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Reviews
Le roi des camelots (1951)
The gift of the gab
Robert unsuccessfully tries to earn his living as a rep for brushes . As he can no longer pay his rent, his concierge kicks him out. He steals a wallet but a street vendor forces him to return it and lectures him. Repentant, Robert becomes his friend. Thanks to his courage and his good feelings, he manages to get into a position, owns a car and a lot of money, which makes a neighborhood scoundrel and the daughter of his protector die of envy and jealousy. The girl refused once her love because he was poor.
When André Berthomieu and playwright/screenwriter
Paul Vanderberghe collaborate ,they sometimes come up with a pleasant little comedy."Gringalet "(1946) starring the great Charles Vanel ,bore this out .
"Le roi des camelots" is full of finer feelings , even mentioning the Holy Scripts ("turn the other cheek") and using the essay the cop's son has to write into a moralizing tale ; when Robert returns the money , which he has supposedly stolen , much to his students' surprise , it's another lesson in genrosity ; Robert Lamoureux is excellent as a street vendor and his gift of the gab ,dealing with feathers to sell ball-point pens ,is irresistible .He's less enjoyable as a stand-up comic on stage during the ball .
Jean Carmet ,who would appear later in Chabrol's films, already shows his talent and his stupefied look.
Le bal des voyous (1968)
Meet my brother .
Henri Verdier, a young bank manager, met Karine, a very beautiful model. Robert, who said he was Karine's brother, forced Karine to introduce Verdier to him. It is to offer him an urgent matter : 50 million contribution for a purchase of uranium which, within a few days, should bring in double the amount. Blinded by passion, Verdier accepts and "takes" the necessary sum from his bank. It doesn't take him long to realize that he has been fooled. Karine is not Robert's sister and he is a gangster. Verdier finds their trace...
"Le bal des voyou " is also known as "playmates",which is a more appropriate title since there are plenty of them ; the first thirty minutes look like a succession of TV commercials;afterwards , the hero's attitude takes naiveté to new limits and the poor script boils down the would be thriller to a simplistic gangsters' story ,with shoot-outs, free-for-alls and playmates .
Michel le Royer is the only real actor in this mess but he is totally wasted ,though he enjoys the only real hot scene of the movie.
It was Jean-Claude Dague's debut as a director. He made three other films before committing a heist to try to save his production company from bankruptcy. He spent eight years in prison, an experience which he reported in his book Le Dénommé which he then adapted for the cinema, with mixed results,to put it mildly.
Liberty Bar (1960)
Maigret's debut on French TV.....
.....when there was only one channel .......
Commissioner Maigret is sent to Antibes to elucidate the murder of William Brown, a rich Australian who regularly disappeared to indulge in tremendous drinking binges. Following in his footsteps, Maigret tours the bars until he discovers the Liberty Bar, its welcoming patroness La Grosse Jaja and its ambiguous clientele. This is undoubtedly where the key to the murder lies...
It was the first time Commissaire Maigret had appeared in a MTV work ,and would not be the last ; of course he was often portrayed on the silver screen before,notably by Jean Gabin.
Louis Arbessier,essentially a stage actor ,does a good job ,but the stand out is Mathilde Casadessus is the thankless part of an alcoholic fat woman with a heart condition,la grosse Jaja .
Françoise Hardy, la discrète (2016)
Si je m'en vais avant toi
A yeah-yeah girl was too pejorative a word to depict Françoise Hardy who has just died ;unlike the other French female pop girls, she wrote at least half of her material, her lyrics were far beyond those of her colleagues; besides,she was an icon , admired by English and American rock stars such as the Beatles, Jagger and Dylan ; the latter demanded the singer be in the theater when he performed in Paris 1966.
The doc focuses on the swinging sixties ;as Hardy ,like most of the songwriters ,could not write music ,she had to use a would be co-writer Roger Samyn to be in the SACEM (French body responsible for collecting and distributing music royalties).
For ,this is pivotal, Hardy ,unlike most of the pop stars of the first half of the sixties,did not do covers of English songs ;you can hear all her classics -but the depressing "mon amie la rose" - including one of her rare covers ,Adriano Celentano's grandiose "la maison où j'ai grandi."
