(Chosen by Jackie!)
Sacha Guitry did not initially care for film. After directing a short patriotic piece celebrating France's great celebrities and intellectuals of the day, the famous French wit swore off the medium as too restrictive, and focused instead on writing, directing, and starring in the over one-hundred plays he'd produce between 1902 and 1936. To his mind, Guitry's greatest assets were his wordsmithery and his voice, neither of which could translate well to the silent medium. This changed in the mid-30s, when his third wife of five, Jacqueline Delubac, convinced her new husband to give film another try, now that it possessed the technology to distribute his words loud and clear. Guitry threw himself into his new medium with characteristic aplomb, wearing multiple hats in numerous films per year to the decade's end, and continuing his cinematic career regularly throughout the late 1950s, even through his disillusionment with French patriotism after his countrymen accused him of collaborating with the Nazis during German occupation on false pretense. Quite a good thing he listened to her advise given today's film, although the whole "five wives" thing does give one a moment's pause when reflecting on his character.
It's interesting coming to Guitry after Murnau in this challenge's previous entry. Murnau fared ill amidst the rise of talkies, and produced his (unfortunately) final film in defiant silence to great effect; Guitry evaded the movie houses for years due to their silence, and when he finally got in on the game, he was all talk talk talk. I'd call The Story of a Cheat one hell of a chatty movie, except a chat usually involves two or more participants - the titular Cheat regales the story of his life to the audience in total isolation, narrating an extended monologue over practically every second of the film. The line between the Cheat and Guitry is blurred from the opening moments, where the picture foregoes the usual textual credits in favor of Guitry's voice introducing us to each player and major member of the crew in a humorous behind the scene's tour, which sets the stage for how the rest of our time here shall play. His voice dictates everything we see onscreen, and not just in the usual narrative sense of a voice-over's words providing additional context to the action. Every camera movement, every choice in framing, many musical cues, acting decisions, practically every last cut happens because the Cheat has thrown in a little non-verbal reaction, or paused for effect, or gone on a tangent that requires a complimentary montage. Rarely have I seen a film so dependent on a near-omnipresent monologue since Blue, and Jarman's solid-color experiment had other speakers every so often.
The effect could land as hopelessly, odiously egotistical lot of nonsense, a bastard so wrapped up in himself he forgets to keep the audience engaged. Make no mistake, this is, at the surface level, IMMENSELY egotistical, what with how all other characters speak in the Cheat's voice, and how the moving image is in absolute subservience to a singular, directorial voice. Knowing Guitry adapted this from his lone novel, Les Mémoires d'un tricheur, the film strikes me as more direct reading from a literary source with a film playing in reaction to the reader's inflection than a film version of said story. To this end, it is still an exercise in ego, but it is a delightful, involving exercise in ego. The filmic medium is already commanded by a single, commanding voice despite its collaborative nature, just rarely in ways we can perceive so directly. Adopting the form of a literary work and making the film move in time with a speaker explicitly rather than implicitly creates the effect of being in on the joke at every turn, especially with how self-aware Guitry's words and the reactions from on-screen characters get at times. A wink for each verbal nudge, a self-conscious cough for every awkward moment, a reward for paying attention to the particulars of rhythm. As an audience member, you are treated as an old friend who gets all the in-jokes and appreciates the Cheat's peculiarities to the fullest, in a way one rarely gets from more conventional filmmaking.
This remarkably successful fusion of literary and cinematic conventions is helped along further by several of the Cheat's endearing character traits. He is simultaneously the luckiest man in the world and the one to catch the hardest breaks, with any curveball life throws him containing both opportunity for fabulous wealth and the set-up for inevitable failure. Attempts at honesty lead him down paths towards crime, caves into underhanded dealing see him taking the straight and narrow route to great personal loss, and all with the Cheat's visible person and detatched narration indicating he's merely a helpless toy of chance and fate with wry amusement. The ways in which his dominance over the narrative breaks also contribute to a positive impression, for the Cheat not only loses his cool around pretty ladies and falls for fate's traps in the course of the narrative, he simply cannot maintain his control over the camera and narrative when an old flame arrives to interrupt his flow. He's a simple buffoon at heart despite all the well-mannered class and posh speaking style. The kind've guy you admire for persevering through a sea of nonsense, despise for his self-satisfaction, and yet admire again for how well he takes the breaks and how knowingly he tweaks his nose at misfortune disguised as fortune disguised as misfortune.
Cleverness coupled with technical proficiency will get you quite far, and it is thanks to The Story of a Cheat's cinematic style that I think it a practically perfect film. In the past, I've praised The Maltese Falcon for possessing such on-cue sound design as to function equally well as a radio program as a moving picture. With this film, I not only think you could snip out Guitry's monologue and have a satisfying experience with very little lost, I also believe you could play the film in total silence and still understand the entire thing. The need to compliment and play along with narration I suspect was written and recorded well before filming started gives the film a highly meticulous yet freeflowing feel, the sort you get when needing to respond to spontaneity with mechanical grace. Its performers approach pantomime whilst maintaining an easy, casual affect; its camera introduces characters and tells stories all on its own due to the need for a complimentary image to each word; its stagy vibes are frequently broken by montage or odd yet fitting cuts in a way that get a laugh with or without the narration. Either half of the film, the singular narration or the collective effort to follow along visually, would make a highly satisfying experience; you mash the two together as they are here, allow them to talk and inform one another's choices in real time, and you've something you just can't get outside the realm of pictures flickering at twenty-four frames per second. S'just... such deeply involving FUN to follow through.
What a film to have prompted my caving and buying a Criterion subscription! The Story of a Cheat is unique in its literary qualities without sacrificing or downplaying the necessary collaborative effort behind its creation. It is self-involved and egotistical in ways that invite the audience to laugh along as an old friend. Self-aware and witty as to offset any and all potentially damaging effects of sinking so far into the mire of this man's life. And it's got some good suggestions about how to improve a capitalist socioeconomic system if we're stuck with it for the foreseeable future to boot! I love love love this film as a successful example of merging mediums, as a comedic thrill ride which achieved the rare feat of keeping me from looking at the clock once throughout the runtime, and as demonstration of how the singular and collaborative and cooperate without sacrificing their respective energies to create that is, I must say again with emphasis, downright delightful. It is more than worth the fifty dollars for Criterion's four-film Sacha Guitry box set, or the 100 dollars necessary to access it on Criterion Channel. Hell, for those looking to go a little cheaper, a single month's subscription (or even just a free trial) is worth it for this film alone.
5/5
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