L’éternel retour [Love Eternal] **** (1943, Jean Marais, Madeleine Sologne, Jean Murat) – Classic Movie Review 5830

Jean Delannoy directs this strangely forgotten and sadly neglected 1943 film adaptation of the Tristan and Iseult [Isolde] legend, set in a magnificent château in 1940s France. The film’s neglect is truly surprisingly since the screenplay is splendidly written by Jean Cocteau as a moving love poem to its star, his lover and muse Jean Marais.

The beauty of the slightly surreal imagery, captured in Roger Hubert’s black and white images, creates a dreamlike atmosphere that beautifully captures the morbid quality of the original.

Marais and Madeleine Sologne cut fine figures as the handsome doomed lovers Patrice and Nathalie in this true Cocteau work of poetic imagination. In support, Piéral is outstanding as the sinister Achille Frossin.

Also in the cast are Jean Murat, Yvonne de Bray, Junie Astor, Roland Toutain, Jane [Jeanne] Marken, Jean d’Yd, and Alexandre Rignault.

It is shot in black and white by Roger Hubert, produced by André Paulvé and scored by Georges Auric.

It is a forgotten film, along with Jean Delannoy’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1956). Delannoy’s reputation was unfairly swept away as ‘old-fashioned’ by the French New Wave writers and film-makers. He lived till the age of 100, passing away on June 18 2008.

The Cocteau masterpieces are: The Blood of a Poet, Beauty and the Beast, The Eagle with Two Heads, Les parents terribles, Orpheus and Testament of Orpheus.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5830

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