Falbalas (Paris Frills) (Essor Cinématographie Français, André H. Des Fontaines, 1945)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2022 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

There were a couple of films being aired on Turner Classic Movies and I was particularly interested in the first one, at 7:30 p.m.: Falbalas, an unusual French word which according to the translation program I checked means “fripperies, frills.” This movie, whose official English title is “Paris Frills,” was actually made in 1945, just after the liberation of France in general and Paris in particular from Nazi occupation. it deals with prominent French designer Phlippe Clarence (Raymoud Rouleau) getting ready to show his new spring collection – which is so late, due to Philippe’s artistic temperament and also the privations of Nazi-era Paris (where, among other things, the on-air host explained that shoes hoad to be made of wood or cork because the Nazis had requisitioned the entire supply of leather to make combat boots). He gets into an argument with his principal fabric supplier, Daniel Rousseau (Jean Chevrier), over the quality of the fabric he can get Philippe. They settle the argument when Philippe agrees to make a custom wedding dress for Daniel’s fiancée,.Micheline Lafaurie (Micheline Presle, who as of this writing is still alive and is about to turn 100 this August 22; her most recent film credit is from 2014 and is called Sex, Love and Therapy). Of course Philippe – who up until now has considered women simply as disposable commodities; he starts an affair with one of his models, uses it for a while, then catalogues the dress he made for her and hangs it in a locked closet in his salon – naturally falls hard for Micheline. He wants to run away with her even though a) she’s already engaged to someone else – and someone he considers a friend – and b) the entire show on which the viability of his business is hanging is coming up and he’s also frantically preparing for it.

Directed by Jacques Becker (a filmmaker I’d otherwise never heard of, though his imdb.com page says he was one of the few Old Guard French directors admired by the New Wave filmmakers who emerged in the late 1950’s) from a script he co-wrote with Maurice Auberge and Maurice Griffe, Falbalas is a film that works on several levels. It’s at once a romantic-triangle drama, a movie about the artistic temperament and how individuals with major talents literally think they’re above the common laws of humanity and decency, and a film about the whole preposterousness of France’s attempt to keep a fashion scene going even under the horrible conditions of Nazi occupation. One of the most fascinating characters is Philippe’s assistant Solange (Gabrielle Dorziat), a tough, no-nonsense middle-aged woman with a gravity-defying hairdo that practically becomes a character itself. She not only runs the business aspect of Philippe’s salon but keeps the all-important fashion show going even in Philippe’s absence. The plot moves to a crisis point when Anne-Marie (Françoise Lugagne), one of Philippe’s models and discarded girlfriends, commits suicide. We don’t get a clear understanding as to why, but it quite likely has to do with Philippe’s growing infatuation with Micheline. Philippe has told Micheline he loves her, and when she makes the inevitable I-bet-you-tell-that-to-all-your sex partners line, he insists that he’s never said “Je t’aime” to any woman before. Micheline confesses to her fiancé Daniel (ya remember Daniel? Actually Jean Chevrier is so much sexier an actor than Raymond Rouleau that it’s hard for us to explain that, either) that she’s been seeing another man. She doesn’t tell him who, but Daniel doesn’t have a hard time figuring it out.

Daniel picks a fight with Philippe which Becker cuts away from before we see its outcome, and when Philippe doesn’t show for the big fashion show at the end (though Solange takes over and runs it just fine), our first thought is Daniel murdered him. Then Philippe shows up at last for the end of the show, and the last item exhibited is the wedding dress he made for Michelinie’s wedding to Daniel. (Ending a show with a wedding dress was apparently a major convention among French couturiers of the time.) Philippe, in a mental daze, takes the dress off the model who wore it in the show, puts it on one of his mannequins (one of the film’s most subtle and savage jokes is that in many scenes it’s hard to tell the mannequins apart from the live movels) and he hallucinates that the mannequin is coming to life. He embraces the mannequin and then, just as Daniel has managed to break down the locked door of the salon (a bit of unspoken sexism here because all the other people there were women, though Solange looks strong enough she could probably have broken down the door in time to save her boss), Philippe and the mannequin crash through the salon window and are discovered below, with him dead. This scene was actually shown at the opening of the film – in which a crowd assembled below and marveled that both he and the woman were visibly undamaged by the fall, and it’s only afterwards when we see the scene again that the “crowd” were actually Daniel, the real Micheline, and the models and staff of the salon. The “woman” was the mannequin clad in Micheline’s wedding dress. Though I had a hard time doping out the subtitles, given the worsening state of my eyes as well as the number of them that were essentially white-on-white, I quite enjoyed Falbalas even though fashion is not exactly one of my big interests in life; as I’ve more than once joked to Charles, if there is such a thing as the “Gay gene” neither of us got the fashion alleles!