The history of the film
“The novel which Pierre Louys had printed in 1898, La femme et le pantin, was extremely successful, perhaps even more than it actually merited. It was avidly read by readers who at the turn of the century were looking for strong emotions. Could cinema ignore, whether rightly or wrongly, a novel which continually pushed editors to reprint it? The last printing had been in 1927, shortly after the death of the author. The following year, on the trail of the novel and the pièce that Pierre Frondaie had obtained for a theatrical version, Jacques de Baroncelli made the first cinema version; he used a system of coloration of some sequences, the “Keller-Dorian”, of which little trace has been found in the history of cinema techniques. La femme et la pantin arrived on the Parisian screens at the end of May 1929 (in Italy it came out a few months later as Conchita). The public enjoyed it, but critics had some reservations. René Olivet in Cinémonde criticised Baroncelli for the severity shown in relation to a script which overflowed with sensuality, a lack of courage in transferring the voluptuous crises and itching desires, which are the themes in Louys novel, into images. Great enthusiasm on the other hand for the actress of Spanish origin Conchita Montenegro, who is full of feline seduction, and who makes the co-partners chosen for her look like real pantins. The film disappeared from the screens very quickly, and was not supported by the sonorous films. It is a work which is unknown to the present generations. This was not the case for the following versions of this fortunate novel, in many ways suggestive of Sternberg with Dietrich, of Duvivier with Bardot and of Buñuel, whose ‘femme’, obscure object of desire splits into the enigmatic face of Carole Bouquet and the sarcastic one of Angela Molina”. (Vittorio Martinelli)

The film
“How does Conchita carry out her seduction flamingo? In the oldest, the most prohibited of ways: through unexpectedly running off and then returning, the subtraction, the dilation of desire. So as to balance such anonymous strategy and so much story-like obviousness, the spectator is made to feel the exceptionality of the moments which appear like little landslides, or like visible catastrophes. There is always something which covers over the look of Don Mateo and his object; first, the dividing glass window inside the train; then, during the first encounter at Conchita’s house, a closed door from behind which a candid arm appears and stretches out, a curtain beyond which the profile of a nude body can be distinguished. ‘I want to stay here, to rest a little …’ Baroncelli does not fail to mention the erotic detail of the cool mat, for the private languors of an untouchable body. Later on, it will be the cast iron of impenetrable grids and of a closed gate which mark the final failure, the even too obvious metaphorical exclusion of Don Mateo (we find this in Buñuel too). Inside this strategy, the nude body is not as need have it either marginal or toned down: Conchita is insolently and ‘artistically’ nude in the most complicated, built up and surprising scene of the film, the flamingo prohibited for use in the English public: where the quiet and literary Baroncelli, in order to render a really catastrophical view, even goes so far as to interrupt the ordinary codes of language to touch on (a no longer) avant-garde”. (Paola Cristalli)

The music
“Georges van Parys is one of the most prolific and long-lived musicians of French cinema. He was able to change over unscathed from silent to spoken films at the beginning of the 30’s. Due to his great inventiveness and a generous streak together with a solid technical capacity, he was able to characterise his films which he put the music to, with a certain, perhaps démodé distinguishing mark, but which was particular and which was linked to the tradition of the Parisian chanson.
His career as a composer begins as author of songs for light theatre; the world of vaudeville and French operetta are at the base of his easy and popular music, which is not, however, without irony and nostalgia. The lost world of the belle époque is present everywhere in his work, and this love for the old Paris is ideally interpreted in René Clair’ s film, with whom he ascertains to have had a long and fertile collaboration.
As for La Femme et le pantin (taken from the novel by Pierre Louys who also inspired Buñuel for his Quell’oscuro oggetto del desiderio) Van Parys, along with, as on other numerous occasions Philippe Parès, fully-handily tinged into popular Spanish music; building up his score around habanera and fandango rhythms, gypsy dances and folklorist mannerisms of clear Arabic descent.
The numerous dance scenes within the film revive the popular feelings which, apart from Spain, only a musician in contact with Paris in those years could have given to his music. The influence of Spanish music on French musician the first years of the century is in fact very obvious, for example in the works of Debussy and Ravel, thanks above all to the influence of Albeniz in the years of his triumphant stay in Paris. The sensuality and enigmatic passion of Conchita, like the amorous torment of Don Mateo are rendered in a masterly way by a musical script which is brilliant and agile, intensely scented and unmistakable.
The version presented here is reduced for four instruments of the original script for a small chamber orchestra”. (Marco Dalpane)