She was a German student and thus could sing in this language ;ditto for English :too bad the doc does not include her original "all over the world" (dans le monde entier ) and opts for two Buffy Sainte-Marie songs ("until it's time for you to go" and "take my hand for a while ")
She was photographer Jean-Marie Périer's fiancée before her affair with singer Jacques Dutronc whom she eventually married and with whom she had a son ,who would become a singer like his parents ;both men appear in the doc .
At the end of the sixties ,she colaborated with singer/songwriter extraordinaire Serge Gainsbourg who wrote her latter sixties days biggest hit "comment te dire adieu ".
The early seventies were years in the wilderness (though it spawned one of her very best songs , the haunting "si je m'en vais avant toi" heard in the doc twice (the second time as a duet with Etienne Daho.)
IN 1973,her Michel Berger- produced "message personnel" brought her back to the charts ; then followed an experimental period she 's not very proud of ; in the eighties, the title of the doc (the discreet girl" ) was appropriate .Astrology became her raison d'être .
In the nineties,she was hailed by a new generation of singers such as Etienne Daho and even foreign ones :Eurythmics covered her international anthem "tous les garçons et les filles", Jimmy Somerville "comment te dire adieu" ,she made a special appearance on a Blur album.
In the naughties ,she became ill (lymphoma). In the last twenty years ,she showed resilience,courage and her magnificent adieu "tant de belles choses" .
The doc talks about her marriage to Dutronc ,and points out that,from "message personnel" onwards ,many of her songs were messages to him.
An interesting doc,but at a running time of 53 min,it's inevitably too short;Françoise deserves more.
The Groundstar Conspiracy (1972)
Second.
Sometimes unfairly called sub-Frankenheimer, "the groundstar conspiracy",even though he does not match stuff such as "seconds" or " the manchourian candidate" ,is a gripping story .Amnesia is a hackneyed sub-genre in the thrillers: George Peppard ,the tough guy of this movie, suffered from this mental disease in "the third day" (1965); but 'groundstar" in its own way, renews the genre for the hero,although being able to start over ,is denied his true identity till the very end and beyond .Michael Sarazzin is ideally cast as the frail chap (this kind of role fits him like a glove, like in "they shoot horses don't they?"IMHO his very best part );matching him every step of the way is Peppard 's portrayal of Tuxan , a diehard cruel investigator ;the best moment comes when the amnesic guy listens to the hush-hush tapes before the unexpected denouement. A good thriller,with a really threatening atmosphere .
La peau de l'ours (1957)
Hate women?
Jean Richard , later the most famous Commissaire Maigret on French TV portrays here his first commissaire (superintendent or captain) in this entertaining comedy , full of black humor.
Etienne Ledru, a superintendent, lives peacefully surrounded by his two children, Philippe and Juliette, his second wife, Anne-Marie, his mother-in-law and the maid Janine. But his happiness will be shattered when he discovers that he has been poisoned with arsenic and that the culprit can only be one of his loved ones...
It's not "arsenic and old lace" but if you give it a chance, you will spend a good moment;the colleague Noel Roquevert is true to form ,and his black humor is not really enjoyed by the victim; the
doctor gives a good piece of advice :"if you suffer from arsenic poisening ,stop taking it!"And one by one, the victim begins to suspect his son,his daughter, his wife who might(or might not) have a lover, even his maid and his mother-in-law ; slowly by inexorably sinking into paranoid , he spies on everyone, he does not want to share a meal with them at the table anymore but keeps food in a safe.
The film introduces future French star /producer Jacques Perrin and the boyish look he will keep along his long career ; spot another future legend , Jean -Pierre Cassel ,who appears in a single scene ; also features future stand-up comic Sophie Daumier, with a ponytail.
The denouement is lite Sacha Guitry ;it can't begin to touch the latter's genius ,but why deny yourself the pleasure to watch a little funny comedy?
Johnny Banco (1967)
You're not on
Yves Allégret was once a very good director :"manèges " ranks among the best French films noirs of all time ; "Dédée D'Anvers " "nez de cuir" " les orgueilleux" and "une si jolie petite plage " are fifties gems. In the sixties,all his talent had melt away .For instance ,his "germinal " did not do Zola justice .
