{"id":46415,"date":"2025-02-21T08:30:30","date_gmt":"2025-02-21T13:30:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=46415"},"modified":"2025-02-17T18:29:49","modified_gmt":"2025-02-17T23:29:49","slug":"the-bootleg-files-no-exit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/21\/the-bootleg-files-no-exit\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bootleg Files: No Exit"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 898: <\/strong>\u201cNo Exit\u201d (1954 French film based on Jean-Paul Sartre\u2019s play). <\/p>\n

LAST SEEN:<\/strong> On YouTube.<\/p>\n

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO:<\/strong> None.<\/p>\n

REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS:<\/strong> It was never released in the United States.<\/p>\n

CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE:<\/strong> Not likely.<\/p>\n

In May 1944, Jean-Paul Sartre\u2019s drama \u201cHuis clos\u201d had its premiere in Paris. The play came to New York in November 1946 with a production directed by John Huston \u2013 this would be the filmmaker\u2019s only foray into directing for Broadway. Sartre\u2019s title, which translated as \u201cBehind Closed Doors,\u201d was changed to \u201cNo Exit\u201d for this production, and since then the work is known to American audiences by that title \u2013 in Britain, the play has been produced as \u201cVicious Circle\u201d and \u201cIn Camera.\u201d
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For those unfamiliar with the work, it is deceptively simple. A valet brings three unlikable people to what looks like a strange hotel room, except that it is really their new home in Hell and they are being imprisoned for their deplorable actions. The disreputable journalist Garcin was killed by a firing squad for being a wartime collaborator with the enemy. The obsessive lesbian Inez lured her cousin\u2019s wife away from a happy marriage \u2013 but after the man was killed in a tram accident, Inez\u2019s new lover created a murder-suicide by turning on a gas stove while Inez was sleeping and crawling into bed with her. The conniving Estelle married a rich old man but kept a young lover \u2013 when she became pregnant by her lover, she killed the baby, causing the grief-stricken lover to kill himself. The threesome quickly realize they are acutely incompatible and were grouped together to torment each other for eternity. Or, as Sartre succinctly has Garcin observe, \u201cHell is other people.\u201d<\/p>\n

While \u201cNo Exit\u201d received critical acclaim, it was not commercially successful and only ran for 31 performances on Broadway. But even if it was a hit, a Hollywood adaptation was out of the question because the Production Code would not allow a film where overt lesbianism figured prominently. Huston would later ask Sartre to write a screenplay for his biopic on Sigmund Freud, but they quarreled over the script and that ended their relationship. But the French film industry was not burdened with the onerous censorship of the Production Code and a screen version of \u201cNo Exit\u201d was released in 1954.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, this production \u2013 which Sartre adapted in collaboration with Pierre Laroche \u2013 decided to expand on the stage version by bringing in additional characters while visualizing the sequences that the Hell-bound characters describe as the lives of those they left behind. It also enlarges the part of the valet who shows the characters to their room and locks them in for eternity. With these changes, the film significantly weakens the power of Sartre\u2019s text. <\/p>\n

Much of the problem involves a new opening sequence that plays like a boulevard comedy instead of an Existential drama. An elevator brings a collection of diverse characters in a downward journey, with the elevator opening to the lobby of an ornate hotel. The new \u201cguests\u201d include a self-important bemedaled military office, a dizzy dowager, a Chinese coolie, a priest, a vagabond, and a young woman who collapses in hysteria when the elevator reaches its lower-level destination. Each guest is treated with mild condescension by a front desk clerk who processes their arrival with varying degrees of irritation \u2013 he is not impressed with the men\u2019s professional standing or the dowager\u2019s bribery attempt.<\/p>\n

Nearly 10 minutes pass before the film gets to the heart of the Sartre play. The valet is played by Yves Deniaud, a comic actor and singer who plays the role in a sad-faced deadpan manner that gives the character a more sincere vibe than the supercilious personality given to the valet in Sartre\u2019s original vision. <\/p>\n

The actors three main characters are closer to the play\u2019s vision \u2013 Frank Garcin intelligently captures the self-loathing destructiveness of the malevolent Garcin, Gaby Silvia is perfect as the vain and none-too-bright Estelle, and the great Arletty \u2013 who became an international star in Marcel Carne\u2019s 1945 \u201cChildren of Paradise\u201d \u2013 is most effective as the predatory Inez. But while the actors shine in their roles, the film version unwisely robs them of the dramatic power of their respective soliloquy\u2019s where they can view and describe the world they left behind. In this production, those glimpses into the land of the living are visualized by having them look out a window that turns into something of a television screen broadcasting what they are describing. This device also erases a key element of Sartre\u2019s Hell \u2013 the room where the trio are imprisoned is supposed to be windowless, in order to reinforce their eternal isolation.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo Exit\u201d was directed by Jacqueline Audry, who was the first female director to gain prominence in the post-World War II French cinema. Audry was married to the screenwriter Pierre Laroche and they collaborated on several films including the 1949 non-musical version of \u201cGigi\u201d and the 1950 \u201cOlivia,\u201d which also had a lesbian storyline \u2013 both of these films were released in the United States, but made little impact with critics or audiences. Today, Audry is mostly unknown to American movie lovers.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo Exit\u201d was not theatrically released in the United States and, to date, it has never been made available on any commercial home entertainment format. There is a collector-to-collector service that sells a DVD with English subtitles, while the film was uploaded with authorization to YouTube in a non-subtitled print \u2013 but if you watch that, be wary of YouTube\u2019s none-too-accurate French-to-English translations.<\/p>\n