The Golden Carriage (film)

The picture takes place in the 18th century in the Spanish colony of Peru in South America, which is governed by the vice-king Ferdinand appointed by the Spanish king, but the church authorities represented by the archbishop also have great weight and authority. A ship arrives in the capital of the colony from Europe, which delivers a “golden carriage” made by Italian masters by order of Ferdinand. His official mistress hopes that the carriage will go to her. Payment of expenses for the carriage, as directed by the latter, is assigned to the treasury.

A touring theater troupe arrives on the same ship, playing in the tradition of the Italian comedy del arte . The troupe's star is Italian Camilla, a temperamental and improbable Italian, playing the role of Colombina in the theater. After successful performances, several men begin to look after her at the same time. Viceroy Ferdinand gives her a golden carriage, at the risk of being deposed by an opposition-minded nobility, for she is dissatisfied with his management and financial charges that limit their traditional rights and freedoms. The actress eventually managed to settle everything by presenting the carriage as a gift to the archbishop. Rejecting the love claims of her men, she chooses a theater.

• Anna Magnani - Camilla / Colombina
• Duncan Lamont - Ferdinand, Viceroy of Peru
• Odoardo Spodaro - Don Antonio
• Riccardo Rioli - Ramon, bullfighter
• Paul Campbell - Feline Akierre
• Pala Fiorelli - Isabella
• George Higgins - Martinez
• Ralph Truman - Duke of Castro
• Gizella Matthews - Marquise Irena Altamirano
• Raf De La Torre - Attorney
• Elena Alighieri - Duchess de Castro
• Jean Debucourt - Bishop

Renoir, who since then lived and worked in exile in the United States and after visiting the war only went to France for a few days about the preparation for the creation of the first European film from the time of the 1939 film The Rules of the Game , the director said in an interview with Andre Bazin the following ^[2] :

Renoir later shoots the Golden Carriage in Italy, which is a free screen version of the play Carriage of the Sacred Gifts by Prosper Merimee with Anna Magnani in the title role. The director called the film a dramatic fantasy in the style of comedy del arte , and about participating in the film Magnani said: “ I was convinced that, maybe, with her, I could come closer to classicism ” ^[3] . The director called her the greatest actress with whom he had a chance to work. However, when shooting the film, Renoir encountered her indiscipline, which was manifested in numerous delays and ignorance of the role text, largely explained by the vibrant nightlife of the star of neorealism : “ In the morning she came, falling from fatigue, with bags under her eyes and could not remember a single line of the role. She started talking about the fact that today she won’t be removed, that she’s falling off her feet, that she looks like an old beggar woman; she expressed all this, trembling in her spacious mink coat and smoking a cigarette after a cigarette ” ^[4] . In connection with this attitude, Renoir spoke with the star explaining to her that such behavior is unacceptable in the first place in relation to members of the crew who arrive on time, but are forced to wait for her to appear at the studio: “In the end, I took her aside and said I'd rather leave the film than let her keep the whole crew waiting. Excited by this threat, she promised to come from now on time and kept her word ” ^[5] .

According to the director, many were puzzled that he attracted the unsuitable role for the actress to the main role, since Magnani was a performer “known for her tragic expressiveness, in a spectacle that, in principle, would be better suited for Milan puppets”. But Renoir did not see any contradiction in this, believing that she was very organic in this role ^[5] :

The script was written by a group of scriptwriters with the active participation of the director and differs from the original source. Regarding the theme and content of the film, Renoir said: “ Merime Pericola is an actress, in my film there is an actress Camilla . In the play, the golden carriage symbolizes secular vanity, in the film, too. The final decision here and there is made by the bishop. Based on these few points, my staff and I invented a story that could be called “Actress, Theater and Life ” ” ^[3] . The director himself gave the Golden Carriage the following characterization: “ This is not drama, not buffoonery, and not burlesque, but a kind of irony, which I would like to give as lightness as we see, for example, in Goldoni ” ^[3] .

The film embodies the interaction of the real world and the theater world. According to the director: " During the filming, I asked the actors who represented the characters" from life "to play with some pressure to give life a touch of theatricality, and thus everything mixed up ."

