturally objectionable Julien, made even more objectionable by 137 minutes of technicolor.

The movie's concentration on the tragedy of it all, its insistence on showing Julien to be a maligned martyr, takes all the sharpness from the story; the movie-made transformation of Julien into a hero of almost homeric proportion destroys Stendahl's original theme. Even Danielle Darrieux's fine acting cannot detract from the fact that The Red and The Black is not meant to be a colossal soap opera.

One cannot cast aspersions upon Gerard Phillipe's portrayal of Julien. Its lugubrious, studied quality is well in line with the movie's tone. The technicolor is, perhaps, the finest feature of the film, making quite clear that the movie is steeped in symbolism. Red and Black come off nicely in color, but, unfortunately, the director seems to think that such visual imagery can make up for more sophisticated dramatic devices.

In total, The Red and the Black would make an excellent television serial to be run at eleven in the morning. It is just the type of movie to coax tears from the housewife, but yawns from the student. The best that can be done is to wait out the Brattle in hope that its next flick will better becloud the academic mind. This simply hasn't got it.