Before the Deluge + The Lovers of Verona

More André Cayatte In the 1950s Cayatte transitioned into the cinema’s first “social justice warrior,” but not before making the Shakespearian film that critics had hoped would emerge from the team of Marcel Carné and Jacques Prévert. Taking Carné’s place, Cayatte gives us an indelible work that honors that legendary duo and even goes a step or two further. A half-decade later, Cayatte channels his mentor Henri Decoin with a heartfelt variant of the “troubled children ignored by their parents” tale (the Occupation noir STRANGERS IN THE HOUSE) and puts a more expansive spin on it. Taken together, these films are a shattering but sensitive look at the tragedy that occurs when youth is not cared for by those who should nurture them to maturity.

Before the Deluge / Avant le déluge

6:15 PM Cayatte’s films became darker in the late 40s as he moved inexorably toward the presentation of presing social issues. By 1954, when he made BEFORE THE FLOOD, he was heavily invested in the problems of French youth in a volatile, changing society. Adapting a true story, Cayatte presents a troubled landscape where the anxiety experienced by young people troubled by the continuing outbreak of war leads them to an ill-considered and ill-fate foray into crime. (1954, dir. André Cayatte, 138m)

The Lovers of Verona / Les amants de Vérone

8:55 PM Five years earlier, Cayatte had teamed with the legendary Jacques Prevert to tell a more expansive, more romantic, and more anarchic tale of doomed youth: THE LOVERS OF VERONA chronicles the tragic arc of a modern-day Romeo and Juliet (Serge Reggiani and Anouk Aimee) whose love is threatened by a jealous suitor (a matchless, manic Pierre Brasseur) and the girl’s anarchic, desperately corrupt family, itself reeling in the chaotic world of post-Fascist Italy. FRENCH 5 audiences were especially enraptured by the plight of Anouk Aimée, making her screen debut at age 18. (1949, dir. André Cayatte, 90m)