Blanche (1971) More Jacobean Tragedy than Euro-Kink Nightmare (Review)

The third film in Arrow’s acclaimed series of Walerian Borowczyk restorations, Blanche is an entry into the late 1960s and early 1970s cycle of Medieval films that produced notable work by Jacques Demy and Pier Paolo Pasolini, before Borowczyk’s disciple Terry Gilliam helped to lovingly spoof it to death with 1975’s Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  For all its parodic intent, the Pythons’ film is often cited as having a strong period atmosphere, and this must surely be down to its co-directors passion for Borowczyk’s work.  Unlike most Medieval films made at this time, Blanche contains no parallels to hippie-era politics and no rock stars.  It is simply an immersion in a period of history and a period in art that the director had a passion for.

Blanche is the story of a young, innocent woman married to a domineering, grotesque older man.  She is pursued by a number of suitors, always with the threat of her husband discovering them hanging in the air.  Strangely, considering this is Borowczyk’s first attempt at adapting another writer’s work (Juliusz Slowacki), this is exactly the same core situation as his first live-action feature, Goto, Isle of Love (also released by Arrow).  If Blanche at first appears to be a strange detour in Borowczyk’s career – lacking the surrealism of the films he released before it, and the sexual explicitness of the films released afterwards – watching it in the context of the Arrow set shows up just how much of its director’s personality is in this apparent anomaly.

Perhaps the most important, and intriguing, the difference between Blanche and the two features Borowczyk made before this is the strength of its villain.  Mrs Kabal and Goto III where comic tyrants – the former more than the latter, admittedly, but still nowhere near as formidable as Michel Simon’s ominously-named Master.  Borowczyk’s films often come down to a clash between innocent young love and perverted, censorious authority (one reason why his later swerve into erotic cinema wasn’t as much of a U-turn as is commonly thought).  Placing this conflict in the Middle Ages, he is aware that the chances of goodness prevailing are much slimmer than they would be in a contemporary setting.

As an evocation of the Middle Ages, Blanche is an unqualified triumph.  The clarity and carefulness of Arrow’s restorations has made the case for Borowczyk as one of film’s great sensualists: the cold castle walls, the clinging fog, the moss and dead leaves of this film all feel as though you could reach out and touch them.  (In the extras, there’s a brilliant short by Peter Graham called Gunpoint which Borowczyk did some cinematography for; the same applies there).

As a narrative, Borowczyk is still finding his feet with the feature-length run time.  Blanche begins as a chamber piece and ends as a Jacobean tragedy, and its middle act sometimes struggles to transition from one tone to another.  The deadpan, affectless style Borowczyk preferred in his actors doesn’t make the emotional through-line any clearer, though there is, again, a very raw and emotive performance from Borowczyk’s wife Ligia Branice to break the mood.  Ligia has been an almost as exciting discovery for me as her husband as I’ve gone through this set, so it was sad to hear interviewees on Daniel Bird’s making-of documentary Ballad of Imprisonment talk about how unpopular she was with some members of the cast and crew.  Her untutored acting and diction irritated some of the professional actors in the cast, and one producer repeatedly tried to cast Catherine Deneuve in Ligia’s role against Borowczyk’s wishes.

It’s interesting to speculate about how differently Blanche would have been received had it starred Deneuve, then the hottest European star since Bardot.  But, as assistant director (and now successful filmmaker in his own right) Patrice Leconte notes in Ballad of Imprisonment, this was unthinkable.  Borowczyk wrote Blanche for Ligia.  She was his muse, and despite Blanche’s PG-certificate restraint the lingering, subliminal kinkiness of a man directing his wife to be pursued by all kinds of handsome young men strikes a common thematic chord with Borowczyk’s other films.

For some, Blanche will be an accessible entry point into Borowczyk’s filmography; a Medieval romance played straight, with only a few flashes of humour and none of the weirdness, sex and weird sex that make his other films a challenge for some audiences.  For others, it will be mainly enjoyable when examined in the context of his wider career, which is exactly the context this disc supplies.  Aside from Ballad of Imprisonment, Daniel Bird also supplies Obscure Pleasures, an extraordinary hour-long assembly of 1980s-vintage interviews with Boro with perfectly-chosen clips from his work to illustrate his points.  (The clips from The Beast, Immoral Tales and Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne, incidentally, account for this Blu-Ray’s 18 certificate)

There’s also a voluble and interesting introduction by Leslie Megahey, director of the cult British horror movie Schalcken the Painter, who discusses both Blanche’s influence on him and the influences from art history that pepper the film.  The most unexpected extra is a five-minute interview with Peter Graham, which serves as a making-of for Gunpoint.  It’s hardly vital, but it is terrific fun; Graham is such warm company, and his reminisces of his own film are as entertaining as his memories of Borowczyk.  The theme of Boro’s perfectionism and strong artistic instincts, which runs through all of the special features on these reissues, comes across just as strongly even when the conversation is about a film he didn’t direct.

Thanks for reading our review of Blanche

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