The House Next Door

By Kevin B. Lee

[Editor's Note: This is the latest entry in House contributor Kevin B. Lee's Shooting Down Pictures, a record of his ongoing quest to see every title on the list of the 1000 Greatest Films compiled by They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?]

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This lavish farce about a 17th century Belgian town whose women openly welcome Spanish invaders when their cowardly male counterparts go into hiding is a classic model of the ebullient pacing and jaunty eroticism that’s long been associated with French comedic cinema. Feyder orchestrates his ensemble and witty dialogue with a lilting, musical efficiency, a quality that’s also reflected in the camerawork, which moves sinuously across lavish sets inspired by Flemish paintings of the period. Feyder’s fanciful farce envisions a marriage of pacifism and sexual equality yielding an idyllic society, which, despite strong critical support, rendered it anathema to contemporary politics. The Belgians saw it as a mockery of their leaders’ ineffectuality during their occupation by the Germans during World War II; the Nazis eventually banned it when links between them and the film’s invading Spaniards became apparent. It’s utopian vision of international peace brokered by the fairer sex, while amounting to a feminist statement ahead of its time, seems downright naive in the immediate context of Petain and Chamberlain’s appeasement policies to the Nazis (much in the way that the “we should have stayed in Iraq” argument underlying David O. Russell’s Three Kings looks very different in the Bush era). But the film managed to place on many top ten lists in a poll conducted by the Belgian Cinematheque only a few years after the end of World War II, possibly attesting to the triumph of laughter and masterful filmmaking over one of the darkest moments of humankind.
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To read the rest of the article at Shooting Down Pictures, click here.