Un Carnet de Bal [Dance Program] [Life Dances On] ***** (1937, Marie Bell, Françoise Rosay, Louis Jouvet, Fernandel, Raimu, Harry Baur, Pierre Blanchar) – Classic Movie Review 4,299

Marie Bell stars as the widowed heroine Christine, who revisits the dance‑card from her debut ball and tracks down the men she once danced with, in the charming 1937 French classic episodic drama film Un Carnet de Bal.

Julien Duvivier’s famous 1937 French classic episodic drama film Un Carnet de Bal stars Marie Bell as Christine Surgère, a newly widowed middle-aged woman obsessed with the memory of a ball she attended at the age of 16.

When she finds the dance-card (carnet du bal) of her youth from her debut ball, she decides to track down the men she danced with that night of the ball, revisit her old friends and discover their fates.

Cue co-writer/ director Julien Duvivier’s famous 1937 French episode film, with bright star cameos from Louis Jouvet as crooked lawyer Pierre ‘Jo’ Verdier, Raimu as the mayor Francois Patusset, Fernandel as the hairdresser Fabien Coutissol, Françoise Rosay as the bereaved mother Marguerite Audié, Harry Baur as the monk Alain Regnault, and Pierre Blanchar as an epileptic doctor, Thierry Raynal.

Duvivier’s handsome, alluring, charming film, with its beautiful waltz music score by Maurice Jaubert, is a lovely opportunity to see France’s most famous cinema faces of the Thirties at work and at around their best form. However, the individual sketches are sometimes on the thin side and, with the passing of so much time, some of this golden film’s gilt has fallen off the gingerbread.

Nevertheless, this quite beguiling romantic film is essential French cinema from its glory days of its pre-war golden era and one of Duvivier’s two masterworks, along with Pépé le Moko (1937).

Also in the cast are Hans Yaray, Yolin Downes, Pierre-Richard Willm, Maurice Bénard, Robert Lynen, Milly Mathis, Sylvie, Andrex and Jeanne Fusier-Gir.

It is also known as Life Dances On (its UK released title), or Dance Program (its UK released title), or Christine.

It is shot partly at the Neuilly Studios in Paris. The art direction is by Jean Douarinou.

Music by Maurice Jaubert.

Production company: Productions Sigma

Distributed by Les Films Vog.

Release date: 9 September 1937

Running time: 144 minutes.

After this, Hollywood then took Duvivier over for The Great Waltz (1938) with Luise Rainer, Fernand Gravey and Miliza Korjus. 

Un Carnet de Bal was partly remade by Duvivier in 1941 as Lydia with Merle Oberon, Joseph Cotten and Edna May Oliver.

The carnet du bal or dance card is the little booklet that ballroom‑goers used to record which partner they were scheduled to dance with for each set of music. Ballroom guests would write the name of each partner next to the corresponding tune or waltz number, so the organiser or the bandmaster could keep the dancing orderly. It was usually a small, pocket‑sized card or booklet, often laminated or bound with a decorative cover, and sometimes pre‑printed with the titles of the dances for the evening.

The cast

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4,299

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