Antoine and Antoinette

(Jacques Becker, France, 1947)

French cinema in the 1930s and '40s was renowned for a style of filmmaking that is long lost: poetic realism. These films borrowed from the Italian neo-realist school an attention to the minute, daily details of ordinary life, but added a subtle ambience of lyricism, joy and magical fantasy.

Director Jacques Becker is one of the forgotten masters of poetic realism. Antoine and Antoinette begins in classic form, with vignettes of its married characters (played by Roger Pigaut and Claire Maffei) engaged in their separate, unglamorous jobs. As they return home, we gradually see the dimensions of their whole social world – their best friends, favourite haunts, coveted material objects.

For a long time, Becker shows us only the poetry of this 'average' married couple, for whom passionate lovemaking alternates with shopping, arguing and dreaming. But slowly a plot intrigue forms, involving an over-eager older man and a maddeningly fugitive lottery ticket.

People often take realism to mean dull, unimaginative, depressing, kitchen-sink drama. Becker proves otherwise; his resolutely small movie (to which Australian independent filmmaker Chris Windmill pays elaborate homage in his endearing short The Birds Do a Magnificent Tune [1996]) is more moving, beautiful and enthralling than most overheated screen stories.

© Adrian Martin July 1992