Jean Renoir - Le testament du Docteur Cordelier (1959)

When the average cinephile thinks of Jean Renoir, several films come to mind. La Grande Illusion, The River, Le Bete Humaine, and The Rules of the Game, all rightfully considered masterpieces, have prevented the intrusion of other lesser-known Renoir films upon his canon. Films such as Whirlpool of Fate, La Marseillaise, The Little Matchstick Girl, and finally his 1959 genre film Le Testament du Docteur Cordelier have all received less renown than they have deserved.



Great directors have long taken refuge on French television, producing works of astounding quality (Welles' The Immortal Story for example), despite the seemingly endless issues with budget, casts and crew. Made for television twenty years before his death, Jean Renoir's Le Testament du Docteur Cordelier (often poorly translated as The Doctor's Horrible Experiment) is a fascinating exercise in horror from the man voted the fourth greatest director of all time by the BFI critics. The film is a bizarre take on Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde which mostly concerns itself with the lengths that Joly, the attorney, will go to unravel the mystery of the killer Opale, as well as the mental processes and experiments of his client, Doctor Cordelier.



Reminiscent of Fritz Lang's haunting masterpiece M, Renoir plays on the tension of the search, a combing of open spaces for a solitary figure juxtaposed against the morally skewed Dr. Cordelier's inner tension. Like most Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde adaptations, Le Testament du Docteur Cordelier hinges on the central performance of the dual Hyde/Jekyll character. This time Jean-Louis Barrault plays both the constantly twitching sexual deviant and general delinquent Opale, as well as the startlingly calm, almost placid genius, Dr. Cordelier.



Setting the well-known tale on the contemporary streets of Paris gives the story a universality which allows us to see the characters as not far removed from our own personalities. Renoir's famous class conscience is also heavily at play here, where servants, maids, and gardeners play out significant roles within the narrative. The zenith of Cordelier's hypocrisy is shown when he engages in continual sexual dalliances with a maid until he is confronted with a patient of equal social stature's similar dilemma, after which he promptly fires the maid

Renoir's take on the horror film is high-minded and tense, as innovative as you'd assume considering the film's creator who here is seen utilizing a playful score, dynamic editing, and oppressive lighting in order to overthrow the audience's expectations. This is Renoir's world, and we're only able to observe, knowing that someone as forceful as him will not kowtow to other people's standards.



Hands down my favorite Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde adaptation, Renoir seems to capitalize on Barrault's graceful fluidity as the calculating Cordelier and the abomination that is Opale, often setting Opale against light backgrounds in order to contrast his dark clothing and intentions. The last quarter of the film builds in tension, catapulting the curious Joly into strange crevices of the doctor's experiments, uncovering the catalyst of all the demonic events within the film, which results in the stripping away of the layers of sophistication and altruism from Cordelier, leaving him a monster unable to quench its abominable thirst for perversion.



Le Testament du Docteur Cordelier is available in a three-disc collection along with six other Renoir films and a documentary hosted by Martin Scorsese, for little over twenty American dollars. Including two of his silent features, this collection is one of the best bargains a fan of foreign films can get, and I highly recommend it.



Jean Renoir’s first collaboration with French Television yielded this quirky yet faithful adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic novel, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. In contrast to previous cinematic adaptations of that novel, Renoir sets the story in a contemporary setting (France of the 1950s) and manages to make the good doctor (renamed Cordelier) more of a villain than his brutal alter ego (Opale). Whereas Opale’s violence is spontaneous, a thoughtless response to an uncontrollable impulse, Cordelier’s actions are far more calculated and wicked, and so it easier to sympathize with Opale than with Cordelier. In this respect, Le Testament du Docteur Cordelier is closer to Stevenson’ novel than most film versions.

One of the most striking aspects of this film is how it rigorously defines and contrasts the moral positions of the two principal characters, Cordelier and Opale. This is partly down to a well-written script, which allows us to get into the minds of both characters, but probably has much more to do with the performance of the film’s lead actor, Jean-Louis Barrault. Throughout the film, it is hard to believe that both Cordelier and Opale were played by the same man. With very little make-up, Barrault manages to transform himself from a cultivated and charming man of science into a loutish, carefree monster – an extraordinary achievement even for an accomplished actor.



