Some films are to be seen almost exclusively for their style, which can outlive story as a source to keep drawing on, and this is a most notable example. Its use of gorgeous, heightened B&W chiaroscuro grows out of silent classics and relates to Greg Toland's dramatic lighting with Welles but fits in with "Girl's" baroque, decadent theme drawn from Balzac of a a spoiled men's club with gambling, debauchery & women kept as slaves transposed to the world of late Fifties Paris fashion. I saw this twice when it was new in memorable circumstances, at Amos Vogel's Cinema 16 in 1961 and in a film series in Cairo in 1965. I've seen thousands of films since, and the memory of "Girl" never ceased to haunt me. Those lush shadows! Of course, this epitomizes the potentials of B&W that color loses, the contrast, the exploitation of pure light.
Finally I just ordered a PAL format DVD of the film, it came, and I watched it. Now I just learnt by coincidence it is in a film series, New Queer Cinema at Lincoln Center, showing in two weeks, 28 & 29 April 2016. Their brochure quotes Vogel from 1961: "A mysterious, perverse Gothic tale, derived from Balzac and transposed to a deceptively contemporary Paris, probes the secret of a bizarre love in an atmosphere of sophisticated decadence. . . Opulent in its artificiality, the film is especially noteworthy for its visual pyrotechnics, luxuriant imagination and unexpected continuity."
A re-watch confirms this, especially of the opening scenes (and the classical guitar theme is beautiful too; one can get the sound track on vinyl). I don't think such deliberately over-ripe, decadent, baroque, rococo B&W visual style has ever been so intensely achieved, though Armando Nannuzzi's intense chiaroscuro for Visconti's 1965 "Sandra"/"Vaghe stelle dell'orsa" comes close. Another rarity, never shown in the US; but you can watch it on YouTube entire w/o subtitles.
"Girl" showed at the Paris Theater in NYC in Aug. '62, it seems, and Bosley Crowther of the Times, not for the first time, didn't particularly get it, noting the graphic qualities were "rare and interesting" but damning it as "obscurantism," its characters as merely "weird," its action (despite Vogel) without "continuity."
It would be nice if the Criterion Collection would issue "Girl" with "Albicocco's other big success, his 1967 "Le Grand Meaulnes" (there actually is a French "coffret" of the two). They should issue Visconti's "Sandra" ("Vaghe stelle dell Orsa") too -- another decadent feast of voluptuous shadows (1965), and with Claudia Cardinale and Jean Sorel. There is a place for excessive style, fake glamor, and baroque visuals. Add a touch of humor and an exciting thriller plot and you get Beinix's film version of Delacorta's "Diva.
This time the decadent heir Henri Marsay (Paul Guers) is a fashion photog and (somewhat implausibly ) is a close friend/collaborator of lesbian couturier Léo (Françoise Prévost) who's been hiding the Girl (Marie Laforet) in the nifty secret pad. When I first saw Léo this time, I thought of Coco Chanel (the real Coco, Coco before Tautou). There are also fab sports cars. When you've got cigarettes, alcohol, deep shadows, amour fou, and fab sports cars, you've got classic movie glamour.
Another lost film decadence I want to rediscover: Roger Vadim's 1957 "No Sun in Venice" ("Sait-on jamais"), with its MJQ soundtrack.
