La chevelure (1961) Online

A short story by Maupassant (1884) ;in an insane asylum ,a doctor shows to the narrator the diary of a lunatic ;at the end of the story ,the narrator (Maupassant himself ,fascinated by lunacy and a writer who died insane) feels his heart pounding with disgust and envy;with a shrug in the shoulders ,the physician concludes : " Man's spirit will stop at nothing".Lunacy was a way for the writer to show the unreal in a real world.

The screenplay only keeps the main character(Michel Piccoli) ,the lunatic alone in his cell ;after a desperate scream ,the man remembers his past ,in a series of flashbacks : till the age of 32,he used to live peacefully ;he developed a taste for things of the past ;a wealthy man,he would buy ancient furniture or jewels :"the past attracts me,and I'm afraid of the present because future means death" . When he would buy a watch ,he would dream of the woman who held it in her hands.

One day,he bought a piece of furniture in which he found a magnificent golden tress of hair ;he would treat it as a true woman ,sleep with it,kiss it ;he would make love with a lover who had risen from the dead.But he would not hide his love away ,so he would take "her" with him when he would walk through the city."they saw me ,they took it from me;they threw me into prison".

All the sentences (the hero's voice over) are taken from the short story ,omitting the hint at François Villon's "Ballade Des Dames Du Temps Jadis" ;Ado Kyrou's treatment is faithful to the text ,perhaps too faithful cause he becomes a prisoner of Maupassant's lines ;to have transposed the action to the sixties , Nouvelle Vague style, is pointless;in spite of Piccoli's indisputable talent,we feel little of the madness,of the pleasure and of the paranoia of a writer who lets his inspiration flow .He never transcends the short story as Renoir did with his admirable pictures in "Une Partie De Campagne" (1936)