L’Eternel retour: Reflection of the Occupation’s Crisis in French Masculinity?

RELEASED IN OCTOBER 1943, L’ETERNEL RETOUR‘s re-working of the legend of Tristan and Iseult in a stylized but contemporary setting was the film event of that year. With a screenplay by Jean Cocteau, the film was the most popular film of the entire Occupation period (Crisp). Along with La Nuit fantastique (L’Herbier, 1942) and Les Visiteurs du soir, the most successful film of 1942, it was seen as part of a new trend in French cinema. Like Les Visiteurs du soir (directed by Marcel Carnm and scripted by Jacques Pr6vert), L’Eternel retour was praised for its aesthetic qualities. Most critics saw in it an escape from the daily life under the Occupation into a fantastic, poeticized world of heightened aspirations and emotions. If some were critical of the incorporation of elements reflecting Cocteau’s poetic universe,1 they nevertheless applauded the film’s imaginative combination of modern setting and universal theme, its stylized settings, lighting, costuming and acting style. Credit for the film’s success was accorded not just to Cocteau, but to director Jean Delannoy, cinematographer Roger Hubert and music coordinator Georges Auric.