Fact :businessman and producer Marcel Dassault had promised Autant- Lara to put up the money for his adaptation of Stendahl's "la chartreuse de Parme" -he had always directed "le rouge et le noir"-....provided that he directed "Gloria " based on a mushy novel by Solange Bellegarde serialized in Jours De France magazine .Autant-Lara reluctantly made his job but his producer did not keep his promise and "Gloria" was a commercial and critical fiasco,considering it was a high budget movie ,the absence of stars for the main roles making up for the money misspent in the settings and the costumes ;Autant -Lara was petulant : "so much dough for a soap opera!"
Jean-Pierre Bleys ,who wrote the definitive biography of the director, much to my surprise ,ranks Autant -Lara 's "Gloria" among his best ,with"douce" ,"occupe toi d'Amélie" ,"l'auberge rouge" ,"la traversée de Paris" "En cas de malheur " and "journal d'une femme en blanc".
Perhaps a little underrated when it was released , "Gloria" can't ever,in a month of Sundays , be mentioned in the same breath as"Douce " : the principals are bland and the male actor is below average ;the girl saves something from the wreckage : her performance of "la mort du cygne",in a theater -shades of Carné 's 'les enfants du paradis "- shows some emotion , which is rare in the whole movie,even in its finale ,a la "love story" ; one can feel Autant-Lara's bite in the children's reflections about WW1 about to happen ; the conversation between the girls which scandalizes a well-meaning bourgeois would not be out of place in "le diable au corps" ;the way pacifist anarchist Autant-Lara -before he turned far right activist ,a man of contradictions- treats the 1918 victory which claimed so many lives ;the -historic- scene of the prima donna bawling out "la Marseillaise " is almost burlesque ...
Autant -Lara called it a day after "Gloria" .
