The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 64

2003:01:16:14:59:16 MOVIES E7 LOSANGELESTIMES THE NEW ORK TIMES ENTERTAINMENT! A film! -Elvis Mitchell Roger Ebert, EBER ROEPER ONE OFTHE BEST FILMS YOU LL EVER SEE! Two thumbs way up! A GOLDEN GLOBENOMINEE BEST FOREIGN FILM BASEDONATRUE STORY MIRAMAX FILMS WALTER SALLESDONALD K.RANVAUDO2 FILMESVIDEOFILMESPAULO LINS OF NACHTERGAELE ALEXANDRE RODRIGUES LEANDRO FIRMINO DA HORA JONATHAN HAAGENSEN PHELLIPE HAAGENSEN DOUGLAS SILVA DANIEL ZETTELSEU JORGEGLOBO FILMES STUDIO CANALWILD BUNCHANDREA BARATA RIBEIROMAURICIO ANDRADE RAMOSHANK LEVINEDANIEL FILHO MARC BEAUCHAMPS VINCENT MARAVALWALTER SALLES DONALD K.RANVAUDBEL BERLINCK ELISA TOLOMELLIANTONIO PINTOED PEAKE DANIEL REZENDE CESAR CHARLONE ABC BRAULIO MANTOVANIKATIA LUND FERNANDO MEIRELLES DIRECTED BY CO- DIRECTORSCRIPTWRITERCINEMATOGRAPHEREDITOR ART DIRECTORAND ORIGINAL MUSIC BYAND LINE PRODUCERSAND EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS CO- PRODUCERS CO- PRODUCERANDPRODUCERSAND CO-PRODUCTION WITHAND PRESENTINGWITH BASED ON THE NOVEL BYPRODUCTIONANDPRESENT ANAND STRONG, BRUTAL VIOLENCE, SEXUALITY, DRUG CONTENT, AND LANGUAGE RIGHTS RESERVED O2 FILMES CURTOS LTDA. AND HANK LEVINE FILM GMBH 2002. ALMAPBBDO, BNDES, BR DISTRIBUIDORA, DM9DDB, BANCO IBI S.A., LODUCCA, VALESUL S.A THE NOVEL WAS PUBLISHED IN BRAZIL BY COMPANHIA DAS LETRAS IN 1996. SOUNDTRACK AVAILABLE ON www.miramax.com/cityofgod ARTWORK MIRAMAX FILM CORP. ALLRIGHTSRESERVED.

15 miles from man will do anything to tell the world everything. AMPAS BAFTA-LA Members: Your card will admit you and a guest to any performance. SOUTH PASADENA Rialto (626) 799-9567 BEVERLY HILLS The Grove Stadium 14 (323) 692-0829 Fri-Sun 11:15 AM 2:15 5:15 8:10 11:05 PM Mon-Thu 11:15 AM 2:15 5:15 8:05 10:45 PM 4 hours on-site validated parking only $2. SANTA MONICA Monica (310) 394-9741 Daily 1:00 4:00 7:00 10:00 PM SORRY, NO PASSES ACCEPTED FOR THIS ENGAGEMENT EXCLUSIVE ENGAGEMENTS START TODAY BEST! TOPTEN! ONOVER 160 CRITICS LISTS including NOMINATED! THE NEW YORK TIMES ELVIS HOLDEN USATODAYCLAUDIAPUIG NEWSDAY CHICAGO TRIBUNEMARC CARO LADAILYNEWS WHIPP NEWYORKPOST FOREMAN LOS ANGELES TIMES KENNETH THOMAS WALL STREET JOURNAL JOE MORGENSTERN ROLLING STONEPETERTRAVERS ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY LISA SCHWARZBAUM CHICAGO SUN-TIMES ROGER BESTPICTURE OFTHEYEAR NEWSWEEK DAVIDANSENUSWEEKLYANDREWJOHNSTON BESTDIRECTOR NEWSWEEK DAVIDANSEN BESTORIGINALSCREENPLAY NEW YORKMAGAZINEPETERRAINER USWEEKLYANDREWJOHNSTON LOSANGELESTIMESKENNETHTURAN TAMBIEN YTU MAMA a film by starring DIEGOLUNA THISFILMISNOTRATED BUTCONTAINS STRONGSEXUALCONTENTANDLANGUAGE. NOONEUNDER18 WILLBE ADMITTED.

