Cinema: Vive la Difference!

“It takes two to make a marriage,” the late Fred Allen once observed. “Yourself and somebody to blame it on.” From this cozy connubial notion, French Director André Cayatte (Tomorrow Is My Turn) has extracted a novel cinematic idea: it takes two movies to describe a marriage—one to give his version, one to give hers. Studied simultaneously, the plots of both pictures provide matter for ironical reflection.

My Nights with Francoise. Two students meet in the park. He is intelligent and handsome; she is silly but beautiful. He seduces her. She asks him to marry her. He says: “Depend on me. I’ll take care of you.” At first they are happyl but soon she frivolously takes a lover. Though he hates to leave Paris, he hurries her away to a small town, where she is bored and makes his life hell. Determined to get back to the gay life, she disgraces him in public, and they have to leave town. Back in Paris, she wangles him a job with a notorious shyster. To escape the wifely routine, she goes to work for an ad agency. Several men pursue her hotly, and she accommodates all of them. Fortunately, he finds out what is going on, and he walks out on the bitch, who is left with her nose out of joint.

My Days with Jean-Marc. Two students meet at a party. She is intelligent and beautiful; he is weak but handsome. She seduces him. He asks her to marry him. She thinks: “I have enough strength for us both.” At first they are happy, but soon his lack of drive becomes a problem. Though she hates to leave Paris, she loyally goes to live with him in a small town, where she is bored but does not complain. Determined to rescue him from obscurity, she disgraces him in public, and they have to leave town. Back in Paris, she wangles him a place in a prominent law firm. To help with expenses, she goes to work for an ad agency. Several men pursue her hotly, but she is faithful to her husband. Unfortunately, he imagines she is not, and he abandons the poor woman, who is left with a broken heart.

Cayatte’s fundamental conception, to present a twice-told tale in the form of a double feature, is mildly stimulating. Unhappily, the marriage his movies describe is immoderately dull. She is a rat fink, he is a mouse fink, and their life together is stinking cheese. After inhaling Anatomy of a Marriage (as the films are collectively called) for almost four hours, an audience can only numbly wonder how Cayatte could imagine that two bad movies would make a good one.