What a unique movie. This was my first time with this film, and I’m finding it growing in my appreciation the more I think back on it. It’s partly a city symphony like Man with a Movie Camera or Berlin Symphony, but it has so many experimental gestures that it fits solidly in the avant-garde. There is one memorable scene after another, scenes of joy and scenes of pain. It’s a great impression of that great Mediterranean resort.
The documentary aspects of the film are shots of people walking along the Promenade des Anglais or sitting in chairs people-watching. Each person, or more specifically each woman, is making a unique style statement with a range of dress from 1930, and I enjoyed the many permutations of that look. There was also some documentary interest in the warships in the bay and a seaplane landing and taking off. And street kids playing paper-rock-scissors. And some very beat-up people. À Propos de Nice has all this.
But there are also many 20s avant-garde cinema gestures here. The camera spins and the imposing Hotel Negresco turns upside down. A series of cuts reveal to us a woman always in the same posture but wearing a series of different dresses…until she is nude. In another editing trick, some partying dancers on an elevated platform dance madly away as the camera cuts to people looking up – a priest, an old woman – creating a cinematic link between the two levels. And the Mardi Gras parade is simply delirious with dancers and huge paper mache figures prancing in the street. A human face peeking out one of these figures looks for all the world like a cinematic mask. The film goes on to cut back and forth between the hyperactivity of the parade and expressive cemetery statues, and it shows soldiers marching in the parade in fast motion as well as people heading to a funeral march. À Propos de Nice has all these elements, too.
The movie also clearly has a certain amount of provocation as its aim. It spends time lingering on women's legs and peeking up their dresses. While the poor work and gamble, wealthy relax in excess. A man burns crispy on the beach. Épater la bourgeoisie would seem to be a clear goal here, and one that the film royally achieves.
À Propos de Nice is several things at once: avant-garde experiment, city documentary, social commentary, poke. Anyone will enjoy their time with this unique, original amalgam.
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