Minority View: Vincent, Francois, Paul and the Others by Claude Sautet blog

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If the category of French cinema generally known to cinephiles in India can be termed ‘˜art cinema', Sautet belongs to what may roughly be described as ‘˜commercial cinema'. The two categories are not nebulous but have some identifiable characteristics although this may have little to do with ‘˜quality'. The major difference between the two categories is perhaps that while art cinema tries to be ambiguous and open-ended, commercial cinema tries to ensure that all its puzzles are resolved. To illustrate, Eric Rohmer and Claude Sautet share an interest in social relationships and human behavior but while Rohmer attempts not to resolve his films - in the way that life is also never resolved - Sautet opts for solutions in which a ‘˜closure' of some kind is imposed upon the narrative. Where Rohmer prefers to work with amateurs Sautet works with stars. Where Rohmer employs no music Sautet uses dramatic scores to elicit the right emotions. If Sautet tends to sound like an extension of Hollywood, where he scores is in the performances he gets from his stars because those like Michel Piccoli, Daniel Auteuil and Yves Montand have given us the most understated performances in cinema - although in films that can be acknowledged as ‘˜commercial'.

Vincent, Francois, Paul and the Others (1974), is an exhilarating film with no clear storyline. It is about a group of friends and the relationships between them. Vincent (Yves Montand) runs a smallish industry which he set up himself and which was once doing well but he is in debt and his assets are mortgaged up to the hilt. He is now preoccupied trying to borrow a large sum of money which he must have within forty-eight hours if he is not to lose his factory. His wife Catherine (Stephane Audran) no longer lives with him and has filed for divorce. Francois (Michel Piccoli) is a successful doctor with an attractive wife and two children. He might have been mildly happy if his wife Lucie had not only not been promiscuous but had also not detested him. Paul (Serge Reggiani) is a novelist with a country house, the place where the friends like to meet on weekends. Jean (Gerard Depardieu) is Vincent's protégée, a factory lathe-operator and an amateur boxer who has just signed on to fight a more experienced fighter who could seriously hurt him.

Sautet as a filmmaker is not interested in exploring human beings afresh and his creations are not complex as those of Rohmer (at his best) are. There is usually a single epithet explaining each character and his/ her conduct is describable as owing to the conventions of film drama. Vincent is ‘˜desperate', Francois is ‘˜cold', Paul is ‘˜amiable', Catherine is trying to ‘˜discover herself', Lucie is ‘˜exploring relationships' and Jean is displaying ‘˜courage in adversity'. The scenes are written and the dialogue composed in a way as to bring this out - and to ensure that each character finds fulfillment at some level. Vincent sells his industry for a reasonable price to a friend; Francois accepts his wife's decision to marry again; Jean wins the match but quits boxing; Paul, who is comfortable with himself, remains where he has been. All this may be schematic but what Sautet does is to choreograph the different lives in a way that is rare in cinema - without all of them revolving around a single pivot. There have not been many films in cinema that have managed to get such ensemble performances. Hollywood (The Godfather, Pulp Fiction) has sometimes been notable here but the films avoid ‘˜choreography'. To explicate, The Godfather revolves around a single major character (Michael) and each relationship is separately delineated through him. Sonny and Fredo, for instance, have no relationship with each other and we understand them only in the way they relate to Michael. Pulp Fiction gets ensemble performances by breaking up the story into separate segments and dealing with each one separately: Jules and Vincent, Vincent and Mia, Butch and his girlfriend.

Vincent, Francois, Paul and the Others, on the other hand, tries to put all the characters into a single frame as it were. Many of the sequences are filmed in parties or pubs and the conversation between different people conveys the sense of genuine spontaneity - as though it was life being filmed. Vincent is a party animal with a huge number of friends but he is in a precarious way. Montand conveys the sense of a man on the edge brilliantly and his impending heart-attack is convincing. In many of these sequences, the friends are usually together but their faces are composed differently, as if unaware of each other predicaments and preoccupied with different things. We may not get under the skins of these characters but we get a general sense of life as it is lived by ordinary (but still interesting) people. More importantly perhaps, we get a sense of life fragmented in today's world in which people may appear to be bonding deeply but are actually shut up inside separate transparent compartments - with no real means of breaking up or dismantling the partitions.