Cinema: Civil War

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A WOMAN AT HER WINDOW

Directed by Pierre Granier-Deferre

Screenplay by Jorge Semprun

The woman is the bored and elegant wife of a witty, philandering Italian diplomat stationed in Greece in 1936, when, as people used to say, the war clouds were gathering. What she sees from her window is a Communist on the run from a police roundup ordered by a new fascist dictatorship. What happens after he climbs through the window is that love conquers the class barriers and she devises an elaborate stratagem to help him escape the country. Later, we are given to understand, she joins him and they both become martyrs to his cause after World War II begins.

A very simple story, though told with needless complexity. Yet it does have a certain charm. Romy Schneider is extraordinarily attractive as the woman, and Victor Lanoux (of Cousin, Cousine) offers both stalwart charm and ideological reticence as the revolutionary. We are allowed to gather that what makes him more attractive than her husband, who is funnier and probably better company over the long haul, is that belief in something beyond oneself tends to make a fellow more exciting sexually. A dubious point, but sufficient for a movie which, like others written by Semprun (notably La Guerre Est Finie), insists that there is a link between the romantic and the revolutionary spirits. Since that is the only worthwhile humanistic argument for maintaining a rebellious posture, and certainly the only likable one, his pictures tend to have a worldly and rueful air that is appealing.

Granier-Deferre's talents perfectly suit that spirit. The textures of a period costume, the mood of a grand hotel or a diplomatic corps tennis tournament—these he dreamily recaptures for us in a way that gives the film its strangely innocent, almost wistful quality. How one wishes that the revolutionary politics of our age had actually been conducted with the elegance and civility depicted here. If only history had Granier-Deferre's good taste, and had kept the blood and violence offstage, so that the sound of the gramophone playing tangos had not been drowned out.