DEVIL IN THE FLESH Movie Review

Le Diable au Corps

An autobiographical novel by Raymond Radiguet, who died at age 20, is the basis for this poetic, powerfully bitter love story between adolescent French schoolboy François (Gérard Philipe) and unhappy soldier's wife Marthe (Micheline Presle) during World War I. Though the movie is by every standard an elegantly modulated and exceptionally sensitive love story, it is the mesmerizing performance of the 24-year-old Gérard Philipe that elevates the picture to classic status. Rocketing past major stardom and heading straight to idol status thanks to his internationally acclaimed portrayal of François, Philipe would remain a popular actor until his untimely death in 1959. A decade after the successful release of Devil in the Flesh (Le Diable au Corps), the film's director, Claude Autant-Lara, was one of those cited by the young François Truffaut and other founders of the Cahiers du Cinéma/New Wave movement as being representative of the staid and formal quality of French cinema—a cinema that this new group of critics/filmmakers would soon alter forever. (Italy's Marco Bellocchio directed an updated remake in 1986.)

NEXT STOP … La Traversée de Paris (Four Bags Full), Sylvia and the Phantom, Devil in the Flesh (1986)

1946 112m/B FR Gerard Philipe, Micheline Presle, Denise Grey; D: Claude Autant-Lara; W: Jean Aurenche, Pierre Bost; C: Michel Kelber; M: Rene Cloerec. VHS NOS, FCT