Carnival in Flanders (La Kermesse Heroique.)

This was the first time I’d ever programmed a film at the Clark that I hadn’t seen myself, based only on critical reputation and fit with the theme of the series. Otherwise unavailable in this country, I had to order a DVD from Britain and rely on the A-V wizardry of the Clark auditorium manager to find a way to show it. The film turned out to be well worth the effort, a true specimen of the golden age of French filmmaking (pre-New Wave, that is.) Exquisitely designed and wittily directed by Jacques Feyder, it brilliantly evokes the world and style of native Flemish masters, particularly Brueghel, while demonstrating political and cultural prescience in its amusing dissection of the war between men and women, as well as occupier and occupied in the military sense. When a Spanish army on the march stops in a remote Flanders town, the men run and hide and the women take up the conjoined causes of homeland defense and sexual liberation. Entertaining and provocative, this is an old film with a modern spirit. (1935, dvd@cai, n.) *8*