MartinHafer This film is made up of three stories by Guy du Maupassant--all of which have something, apparently, to do with pleasure (hence the title). However, this connection is very tenuous to say the least.The first is about an old man who is vain and wants to remain young. He does this by wearing a mask as he dances. Nothing interesting here other than a sad old vain man.The second is by far the longest one. It's about a brothel in a small town and it actually has two part. In the first one, it shows the reaction of the men in the community when the place found unexpectedly closed. The second consists of these women going to see the christening of the niece of one of the sex workers. All this is well acted--very well acted. Other, however,than perpetuating the 'hooker with a heart of gold' notion, this one didn't seem to have much of a point--more just a slice of life.The third is about an artist who falls in love with one of his models. However, once they begin cohabitating, they soon get sick of each other. But, through a twist of fate, they are stuck with each other. Pretty depressing.Apparently I am in the minority on this one. While its overall score is almost 8.0 and Stanley Kubrick apparently adored the film, it left me very flat. Now this is not because of the acting or direction--it was first-rate all the way and very lovely to watch. No, my problem is that none of the stories were that interesting--particularly the first and third ones. And the stories also didn't seem to have a lot of meaning or significance or irony.

jzappa Max Ophuls' indulgence in mobile camera work is given its utmost fulfillment and flourish in his adaptation of three stories by popular 19th-century French writer Guy de Maupassant, considered one of the fathers of the modern short story. There is largely a rationalization for what may seem like intemperance: Ultimately, life is motion, so this continual progression is the intonation of a notion that doesn't exist in physical form. An enthusiast for immutable motion, Ophuls knew that, due to its pure texture, existence can never be entirely fulfilling, finished, or conclusively satisfied. His world is full of inextricable oppositions, a feature most overtly drawn out in the middle segment of this hilarious, melancholy amalgam. That is why, whether or not one interprets the end as a happy note, it commemorates life.One can trace, throughout the three tales, a clear-cut evolution in the women's statuses. The wife in the first story, embittered, deserted at home every night while her aging husband frolics in the nearby palais de danse in his escapist mask of youth, is completely involved in his compulsion, even content with him in her serfdom. The women of the middle episode are prostitutes in the town brothel, shown as a crucial community establishment, exercising a kind of control over men and, in the instance of Madame Rosa, beginning to spy promise free of the brothel. In the third story, the woman, acting out against the painter and lover who has retained her like a vendible, defies in the sole manner available to her.Admirable in their cleverness, rigor and craftsmanship as the surrounding segments are, it is the middle episode whose pleasure, assured by the movie's title, is most affectingly troubled by inferences, by a feeling of defeat surrounded by merriment, by underflows of dissolution. What is introductory is decidedly presented as a usual night. What follows is decidedly unusual: a night when the lights are out, the den is forsaken, and society falls apart. Within minutes, the businessmen, the town hotshots, their evening's escapade turned down, are fighting, fussing, nearly waging war. When eventually they dissolve, one straggler finds the solution, on a paper that has dropped from the door. The whole bunch has gone on a daylong trip to the country, to be at the first Communion of one of the madames' young niece. The central tale reverberates, in model, the triangular form of the film.A single transient twinkle of shared bedroom eyes is at the crux of Ophuls' arrangement of Maupassant's narrative trifecta. One might say that this lavish tragifarce is structured around it: The sole benign love match in the entire film, and indeed hopeless to attain, the categorical Ophuls love story, nipped in the bud by both an elderly wife and business priorities. Going outward from this axial bond, Ophuls gives us the two train journeys, to and from the country. Being is moving.

jonathan-577 A trilogy of Guy de Maupassant stories, two short simple ones framing a long and impossibly rich one, and I don't know why everyone complains about the framing ones - everything is given exactly the weight that their narrative will support. An old man dressing up like a young dandy to relive the gavotting excesses of his youth, only to end in physical collapse, starts things off; and to close we have a beautiful young couple who go from romantic bliss to petty vindictiveness to resigned acceptance via an attempted suicide. This gives us a rather complex understanding of the meaning of 'pleasure', and the worst you can say is that one and three don't utterly embody pleasure the way number two does (although the swirling camera work in the dance scene comes damn close). The story of a troop of sex workers romping off to a country wedding is simplicity itself, but also incredibly rich - full of memorable human beings and interactions. Everyone sees happiness in the place that they're not, but this episode celebrates life wherever it finds it, and it's a joy to watch.

writers_reign Max Ophuls is rightly regarded as a major filmmaker and this is a major work. If you'd heard of his fluid camera-work but hadn't seen a film bearing his signature this film would illustrate perfectly what people mean by his fluid camera-work. In 1952 the portmanteau film was hardly new; in England we had seen both Quartet and Trio (a joke in the early fifties had two hippies walking down Broadway and passing in turn cinemas where these titles were playing: One says 'Man, we better dig this crazy combo, it's fading fast') followed by Encore, all featuring short stories by Somerset Maugham but it's fair to say that all three lacked the visual style and sheer sumptuousness that Ophuls brings to DeMaupassant. Framed by The Mask and The Model the piece de resistance is The House of Madame Tellier, a four-reel examination of the role of the bordel in the provincial town - when they close for a day the whole sub-social life of the town is disturbed. If the lion's share of the plaudits go to the middle segment the others have more than their own individual moments and staples of French cinema like Jean Gabin, Danielle Darrieux and Simone Simon get to strut their stuff and pay their dues. A visual delight.