Le Plaisir

Saw Le Plaisir, a trio of short films directed by Max Ophüls.  All three films are on the theme of romance in conjunction with pleasure.  We start with a creepy film about an old man who disguises himself (with a mask) to look like a young dandy.  We visit him briefly and listen to his wife complain about him.  He was always a womanizer and now, in his old age, uses masks and wigs to continue to harass women.  In his getup, he looks like a serial killer.

The next, and much longer segment, follows a crew of prostitutes as they go to visit the Madame's niece for her first communion.  The setup is a ridiculous joke - whores on holiday for their first communion - but it turns kind of sweet in the end, as the whores sleep on the floors and couches of the niece's family farmhouse, making the family proud with their fancy clothes and weeping at the sermon.  Everyone comes off as a bit silly but mostly happy and mostly alright.  The men in the city celebrate the return of the whores and the farmhouse glows with pride at its fancy relatives.

The last film, we are warned, is more of a tragedy: a painter with a fleeting infatuation with his model.  This one, like the first, has a fairy-tale quality - a sort of timeless simplicity that is old and quaint and yet universal: man chases girl, gets her, and sees he doesn't want her.

There's a narrator walking us through all of these stories with a sort of affected humility.  He begs our pardon several times and apologizes for having "old stories" when we are "so modern".  The film feels like a close adaptation of a book with a strong authorial voice.

Another thing I noticed was that we're very often outside of the houses where the action is taking place.  The camera is always peering through windows and through stairway railings, making us into outsiders peering in at the desire and love on display inside.  The action seems to not be for us, but we are witnessing it anyway.

All this aside, the film was quaint and pokey, dealing with desire and such but in a very chilly, almost cerebral way, prostitutes notwithstanding.  This being the 50s, we of course could not deal frankly with sex and I wonder if this is the sort of boundary-pushing film that would have had un-simulated sex in it nowadays but which is rendered pretty tame in this modern, boundary-pushed time.

A quaint little film.  It's apparently one of Kubrick's favorites, but I can't see why.