A spoof on the gangsters movies of the sixties, its follow_up , "Johnny Banco", completely falls flat ; no Audiard is at hand to write lines which hit home ; the cast is absurd : in spîte of their undeniable talent , Horst Buchholz and Elisabeth Wiener are not comic thespians ;as for Sylva Koscina,she contents herself with changing wigs every five minutes. Poor screenplay.
Capitaine Ardant (1951)
An ardent fighter.
A forgotten director, André Zwobada made a handful of movies , often off the beaten track: "croisières sidérales" was one of the rare sci-fi French movies (using the general relativity ,but the lack of means often made it a laughing stock ) an interesting biography of poet Villon, and mainly his best effort ,"la septième porte" carpe diem "philosophical fable .
Both this movie and "les noces de sable" ,which transposed 'TrIstan and Isolde "to the desert,was a remake of sorts of "l'éternel retour" ,Cocteau being the narrator, take place in North Africa .
"Capitaine Ardant ,unfortunarely ,was a return to the thirties ,showing the benefits of the colonialism ,as far as one can judge by the screeplay:
Moroccan rebels are preparing to besiege the last French fortress which blocks their passage. They buy ammunition from Europeans. When their artillery is in place, they begin their work of destruction. But Captain Ardant managed to win over an undecided tribe to the French cause. He is helped by a young woman, widow of a French officer assassinated by an "European" bullet. Captain Ardant saves four times the life of a young Moroccan prince who wanted to kill him.
The Morrocan rebels even attack their own people , slaughtering and plundering ; the story lacks substance and looks like a comic book ; the dashing officer , handsome and fearless,(Yves Vincent)supported by legionnaire Jules who serves as a foil to him (Raymond Cordy) , the brave heroine (Renée Saint-Cyr ) and the perfidious temptress who tries to prevent the calife from helping the Legion :she even sat topless for a photograph which is handed around, even to be found in the captain's kepi .THe villains are botched ,being given a minimum time on the screen .
The director often filmed news,so it was only natural he shoots his work on location ; the best sequence is probably the wild dance of the rebels ,around a fire .
Bullet for a Badman (1964)
A not so bad badman.
The most interesting thing in this western made when it was slowly but inexorably an old-fashioned genre is the Logan /Sam relationship : the choice of the actors is quite relevant ;although only two years Murphy's senior , McGavin 's mature look sharply contrasts with the former's always boyish face ; another baffling thing: when the story begins, it looks like a follow-up to an imaginary prequel .
Although they became enemies , their relationship remains ambiguous and the very last sequence is revealing : in spite of what happened, friendship had survived ; the rest of the movie is more routine, but the borderline between good and bad is becoming blurred ,as far as the so-called lawmen are concerned .
Le dénommé (Oublie que tu es un homme) (1990)
Descent into hell.
The first sentence of the storyline is not accurate even though the retribution is disproportionate to the offence .
Jean-Claude Dague (died 2017) directed four films before committing a heist to try to save his production company from bankruptcy. Having used his own vehicle for this misdeed, he was arrested without difficulty . He spent eight years in prison, an experience which he reported in his book Le Dénommé which he then adapted for the cinema. It was not the first time ,though ,that a French ex-convict had depicted his time in jail : José Giovanni was a good exemple .
Plunging into the prison world, he discovers, to paroxism, love, hatred, violence, drugs, depravity, decay, death. An alternate title of the film is: "forget when you come here that you are a man". Here he is forced to survive among characters such as Bull Rosenthal, the boss, Imbert, the rapist, Macadam the executioner, Rispal the resigned, Leleubellac the unpredictable guard and Vautrot the all-powerful director.
The principal ,Jean Dolande -the unfortunate hero was given the actor's name -,made a handful of films before opting for painting ; but his director who lived through this descent into hell , does not really succeed in adapting his calvary for the screen : I saw one of the movies he made before the events, "le bal des voyous" ,and it was really very mediocre,to put it mildly .
Had he used a talented director, his plan could have succeeded ;but left to his own devices, he produces a disjointed film , with so many characters it's often hard to decipher their motives ; the journalist -the only real female character- is particularly badly written and acted .And a long-haired warden in the 1969-1975 period!!
