This was the first version of Jacques Deval's play ,made two years before Anatole Litvak's most famous movie (1937).Jacques Deval filmed his own play .As a cinema director he only made four movies and at least two of them are interesting : "Club De Femmes" (1936) featured a lesbian , a man dressed up as a woman and plenty of go from Danielle Darrieux ;"L'Invité Du Mardi" had three extraordinary actors ,Madeleine Robinson,Bernard Blier and Michel Auclair who carried the movie on their shoulders.
The early thirties French movies often sound like filmed stage productions;two of the most famous directors of the era ,Sacha Guitry and Marcel Pagnol were sometimes unfairly accused of "canning" their plays.Jacques Deval was not so successful but his "Tovarich" is quite watchable .
After the 1917 Revolution,two aristocrats emigrate in France.Although very rich (they own 4,000,000 Francs) ,they want to keep their money to help restore tsarism .So they work as servants in a bourgeois mansion . But greedy French businessmen covet the Russian oil (a still topical subject).Enter a people's commissioner who tries to save black gold from the western world(Pierre Renoir is the government official as you picture it) .The aristocrats meet the Red :what are they going to do?
Pleasant enough ,but not as exciting as "Club De Femmes" .
The early thirties French movies often sound like filmed stage productions;two of the most famous directors of the era ,Sacha Guitry and Marcel Pagnol were sometimes unfairly accused of "canning" their plays.Jacques Deval was not so successful but his "Tovarich" is quite watchable .
After the 1917 Revolution,two aristocrats emigrate in France.Although very rich (they own 4,000,000 Francs) ,they want to keep their money to help restore tsarism .So they work as servants in a bourgeois mansion . But greedy French businessmen covet the Russian oil (a still topical subject).Enter a people's commissioner who tries to save black gold from the western world(Pierre Renoir is the government official as you picture it) .The aristocrats meet the Red :what are they going to do?
Pleasant enough ,but not as exciting as "Club De Femmes" .