NEWSDAYGENESEYMOUR USA TODAYCLAUDIA PUIG IFPINDEPENDENTSPIRITAWARD BRITISHINDEPENDENTFILMAWARDS CRITICSCHOICEAWARD EUROPEANFILMAWARD THEINTERNATIONAL GAY FILMAWARD GLAADMEDIAAWARD GOLDENGLOBEAWARD THEMOSTACCLAIMED FILMOFTHEYEAR! AMPAS, DGA, SAG NOM. ANDWGAMEMBERS: YOURCARDWILLADMITYOUANDAGUESTTOANYPERFORMANCE HOLLYWOOD Regent Showcase (323) 934-2944 4:30 7:15 9:40 2:00 4:30 7:15 9:40 Presented in EXCLUSIVE ENGAGEMENT STARTS TODAY! youthful self on screen at the Nuart as the foxy, bewitching Jenny Lamour, the protagonist of des The 1947 film noir classic has been restored and brought back for a second spin in theaters more than half a century after its initial release date, and despite a conventional plot inspired by a police procedural, its raw tears, filth, wit and redemption still pack a punch. was the sixth film directed by Henri-Georges Clou- zot, maestro of the thriller genre. It was also his third starring Delair, a muse and lover for 12 years. In a recent phone interview, the retired actress does not hide her enthusiasm for the picture.

is a great film. For me, it is flawless. Clouzot pulled it off marvelously. The small parts, like the important parts, are all well acted. Working on it was like having a great love Set in recently liberated Paris, the film was shot on location in the winter of 1947.

Realistic touches convey a locale sallow in appearance but boisterous in spirit. It is not the pastel Paris of cinematic but rather the mecca Henry Miller famously saw sprouting an organ diseased in every throbbing with life. The postwar weariness is rendered palpable, the scent of throngs hungry for spectacle. Great small characters populate the movie pretty cigarette vendors, music-hall girls hoping to make the cancan line, merchants rattling their wares in the street. Prostitutes, fiends, mangy journalists and cops rub elbows in the bowels of the titular establishment, where the Judiciary Police Department is quartered to this day.

At the center of it all, like a sum total of the ethos, is Jenny Lamour. She may be the stock film-noir vaudeville singer who gets mixed up in a nasty murder, but she is also a working-class heroine with a fearsome temper and a will to match. The parallels between Delair and her character would have been apparent to those who knew the temperamental singer- turned-actress in real life: suppose always been the kind of person you might call difficult. all say, her! so But not. I am sincere.

I love the truth. And I am not tactful, though I wish I was. It would have been much better for me. Sometimes what I say rattles people, but I love to get to the bottom of it all, Her character in the film is equally unapologetic. Perpetually wrapped in furs, with a Minnie Mouse face at once sweet and sexy, Jenny is the eternal Parisian coquette.

But also tough: She protects her irascible husband, whom she loves even as, or maybe because, he torments her with jealous reproaches for cultivating the favors of powerful men. It is precisely such a scheme designed to advance her career that lands Jenny in a jam and sends a pestering by French theater star Louis on her tail. In one of the most fabulous scenes, Jenny replies angrily when he accuses her of being an arriviste, a go-getter. is that supposed to she fumes with hands thrust deeply into the pockets of her backstage robe and Cupid-bow lips curled into a fierce pout. was born in the dead of winter in a two-room flat.

Six of us lived there for 12 years. 12 years of the landlord yelling for rent, of lousy pork meat, of washing in the sink. Is wanting to leave that Her monologue cut close to the bone because, says Delair, similar realities permeated the production of the film. The shoot got off to a chilly start in early February. studios were not heated and it was cold Delair recalls today.

She is greatly amused by the memory of her shivering in only a lace corset, stockings and a garter belt in several scenes. mind it much, because there was such a wonderful ambience on the elair grew up in Montmartre, original bohemian neighborhood and current tourist trap, as the daughter of a dressmaker and an artisan father who made a living upholstering the interiors of luxury automobiles. She studied singing at La Scala of Milan and starred in the operettas of JacquesOffenbach before landing movie parts. A passionate performer, she was capable of invoking an array of visceral emotions. Her extravagant trills as Jenny Lamour in one scene prompt a toddler to sob hysterically in his arms, a teen to lasciviously finger the wad of chewing gum in his mouth, and grown men to ogle with breathless adoration.

this voluptuous slut critic Pauline Kael once wrote about Jenny, may make you wonder if the higher things in life are worth the before I was even born, I wanted to do this Delair says. came true, and along the way I had the fortune to meet Henri-Georges Clouzot, who became my The two met when Delair was doing a cabaret show in Montmartre and Clouzot, an assistant director at the time, sauntered in looking to fill a part. came, he saw me, he told me, part Ihad in mind is not right for you, but like to have a drink and get to know you then it lasted 12 she adds in a deadpan tone. Clouzot, she says, was not only a great director knew how to do everything! He had done editing, had ghostwritten scripts, had done cinematography, he was a great dialogist. He was formidable, a complete but also an erudite lover who taught her a lot about music, filmmaking and life.