It must be the lack of a story structure ; the movie consists of sketches ,with big time gaps. Most of the actors are unknown or non-professional ; oddly though, the cast includes more famous names such as Philippe Léotard, Bernard Fresson,Michel Galabru ,singer Lény Escudero ,Claude Brosset ,but they are wasted .
Cent francs l'amour (1986)
Bohringer blows everyone off the screen ;
Jeremy, a young art photographer, is kept by Maurice, a strange bachelor who only lives for Jeremy's appearances. To occupy his evenings, Jeremy wanders from sex shops to peep shows and becomes passionately in love with Otie, a pretty blonde.
But this gorgeous girl is the star of a peep show and at first sight she does not dote on him ;she had so many temporary admirers than she does not trust men anymore ; this exposure of the world of peep-shows and (male and female) prostitution is not really convincing (and has been treated many times,often more successfully than here)Besides the young couple is cute but bland ,and you can see how the movie will end from a mile off.
The reason why you would see through this movie is Richard Bohringer ,who steals the show every time he appears ;but his excellent performance throws the film off balance :Maurice , a sullen antique dealer, a heir (the black sheep of a wealthy family?), an admirer of a silent age
actress , and a gay in love with the hero , heterosexual through and through. Actually one feels to use the fast forward button when he's not present; watch the movie for him!
Bright Victory (1951)
Victory on the night,a new dawn .
This is the same subject as "pride of the marines" ,starring John Garfield and Eleanor Parker ; it's a very absorbing story featuring the outstanding Arthur Kennedy who was rarely given the lead , which ,with hindsight , is decidedly a shame ;to think that ,for instance,in Williams' "the glass menagerie" , he took a back seat to Kirk Douglas (I have nothing against him but his character appears late in the play) whereas he played the main character !
Kennedy is excellent from start to finish ,from utter despair to determination ; the subplot about the black soldier is a lesson about anti-racism ,and the final scene is even more moving than the sentimental story which seems contrived: the first girl the blind sergeant meets is the one !she seems to have been introduced in the screenplay just to secure a happy end .
But the official fiancée ,Chris ,allows us to meet people that are meant to help but treat him gingerly, notably the wealthy father (who reluctantly agrees to let his daughter marry him)who offers a job to the hero who does not want charity ; against all odds ,the victory will be bright and the future is no longer bleak ,braille is here to allow any study ; and it's credible ,remember Helen Keller who was blind,and deaf and dumb to boot !
Cargaison clandestine (1947)
Listen to the music.
Ricardo Mendi's gypsy orchestra lands a contract in the El Dorado cabaret, in San Juano in Central America. Mila, Mendi's girlfriend, is having an affair with José, the singer. But weariness eventually gets the better of her and the beauty lets herself be seduced by Mendoza, the cabaret director. José, disappointed, does not take long to console himself in the arms of Luisa Heim, the charming owner of the place. The troop soon discovers that their hosts are involved in drug trafficking, in which they participate despite themselves. An unenviable fate, prison or death, awaits them...
A vehicle for bel canto singer Luis Mariano masquerading as a thriller of sorts ;it's actually 50% musical acts ,and 50% film noir ; Mariano is not only a singer but he also plays the violin. The movie begins with Liszt 's Hungarian Rapsody which outstays its welcome in what is finally a smugglers affair (like "Carmen" of which Bizet wrote an opera ).
You will easily guess who the baddies are :they are VIP ,and their method is quite shrewd: to indicate where the clandestine cargo will be delivered , they use music tunes (hence the connection with the concerts) on the national airwaves ,much to the prefect's displeasure ( Pierre Renoir) who cannot catch these sharks red handed.
Le passé simple (1977)
Past in shreds.
Amnesia has become a recurrent feature of the thriller : the best of the genre is probably Cayatte's "piège pour Cendrillon " in France and "spellbound" in America ;the heroine is also a a distant relative of George Peppard in Jack Smight's "the third day" (1966) and Tom Berenger in "shattered".
Michel Drach,then husband of Marie-José Nat ,who starred in most of his works was an electic director and that probably went against him :today he is unfairly forgotten :now comedies ("la bonne occase" ), now psychological drama about amour fou ("Amélie") ,now politically commited director ("Elise ou la vraie vie" ,"le pullover rouge ",) now remembering his childhood ("les violons du bal" ) and ....yes ...thrillers ..
