Eric Romer, Cinema of Ethical Maximalism (part 9) In the year when Godard returns to the feature film with a tough film about prostitution “Save Who Can”, and Truffaut shoots a story about the theater in occupied France “The Last Metro”, Romer brilliantly opens a new cycle of “Comedies and Proverbs”, in my opinion, an absolute masterpiece of “The Pilot’s Wife”. Getting rid of, on the one hand, from the rigoristic assessments that still distinguished the “Six Moral Stories”, on the other hand, from the multi-word behind-the-scenes commentary that weighted the narrative of his previous paintings, betting on unexpected plot twists, improvisational dialogues and long plans with a minimum of glues, Romer achieved an incredible naturalness of what is happening on the screen, captivating the audience emotionality and total irony, which makes “The Pilot’s Wife” both a comedy and a melodrama.
The first film of the new cycle is primarily a story about the unpredictability of life, the seductiveness of Parisian existence (the final song is the key to the film), because let’s not forget that Paris is a feminine word. “The wife of the pilot” is the story that men in amorous stories always remain fools, and a woman is a creature of the highest order, insidious, charming, captivating. This is a tape about the fact that amorous polygons, often created by women, become traps primarily for simpleton men, who are not difficult to deceive, because they themselves are happy to deceive. However, the heroines of Romer in this film are so charmingly direct (primarily Lucy) that their bitchiness and desire to sit on two chairs cause not so much rejection as charm.
The fact that François is so unlucky in love affairs, although he is an honest and decent man, is not his fault, he is simply an unsophisticated victim of circumstances and female deceit, and is ridiculous precisely because he is a good man. In The Wife of the Pilot, as in most of the subsequent films of the series, Romer not only does not denounce and accuse anyone, he rather condescendingly grins at the quirks of the French national character, sings an ode to female treachery and fatherly pity his victims, realizing that Paris itself acts towards the simpletons as a treacherous and much-seen lady.
In any case and in all respects, this film is beautiful, first of all for its light intonation and naturalness of unfolding events, in which there is not a drop of falsehood and lies. As for the craftiness of the experienced sage-fablewriter of Parisian morals, with each subsequent film, it becomes more palpable for Romer: after all, just as his heroines fool men around the finger, and Paris – their inhabitants, so this director deceives audience expectations, each time building an unpredictable plot. However, humiliated viewers are not only not resentful of him, but even grateful for these brilliant manipulations.