Just like the short story offers little space to its writer, the short film grants its director little time to deal with the subject chosen. But what may first appear as a constraint also holds a great virtue: the short story's restricted number of pages as well as the short film's limited time range are the best guarantee against dilution, padding out, getting lost in digressions. Of course saying as much as possible within a tight framework is not the easiest thing in the world: to take up the challenge, special qualities are required, such as density, meaningfulness or allusiveness, to say nothing of the sine qua non condition - a sense of synthesis. The authors, whether they like it or not, have no choice but to go to the essential, to cut it through the bone. When they prove able to do so, then the initial drawback turns into a real advantage, keeping their work safe from lengthiness.
Such is the case with the film "Jeux de mort", where in the space of 9 minutes and 47 seconds, the writer-director, Pierre Alt, will in turn surprise you, thrill you and, finally, make you think. Three pleasures for the price of one, it isn't something you refuse!
The film's first quality? Undeniably, its smart construction and the elements of surprise it allows.
One example, the first two minutes : in the opening shot a female singer is seen face to a microphone. Wearing a sexy black lamé dress, her shoulders bare, and with long gloves on, she is performing a languid torch song.
She looks so much like Gloria Grahame that you keep wondering if it is not Nicholas Ray's "Woman's secret" you are watching.
After a while, the camera moves away and spans a restaurant area and its diners, all well dressed. The place is a chic nightclub, the time might be the late 1940s or the early 1950s. The tracking shot finally focuses on a couple, in the middle of an argument. Disturbing the peaceful atmosphere of the restaurant, Pierre, obviously drunk, speaking too loud, is making a distressful revelation to his elegant mistress, Maria. He lied to her, he is not rich as he claimed and now that she is pregnant, he can afford neither a luxury marriage nor a role as a father.
You ask yourself: « Could it possibly be one of Douglas Sirk's early American melodramas? »
The crisis gradually worsens: Maria, on the verge of fainting, leaves the cabaret followed by Pierre, who has become almost insane: after a ladder climb, a rooftop chase, the couple find themselves hanging desperately over a bubbling river.
An old Hitchcock, perhaps?
No, nothing to do in fact with either Ray, Sirk or Hitchcock. That's what you realize all of a sudden - and with pleased astonishment: shortly after the revelation by Pierre of his shameful conduct, the film until then in black and white (rather glossy during the cabaret sequence, superbly contrasted in the outdoor night scenes) has turned to color (trivial everyday colors, without aesthetic refinement).
Now you get the idea (or so you think): the story of Pierre and Maria is a film within a film! Set in the present, the sequence in color takes place in a cinema where the film in black and white is being shown at this very moment of the action. The "old" film was only a part of the main movie entitled "Jeux de mort (Death Games)" whereas the "real" action only starts now. What do you see now? A spectator enters late in a cinema hall, and who after having disturbed all the viewers in a row of seats, starts to keep up with « Jeux de mort ». From then on, excerpts of the film in black and white alternate with color shots of the man following the film and reacting to it. A double story, a double delight!
Indeed, the way the man reacts to the images on the screen (opening his eyes wide, sweating, speaking out loud, wriggling in his seat) make you smell a rat: something unsettling is happening in his head. Obviously, the story of an expecting woman abandoned, the false promises made to her, the threat of falling into a dizzying precipice... awaken a painful echo in him. It looks as if he too has behaved badly with a pregnant companion. Instead of being a pleasant experience, the screening turns out to be an unbearable ordeal for him so much so that he leaves the theater before the end.
Meanwhile, in "real" life, the "real" audience (you, me, the others... watching the man watching the film!) is in a much different state of mind, rejoiced, not upset: what a challenging mind game indeed to try to disentangle the threads of these three stories, embedded in each other, and to discover that behind a brilliant exercise in style, lurks even one more gift, a bit of reflection. For, in his own unassuming way, Pierre Alt does tackle important issues like the fiction-reality relationship, the fiction-lived experience interaction, the influence of a work of art on an individual.
