Life Dances On


Life Dances On or Christine or Dance Program is a 1937 French drama film directed by Julien Duvivier and starring Marie Bell, Françoise Rosay and Louis Jouvet.
The film's art direction was by Jean Douarinou.

Plot

Twenty years after her debut ball, recently-widowed Christine tracks down her former dance partners to see how time has treated them. Her beaux have not fared well: one killed himself over Christine and his doting mother haunts his room in a perpetual state of denial. Promising lawyer and poet Pierre became a cynical nightclub owner and mob boss. An older composer took monastic vows and now teaches music to choirboys. The relatively fit and well-adjusted bachelor Eric has secluded himself on a mountain. Francois is a petit-bourgeois mayor marrying his henpecked maid in a small village. A former medical student is now a world-weary, drug-addicted wreck performing illegal abortions in the dockyard district. And optimistic card-trick-loving Fabien is a hair-dresser well-contented with his domestic life and frequenting the same old dance circuit.
Christine indulges in the melancholy of regret, remaining non-judgmental, but nevertheless disturbed by the profound effect she had on these men, their loss of innocence, and the ravages of time.

Cast