An important place in the picture is played by the music of Antonio Vivaldi , a contemporary of the events unfolding in it. One of the crew members introduced Renoir to the music of the Italian composer. Renoir even said that the main co-author of his film was Vivaldi, finding his music consistent with the spirit of Italian theater art: “ Vivaldi ’s influence determined the style of the director’s script ” ^[3] .

The picture was originally shot in English and with an international group of actors. Renoir was against the dubbing, which was carried out without his participation and which he called the “barbaric process”, considering the English dubbing the only version of his film.

The picture failed at the box office and from critics initially, too, did not meet a decent understanding. According to Georges Sadoule , this picture of Renoir did not completely succeed, yielding to his pre-war work: “ Neither the delightful Magnani, nor the subtle sense of color, nor the techniques borrowed from Italian folk comedy, nor the carefully made staged scenes were enough to elevate this created Renoir's divertissement , devoid of the same wit Merimee, to the level of previous productions of Renoir ” ^[6] . Later, critics and directors close to the aesthetics of the “ new wave ” recognized this film as a masterpiece, embodying the themes closest to Renoir. In particular, Andre Bazin , Francois Truffaut , Eric Romer , Jacques Rivette admired this film.

According to the French critic Jacques Lursel , who had a negative attitude to the aesthetics of the “Novovolnovtsy”, three paintings by Renoir of the 50s - “The Golden Carriage”, “The French Cancan ” and “ Elena and Men ” ( Elena et les hommes, 1956) - together a kind of theatrical trilogy in which the director pays tribute to three traditional performances: the Italian comedy del arte , the cafesantan and the puppet theater ^[7] . Lursel characterizes the picture as “the absolute masterpiece of Renoir ” and calls it the most civilized and European of all his films. Noting that the picture is a synthesis of various types of art and is one of those “ rare films that make one believe in the superiority of cinema over other types of art ”, the French critic wrote ^[1] :

According to Francois Truffaut, the picture is a real masterpiece and is key in the work of Renoir. He points out that it combines the central themes of many other paintings by Renoir and she embodies the ideas of sincerity that excited him in love and in artistic calling.

Eric Romer wrote that in this picture the characteristic poles of Renoir's work are embodied - “Art and Nature, Comedy and Life”. Noting that Renoir “ managed to express in the very form of his work that which usually constituted the deep-seated basis of his thought, but managed because this thought was especially close and amiable to the art he was engaged in, ” Romer wrote:

According to Mikhail Trofimenkov , in this film the director turned out to be “ almost a comedy of masks, a farce of farce, a parable about the absence of boundaries between life and the theater, romantic, impossible, but warmed by typical Renoir’s sly humor of incorrigible feminine love story from the life of the Spanish colony of Peru in the 18th century " ^[4] .

• In memory of this film, Francois Truffaut in 1957 named his production film company Les Films du Carrosse (“Carriage Films”), on the basis of which most of Truffaut’s films were shot, thus paying tribute to the highly regarded director ^{[8] [9]} . In his film " The Last Subway, " Truffaut focused on the aesthetics of the Renoir painting, trying to achieve a combination of real life and the world of theater in it.
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  Golden Carriage Award
  Since 2002, at the Cannes Film Festival during the traditional two-week directors from the French society of filmmakers ( société des réalisateurs de films ) for the contribution to the development of cinema, the Golden Carriage Award is awarded. The award is presented to the director for “ innovative approaches to films, for courage and adamantness in directing and producing films ” ^[10] .

• Bazin, Andre . Jean Renoir / Preface Jean Renoir . Enter Francois Truffaut . - M.: Museum of Cinema , 1995 . - 191 p.: Ill. - ISBN 5-88395-012-4 : 15
• Renoir, Jean . Articles, interviews, memories, scripts. M .: Art , 1972 . - 256 s.
• Renoir, Jean. My life and my films. - M .: Art, 1981. - 236 p.
• Leproon P. Modern French filmmakers. - M .: Publishing house of foreign literature , 1960. - 698 p.
• Lursel J. Authors Encyclopedia of Films. T. I — II. - SPb.-M .: Rosebud Publishing, 2009. - ISBN 978-5-904175-02-3

• Golden Carriage (film ) on the Internet Movie Database