Stavisky...

Biarritz, 1933. Serge Alexandre dresses well, speaks well and everyone knows him. He buys theatres, pays newspapers, dines with ministers. His real name is Alexandre Stavisky and his business is issuing false bonds through municipal pawnshops. The bigger the scheme grows the more signatures it needs, and the signatures come, because everyone takes a share somewhere. In the same period Trotsky arrives in France in exile and the police watch him. When Stavisky's business collapses the names that surface shake the government. Alain Resnais directs; Jorge Semprún wrote the screenplay. Jean-Paul Belmondo plays Stavisky; François Périer, Anny Duperey and Michael Lonsdale are in the cast. It is a French production. Stephen Sondheim wrote the music; Sondheim is known mainly as a composer for the musical stage and this is among the few things he did for the cinema. The ground is real; the Stavisky affair caused a large political crisis in France in 1934 and ended in street violence. The narrative does not tell the event chronologically; testimony from the inquiry cuts in and the time breaks. Belmondo was known for action parts; here he plays in an entirely different register. The Trotsky line sets up a contrast inside the narrative; one man enters the country, the other robs it, and the state concerns itself with both. The costumes and sets bring the luxury of the period forward and the film shows it together with the criticism. Its limit is accessibility; the affair is closed to anyone who does not know French politics and the narrative is scattered. Who it is for: viewers who like Resnais's cinema and political period films. Who it is not for: it is confusing, distant, and the ending cold.