You may think these considerations a bit high-minded but don't worry, Pierre Alt's ambition is not to give a philosophy course. You will just deduce them (or not if you don't feel like it) from his rich movie. His main objective (achieved, to be sure) is the excitement brought by a subtly written script and a well-directed movie (sleek tracking shots, fine crane movements, brilliant image and editing , elaborate period reconstitution).
This "great little" film ends as brilliantly as it began (we won't say anything about the final sequence - excellent - to avoid spoiling it). To be discovered absolutely.
Such is the case with the film "Jeux de mort", where in the space of 9 minutes and 47 seconds, the writer-director, Pierre Alt, will in turn surprise you, thrill you and, finally, make you think. Three pleasures for the price of one, it isn't something you refuse!
The film's first quality? Undeniably, its smart construction and the elements of surprise it allows.
One example, the first two minutes : in the opening shot a female singer is seen face to a microphone. Wearing a sexy black lamé dress, her shoulders bare, and with long gloves on, she is performing a languid torch song.
She looks so much like Gloria Grahame that you keep wondering if it is not Nicholas Ray's "Woman's secret" you are watching.
After a while, the camera moves away and spans a restaurant area and its diners, all well dressed. The place is a chic nightclub, the time might be the late 1940s or the early 1950s. The tracking shot finally focuses on a couple, in the middle of an argument. Disturbing the peaceful atmosphere of the restaurant, Pierre, obviously drunk, speaking too loud, is making a distressful revelation to his elegant mistress, Maria. He lied to her, he is not rich as he claimed and now that she is pregnant, he can afford neither a luxury marriage nor a role as a father.
You ask yourself: « Could it possibly be one of Douglas Sirk's early American melodramas? »
The crisis gradually worsens: Maria, on the verge of fainting, leaves the cabaret followed by Pierre, who has become almost insane: after a ladder climb, a rooftop chase, the couple find themselves hanging desperately over a bubbling river.
An old Hitchcock, perhaps?
No, nothing to do in fact with either Ray, Sirk or Hitchcock. That's what you realize all of a sudden - and with pleased astonishment: shortly after the revelation by Pierre of his shameful conduct, the film until then in black and white (rather glossy during the cabaret sequence, superbly contrasted in the outdoor night scenes) has turned to color (trivial everyday colors, without aesthetic refinement).
Now you get the idea (or so you think): the story of Pierre and Maria is a film within a film! Set in the present, the sequence in color takes place in a cinema where the film in black and white is being shown at this very moment of the action. The "old" film was only a part of the main movie entitled "Jeux de mort (Death Games)" whereas the "real" action only starts now. What do you see now? A spectator enters late in a cinema hall, and who after having disturbed all the viewers in a row of seats, starts to keep up with « Jeux de mort ». From then on, excerpts of the film in black and white alternate with color shots of the man following the film and reacting to it. A double story, a double delight!
Indeed, the way the man reacts to the images on the screen (opening his eyes wide, sweating, speaking out loud, wriggling in his seat) make you smell a rat: something unsettling is happening in his head. Obviously, the story of an expecting woman abandoned, the false promises made to her, the threat of falling into a dizzying precipice... awaken a painful echo in him. It looks as if he too has behaved badly with a pregnant companion. Instead of being a pleasant experience, the screening turns out to be an unbearable ordeal for him so much so that he leaves the theater before the end.
Meanwhile, in "real" life, the "real" audience (you, me, the others... watching the man watching the film!) is in a much different state of mind, rejoiced, not upset: what a challenging mind game indeed to try to disentangle the threads of these three stories, embedded in each other, and to discover that behind a brilliant exercise in style, lurks even one more gift, a bit of reflection. For, in his own unassuming way, Pierre Alt does tackle important issues like the fiction-reality relationship, the fiction-lived experience interaction, the influence of a work of art on an individual.
You may think these considerations a bit high-minded but don't worry, Pierre Alt's ambition is not to give a philosophy course. You will just deduce them (or not if you don't feel like it) from his rich movie. His main objective (achieved, to be sure) is the excitement brought by a subtly written script and a well-directed movie (sleek tracking shots, fine crane movements, brilliant image and editing , elaborate period reconstitution).
This "great little" film ends as brilliantly as it began (we won't say anything about the final sequence - excellent - to avoid spoiling it). To be discovered absolutely.