The first movie he directed was a black and white film noir "on n'enterre pas le dimanche" in which the principal was a black man ,a daring move in the early sixties ;"le passé simple" looks like a Hitchcockian thriller in which the heroine is lost in a world she does not know anymore : even her husband has become a stranger ; on the verge of paranoia , she's afraid of the people she meets ,all seem to be living threats ; the best sequence shows Cécile, in a dehumanized urban landscape where her reflections in the glasses enhance her confusion :who is he? It's all the more disturbing since her husband lies to her and that visions haunt her ,a girl on a poster,a man named Bruno .
The title has too meaning : it's a tense of the French conjugation (past historic) which is only used in the books , in a distant past but never in the spoken language ; it can also be taken literally : Cecile's past is relatively "simple" and may disappoint the thrillers buff ; but Marie-José Nat displays a quivering sensitivity ,a hope against hope which will win you over ;Victor Lanoux,more at ease in comedies ,is less convincing .The accident will remind you of that of "les choses de la vie" (1970).
Universum History: Elisabeth - Kaiserin auf der Flucht (2019)
Schicksal einer Kaiserin
An interesting doc, including scenes played by actors ,portraying aging characters ,much less handsome than those of the Marischka trilogy , which is ,according to one of the historians who intervene ,the contrary of reality .
The title speaks for itself : " an empress on the run"
The film focuses on the actress ' fascination for foreign cultures : she used to shun Vienna ,their court and their etiquette .She was in love with Hungary ,and it was the only time she dabbled with politics ;but later this country was superseded by Greece : she had a huge palace built on the island of Corfu ,the Achilleon ,which cost a fortune ;you can visit this place nowadays , its' really impressive ;she also studied Greek and it was during one of her lessons (historically accurate) that she learned her son's suicide ; also interesting is an extract of a silent movie which depicts the reconstruction of her assassination .
Dernier métro (1945)
Madame Colombo
Two bad boys attack a young woman at night, as she comes out of the last subway. It is, for his savior, a gentle and tidy young man, the beginning of cascading adventures in which the perceptive and common-sense wife of a police inspector is closely involved.
Not to be confused with Truffaut's 1980 movie:no definite article .Actually ,after the lady and the shy law student come out of the last subway, there's no subway anymore. It's a far-fetched story which includes twin brothers, two corpses , and a damsel in distress.
The young hero, brave maybe but not foolhardy ,takes a back seat to the superintendent 's wife , played by a smart Gaby Morlay who even supersedes her cop of a husband ;Morlay has plenty of go and makes this cock and bull story palatable ; she's clever,wise ,and the student serves as a foil to her ,her doctor Watson .Woman's lib before its time.
A clue: the mark on the villain's face.
Le couple idéal (1946)
Sons of the silent age.
Paris, 1912. The whole city shudders as it watches the adventures, renewed every week on the screens, always ending with a cliffhanger ,of Diavolo and Diana. The "serials" fascinate spectators to such an extent that they are convinced that, in life as in their films, the two stars form the ideal couple.
However, this is not the case: Diana is exasperated by Diavolo's conceit, and it takes all the diplomacy and all the good humor of the impresario Antoine for the two actors to still agree to smile at each other.
In spite of an unfairly poor rating, this is a marvelous tribute to the silent age ,to Louis Feuillade (Diana's tights are a nod to Musidora, the serial which tries to beat "Diavolo" is called "Justex " (a nod to "Judex") and to these far-fetched stories in which the hero (here Diavolo ) always comes to his fiancée-damsel-in-distress' rescue and triumphs over the villain called Satanas (Fantomas).
Raymond Rouleau shines in a double role: the smug narcissistic and refined Diavolo and his crude lookalike ,Henri ,who,much to his displeasure ,replaces him when he is in the slammer after a rumble ; both him and Diana have a tendency to put a spoke in their wheels.
Icing on the cake, Diavolo's maid -two short scenes- is portrayed by Simone Signoret ,whom Rouleau would direct later in "les sorcières de salem " (Miller's "the crucible")(1957) both on stage and on screen .
Forget the rating ,and watch it; it's,along "portrait d'un assassin", Bernard -Roland 's finest work.
