Antoine and Antoinette (1947)
Directed by Jacques Becker
Made at the time when postwar deprivation and fatalism gave rise to film noir in Hollywood and neorealism in Italy, this comic melodrama likewise approaches class anxiety with plotted determinism, subjecting the title couple (Roger Pigaut and Claire Maffei) to an unhappy run of coincidence and misunderstandings in the search for a lost winning lottery ticket. For his part, however, Becker pirouettes ’round grim resignation, unwilling either to diminish the hardships of working-class life or to wallow in them. With wise and tender humanism, he unknots contrivance to expose the raft of possibilities hidden in the fabric of the everyday. Eli Goldfarb (Jan 6, 4pm, 7:30pm at the FIAF’s “Eccentrics of French Comedy”)