Renoir’s decision to have Barrault playing both characters so distinctively can be interpreted as a reference to the theories of Jung and Freud, that an individual is made up of two distinct personalities, one civilized, the other untamed – two forces in constant opposition Renoir goes beyond this and, with Barrault’s skilful complicity, manages to convince us that neither of these two aspects of a person’s ego has moral superiority over the other. In many ways, Renoir is re-treading ground he has already covered in his earlier masterpiece La Bête humaine (1938). In both films, good and bad character traits are shown to exist side-by-side in the same individual, but the conclusion is that such characteristics do not necessarily make that person good nor bad; they are merely two sides of the same coin.



In both content and form, Le Testament du Docteur Cordelier is in marked contrast to those films which most people associate with Jean Renoir (La Grande illusion, La Bête humaine, La Règle du jeu, etc.). However, when you consider the range and diversity in Renoir’s oeuvre, this film appears scarcely out of place – it isn’t even his first foray into science fiction. One symptom of Renoir’s genius was his flair for innovation and experimentation. Not all of his more radical experiments were a success, but the fact that he was able to take a chance and try something different surely reinforces his standing as a director of great stature and importance. Le Testament du Docteur Cordelier represents one of Renoir’s most daring experiments – to make a cinematic film using the techniques and processes of television. This was, after all, a film which was intended to be released in the cinemas at the same time that it was screened on French television.



Renoir’s idea of merging television and cinema into one film is typical of the director’s imagination and daring. The film was recorded using the non-stop, multi-camera technique which was widely used for television dramas at the time. A scene would be pre-rehearsed and then shot in its entirety with several cameras and the minimum of recording breaks. This approach adds to the sense of modernity and disorientated atmosphere of the piece but it also weakens the film’s credibility, since its faults are more apparent. A number of scenes look rushed and amateurish and would have benefited from another take, and the pressure the actors were under does is palpably apparent in a few places.



The film’s production faults were so noticeable that even Renoir felt unable to defend it. Indeed, he believed that the venture was damned from the outset – a view which could only have been reinforced by the torrent of invective which film critics dished out once the film was released. In addition, a dispute between the film’s distributors and the television company that produced it resulted in transmission of the film being deferred to 1961, two years after it was seen in the cinemas.



To this day, Le Testament du Docteur Cordelier remains one of Jean Renoir’s most obscure and underrated films; yet it also one of the most revealing about its creator. Not only does it show Renoir’s courage to take risks – even at a time when he was finding it more difficult to get financial backing for his films. It also shows us – as many of his earlier films did – his acute understanding of the human psyche, his fascination with all aspects of human nature – particularly that tragic inability of human beings to control their own destinies, in spite of their intelligence or status in society. For those who are prepared to forgive the film’s imperfect presentation, this is an insightful and thought-provoking work, one which boldly addresses that universal conundrum about what it means to be human.



This is minor Renoir, 'Jekyll and Hyde' transposed to contemporary Paris. An early example of the TV/cinema hybrid, it was sufficiently a curiosity at the time to justify an irrelevant opening about Renoir arriving at the RTF studios to record a prologue. Shot fast using TV techniques (lots of cameras and mikes covering a single long take), it consequently looks flat and unatmospheric, while some of the performances are mysterious (Why is Vitold so manic? Is Bilis meant to be such a prig?). But the redeeming asset, indeed the film's entire justification, is Barrault in his Opale (i.e. Hyde) manifestation. Shambling, twitching, cocky and looking for trouble, turning ferociously on anyone weak who crosses his path, he is the epitome of aggression and the absence of pity. Forget March and Malkovich, Barrymore and Beswick: none comes within a mile of this chilling creation.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053348/



Subtitles (.srt): Portuguese br, spanish.



Vídeo Bitrate: 1.834 Kbps

Áudio Codec: AC3

Áudio Bitrate: 192 kbps CBR 48 KHz

Resolution: 720 x 544

Aspect Ratio: 1.324

Format: 4x3

Frame Rate: 23.976 FPS

Size: 1.368 GiB