Pandemonium (2023)
The carnival of souls
This is a complex movie,not your routine horror flick where gore and special effects get the lion's share ;
I wrote about "tous les dieux du ciel ":Quarkxx (Alexandre Claudin) is certainly one of the most promising newcomers to emerge in the decade; he will be a name to reckon with in the years to come.
That said, "pandemonium " is more uneven than his previous effort ;The opening is brilliant : only two actors on the screen, one of them not believing he's not in the great beyond ;the subject is not new and will remind you of "carnival of souls" and the numerous films influenced by this indie movie ( "au coeur de la vie" segment "an incident at owl creek bridge","Jacob's ladder", "the sixth sense " " the others" the list has become endless)
But Quarkxx does it in about twenty minutes :he broaches the matters of good and evil ; the dialog between both men has something of Sartre "Hell is other people ".
Sadly , all that follows is not on the same level:the perverse nasty little girl is a hackneyed subject ,since Mervyn Le Roy's "bad seed " (1956) and Quarkxx does not really renew the subject with his young murderess, let alone with her new "friend" ; it's only in the theater when the naughty girl performs her act before two corpses that the director lives up to one's expectations.
The third segment which begins where the first has left seems to regain strength : the man who died in a car crash in Hell where he's "welcomed " by a specter who tells him that in eternity time does not exist anymore and that not even the "purgatory" of sorts (the word is not mentioned in the Bible ,and it's an exclusive Catholic dogma ) can redeem a soul because the humanity is par excellence evil ;after the "40 centuries " (which echo Christ's 40 days in the desert ?), the films succumbs to special effects and the paraphernalia which mar today's fantasy and horror movies.
Even disjointed , the movie has moments of brilliance which should not be overlooked.
Variétés (1935)
Trapeze
Georges and Pierre are two talented acrobats who perform successfully every evening in a traveling circus. Their partner is the pretty Anne who attracts ovations from the public. Everything would go perfectly if Georges and Pierre did not love passionately Anne. Because she shares Pierre's feelings but feels nothing for her other partner. So Georges is jealous, which makes him mean, even unsympathetic and dangerous.
Although the film is in need of restoration , it possesses considerable appeal for Jean Gabin's fans : although a great director's touch is lacking , he plays the part of a beautiful loser he would often resume in Carné's or Duvivier's works ; good support from Annabella ,once Mrs Tyrone Power ,and from Gravey.
The scenes of acrobatics without a safety net are the highlight of the movie,although Annabella' s escaping unharmed after a fainting fit on the trapeze is beyond belief .
Hats off to the goose that's good in arithmetic and sadly ends up as "plat du jour" .
Le chemin perdu (1980)
Have I lost my way?
While the Easter holidays are over, a young girl named Cécile and her brother Pierre return to the family home. There they found their grandfather Léon, an old communist activist who had shaken Lenin's hand. Caring little for their parents, fervent naturalists, they preferred to focus their attention on their grandfather who shared his activist memories with them.
The Swiss cinema is cerebral ,intellectual , not very accessible and Patricia Moraz's work is no exception to the rule ; this one my put off some viewers for its lack of plot ; it's more a chronicle : the end of an activist life for the commie grandpa , the closing down of a movie theater -there was a crisis in the European cinema in the mid-seventies when the TV sets exponentially arrived in homes -
This was the last decade for giant Charles Vanel whose career encompassed almost the whole 20th century,from the silent age to the late eighties ,including works known all around the world ("le salaire de la peur" ,"les diaboliques" "to catch a thief");he was 88 in 1980,ten years older than in his "lost way" which has two meanings:it may deal with horology mechanism but it may mean that his ideals were not fulfilled : although he shaked Lenin's hand, although he organizes his funeral, although he laicizes his granddaughter's poem , it's no sure that there will be one man to carry on with the fight :Angelo who's supposed to read the short speech is not present for the funeral;and although they sing "l'internationale" , they frighten the children and the son reproaches his daddy for not letting him bury "properly " ("religiously" that is ) him.
For the grandchildren , the death of the grandpa and the "adventures" he used to tell them , the imminent closure of the movie theater, may epitomize childhood's end ;but they take refuge in their imaginary planet (which oddly reminds you of Robert Parrish 's "journey to the far side of the sun " 1969 in which all was reversed ,like in a mirror)
The parents , taxidermists , work with death in their way ;hence the admirable last picture ;Delphine Seyrig , a feminist activist is cast against type ,staying in the background most of the time ; she takes a back seat to Magali Noel ,who embodies life .