She chalks up her success her career lasted several decades being a rebel, someone who refused to fit expectations and readily dropped acting when she no longer felt passionate about it. have always lived passionately. I am an enthusiast, and when I like something, I give myself wholeheartedly to it. I fall in love with a bird that sings, with a little flower that blooms. They just delight me everything that is beautiful She spent much of her life in the company of talented and often famous friends, like silent film siren Lillian Gish, dramatist Noel Coward and couturier Hu- bertde Givenchy.

knew important people, you see. And I had the chance to be recognized by the great directors, great actors, great orchestra conductors, great Besides friends, these days the most likely diversions for Delair, who lives alone, are books or her favorite songs. am mad about Barbra Streisand, for example. I adore her. And Frank Sinatra I was nuts about She does see movies plays too if they are good.

But in she says, go out much these days. There are few things, in all honesty, which interest me these Is French cinema one of them? she protests with a sonorous exclamation that dissolves into cascades of laughter. days, rather keep a low To modern filmmaking she has awakened she says. are sometimes things that surprise me; there are actors that I discover and fall in love with. a style of working completely different than what I was accustomed to.

One just used to come up this way. It was a more rigorous craft. actor was expected to be acomplete artist, well-rounded in many At the end of the day, joie de vivre is as intact as that of the saucy and unforgettable Jenny Lamour in the final frames of des why not? You see, everything happened during my lifetime. I lived Actress, from Page E1 A character who hits close to home By Kenneth Turan Times Staff Writer Brooding, beautifully made and almost impossible for Americans to see (or, for that matter, to correctly pronounce), Henri-Georges knockout 1947 film noir des Or- makes a triumphant reappearance on theatrical screens after an absence of about 50 years. Originally released in the U.S.

as returns with the soul-destroying shadows of its vintage Paris ambience so crisply restored in 35 millimeter by Studio- Canalthat you can almost smell the cigarette smoke drifting over rain-drenched streets. Distributor Rialto Pictures, previously responsible for such reissued gems as and le has once again seen to it that the slangy dialogue is accurately translated by Lenny Borger, who also did the first-time-ever subtitling of the lyrics that make this one of the few noir films with musical interludes. des is also notable for the care it took with production design, re-creating not only the long-gone world of French music halls, where animal acts shared the stage with singers, but also the cramped, unhappy atmosphere of the Paris Criminal Investigations Division. That institution is housed in a building on the Quai des making the address of the title the French equivalent of Scotland Yard. What gives life to all this careful filmmaking is the corrosive sensibility of co-writer-director Clouzot, best-known in this country for Wages of and the Hitchcockian But Clouzot also did a savage dissection of the French character made during the German occupation that was so unsettling that the director was blacklisted for four years.

des the film that ended his enforced idleness, partakes of characteristically misanthropic view of human nature, a cynical insistence that individuals are pawns in cruel jest that is so strong that not even the denouement can completely dissipate it. Clouzot starred mistress Suzy Delair as the Jenny Lamour of the American title, the stage name of an aspiring singer named Jenny Martineau. Jenny has a way with a tune, but also a world-class flirt, something that infuriates her jealous sad sack of a husband, Maurice (Bernard Blier, father of director Bertrand Blier). Although she loves Maurice, Jenny is not above playing with fire in the person of a hunch- backed of a movie producer named Brignon. a desiccated and dissipated creature, pure Clouzot in his leering lust and accurately described by film historian David Shipman as dirtiest old man on be a full- fledged film noir without a corpse, and when someone shows up dead, things start to get complicated for Jenny, Maurice and their best friend, Dora (Simone Renant).

a lesbian photographer with a habit of wearing elegant clothes with her name on them in big letters a fashion trend waiting to be reborn) who has a terrible crush on our Jenny. None of these people, as it turns out, is as clever as they think they are. That distinction belongs to Detective-Lieutenant Antoine, played by one of the great names of French theater and film, Louis Jouvet. Cranky, irascible, Columbo-rumpled despite his bow tie and plastered- down hair, the lieutenant is the kind of cop seen it all twice and has forgotten nothing. But character also turns out to be a doting father who lives with his black teenage son, the only thing that remains, he says, from his days overseas in the French Foreign Legion.

Filmmaker Clouzot, who won best director at Venice for this film, is incapable of making anyone or any situation standard, and a gift not even half a century on the shelf can tarnish. MOVIE REVIEW Noir at its soul-destroying best Nuart Theatre PARIS AFTER DARK: Suzy Delair meets up with Louis Jouvet in des A crisply restored des returns to American screens after almost 50 years. Where: Nuart Theatre, 11272 Santa Monica West Los Angeles When: Daily, 5 7:30 and 10 p.m.; plus, Saturday-Monday, noon and 2:30 p.m. Ends: Thursday Price: $6.75 to $9.25 Contact: (310) 478-6379 Running time: One hour, 43 minutes des.