It seems that the adventures of the suave gentleman thief have been downgraded since his last outing in Becker's LES AVENTURES D'ARSENE LUPIN. Whereas that confection was couched in glorious candy Technicolour, SIGNE is reduced to a more sober monochrome; while the loose episodic structure of its predecessor is replaced by a single plot with which all seemingly random elements are concerned, touching, dismayingly, on international events, in the way Sherlock Holmes soon got bored of grubby local crime and became an Imperial protector. But if Robert loses the playful freedom of Becker - indeed if Robert is no Becker - his film explores the Lupin myth with a gratifying complexity.
As ever, the big problem with a character who, in literary form, can truly disguise himself from the reader, through disguises, modes of narration etc., is that he is instantly recognisable on screen, each identity easily seen through. Therefore, one of the main themes of the books, that of loss of identity, a fixed personality, is itself lost, as we can clearly see a man at the centre controlling everything. This minimises both his power - in a bourgeois society where identity is fixed and linked to name and fixed property, Lupin's protean wandering is a mark of freedom, and a bigger threat than his stories seem to allow; his thieving a dismantling of bourgeois identity - and his weakness, his own diffusion, his own getting lost in a variety of guises, names, places, roles, his own inability to live life fully; as much in thrall to identity - that loose assembly of signs gathered under the umbrella 'Arsene Lupin' - as the bourgeoisie he mocks.
Robert doesn't really deal meaningfully with any of this, his film determinedly light-hearted, with the comic focus on the mechanical side of Lupin's genius which might almost be Melvillean. We are asked, as ever, to admire his nerve, daring, charm, creativity, wit. But there are two fundamental distortions to his image in this film. Firstly, his power is literally emasculated when he is faced with a double, who steals his methods and reputation, to carry out an elaborate crime. Lupin is now no longer in control of his identity, and its customary diffusion seems to have finally outreached his grasp. The fact that this double is a woman adds a psychological frisson to the plot: her appropriation is in the form of a signature, and one is reminded of Poe's 'The Purloined Letter', where power is bound up in a written signature, the province of those who possess it. It is significant that the plot concerns paintings, remakes, which are themselves diffuse in location, fragmenting meaning, and which can only achieve a reassuring wholeness when they are returned to their source, and put back together again.
For Lupin to do this to his own identity, he must become his opposite, a detective, the second distortion. This attempt to retrieve his identity ironically entails a further split. In this way he is almost an anti-detective like Scottie in VERTIGO, someone who must solve a crime that relates to his own identity, in which the disparate clues of the material world, of 'history', are all signs of his own dissolution. I say almost, because unlike anti-detectives, who either fail to solve the problem, or who erase themselves by its solution, Lupin achieves an uneasy restoration.
This is quite a pleasant film, charmingly quaint in the annus mirabilis of the nouvelle vague. Robert doesn't strain his narrative with unneccessary invention, but Rappeneau's witty script and taste for rarefied environments look forward to his own wonderful comedy LA VIE DE CHATEAU. There is no attempt to mimic Becker's artifice, and, indeed, the move to black and white makes the film somehow more sumptuous, as Robert indulges in much harmless traveloguing.
The setting, immediately after World War One - isn't made as much of in comparing Lupin's identity problem with the rupture of the French nation as a whole (and after TWO world wars; surely the resurrection of an old-fashioned, outlaw hero in the 1950s is not coincidental), but there are fun insights into modern celebrity and the media courtesy of a naive reporter called Veritas, who is no Roullitabille. The performances are as bright as you would expect, but Lupin really needed someone like Alain Delon, someone with aristocratic charm, but also menacing danger.
As ever, the big problem with a character who, in literary form, can truly disguise himself from the reader, through disguises, modes of narration etc., is that he is instantly recognisable on screen, each identity easily seen through. Therefore, one of the main themes of the books, that of loss of identity, a fixed personality, is itself lost, as we can clearly see a man at the centre controlling everything. This minimises both his power - in a bourgeois society where identity is fixed and linked to name and fixed property, Lupin's protean wandering is a mark of freedom, and a bigger threat than his stories seem to allow; his thieving a dismantling of bourgeois identity - and his weakness, his own diffusion, his own getting lost in a variety of guises, names, places, roles, his own inability to live life fully; as much in thrall to identity - that loose assembly of signs gathered under the umbrella 'Arsene Lupin' - as the bourgeoisie he mocks.
Robert doesn't really deal meaningfully with any of this, his film determinedly light-hearted, with the comic focus on the mechanical side of Lupin's genius which might almost be Melvillean. We are asked, as ever, to admire his nerve, daring, charm, creativity, wit. But there are two fundamental distortions to his image in this film. Firstly, his power is literally emasculated when he is faced with a double, who steals his methods and reputation, to carry out an elaborate crime. Lupin is now no longer in control of his identity, and its customary diffusion seems to have finally outreached his grasp. The fact that this double is a woman adds a psychological frisson to the plot: her appropriation is in the form of a signature, and one is reminded of Poe's 'The Purloined Letter', where power is bound up in a written signature, the province of those who possess it. It is significant that the plot concerns paintings, remakes, which are themselves diffuse in location, fragmenting meaning, and which can only achieve a reassuring wholeness when they are returned to their source, and put back together again.
For Lupin to do this to his own identity, he must become his opposite, a detective, the second distortion. This attempt to retrieve his identity ironically entails a further split. In this way he is almost an anti-detective like Scottie in VERTIGO, someone who must solve a crime that relates to his own identity, in which the disparate clues of the material world, of 'history', are all signs of his own dissolution. I say almost, because unlike anti-detectives, who either fail to solve the problem, or who erase themselves by its solution, Lupin achieves an uneasy restoration.
This is quite a pleasant film, charmingly quaint in the annus mirabilis of the nouvelle vague. Robert doesn't strain his narrative with unneccessary invention, but Rappeneau's witty script and taste for rarefied environments look forward to his own wonderful comedy LA VIE DE CHATEAU. There is no attempt to mimic Becker's artifice, and, indeed, the move to black and white makes the film somehow more sumptuous, as Robert indulges in much harmless traveloguing.
The setting, immediately after World War One - isn't made as much of in comparing Lupin's identity problem with the rupture of the French nation as a whole (and after TWO world wars; surely the resurrection of an old-fashioned, outlaw hero in the 1950s is not coincidental), but there are fun insights into modern celebrity and the media courtesy of a naive reporter called Veritas, who is no Roullitabille. The performances are as bright as you would expect, but Lupin really needed someone like Alain Delon, someone with aristocratic charm, but also menacing danger.