L'amour est en jeu (1957)
Trouble in a dual-income household
Aka "ma femme mon gosse et moi" (my wife,my kid and I )
Bob, a talented designer, and his young wife Marie-Blanche, a young antiques dealer, adore their only son Gégé. But over the most trivial pretexts, the couple often argue. A more serious quarrel will lead to their separation and the initiation of divorce proceedings. Gégé spends a week with one, a week with the other, each competing in tenderness towards the little one. But Gégé understood that he could perhaps initiate a reconciliation...
Marc Allégret made more movies than his brother Yves ,but the latter's are ,at least to these eyes ,much more interesting. By and large , Marc Allégret's films depend on their actors ;"l'amour est en jeu" is a good example :
Lamoureux and a young Annie Girardot (then on the threshold of a brilliant career )have plenty of go and can save the most clichéd of the scenes ; the young actor playing their beloved child does not ham it up (too much)
In the fifties ,divorce was rather rare in France ;part of the reason can be found in the fact that women generally did not work and thus financially depended on their husbands .Not only the wife works here,but she's an antique dealer and she probably makes as much money as her hubby ; they have an old maid , and by the end of the film , both have their own car ;no problem to make ends meet in the mid-fifties .
That said,this is a pleasant harmless comedy , its optimism is equal to anything. A prehistoric "Kramer VS Kramer" .
Deserted (2016)
Inferno
The cinematography is splendid indeed ,enhancing magnificent but hostile landscape;the soundtrack for once fits the pictures,including such luminaries as Tom Waits whose tired hoarse voice works wonders .
As for the characters,they are clichés ,like in all the "survival movies" ,so fashionable ,mainly at sea when the heroes are lost in the middle of the ocean ; but no killer, no loony peasants,no trained former marines , just ordinary people who have to fight against the elements .I remember being once in this place ,and the temperature was "hotter than July' ,I was not able to stand it ;they say that at night ,it becomes icy but I did not probe it. It's unlikely that these people can survive several days without gallons of water ; even the old "inferno" in which Robert Ryan with a broken leg was crawling across the desert was more credible,
See it for the cinematography ,it deserves it.
Un homme en or (1934)
Can money buy me love?
Papon, a brave civil servant learns one day that his wife Jeannette, whom he adores, is cheating on him. He pretends to ignore everything and goes into business. Papon becomes very rich and thinks in this way of winning back Jeannette.
A fable on the well-known "money can't buy happiness " proverb ,for the denouement shows that it's not by becoming a millionaire that he will find back his beloved wife ; the title " a man of gold" is no misnomer : Harry Baur,the legendary actor, portrays a good man ,with a beautiful mind who understands that his younger wife cheats on him with a more handsome man, but in the end ,he will teach the greenhorn a lesson or two ,whithout holding him any grudge .
The rise of the modest civil servant whose business in chocolate trade makes him almost overnight a tycoon is not very convincing ;thus the best scene may be the moment when the businessman makes all his telephones ring by pressing a button before his impressed wife .
Guinguette (1959)
Illegal motor trade .
Renée known as Guinguette, a former prostitute , earned enough money on the Parisian sidewalk to be able to buy her dream: an open air dance hall by the water. Her new lover, Marco, offers to use an unused adjoining barn to store used cars in which he deals. But the "opportunities" are actually stolen cars, and the charming Marco, a bad boy.
With a good cast , fine lines by Henri Jeanson, this is a nostalgic look at the guinguettes ,those open air dance halls which had begun to disappear in the late fifties ,a place depicted by the masters of the French cinema ,Jean Renoir ("une partie de campagne" ) Julien Duvivier ("la belle équipe" ) and Jacques Becker ( "casque d'or") ; Jean Delannoy is not to be mentioned in the same breath as them,but he was a solid craftsman ,as well as one of the bêtes noires of the notorious New Wavelet .
Zizi Jeanmaire ,essentially a dancer , is not exactly the character (the Arletty of the late fifties nohow) but she manages quite well ;the stand out is definitely Paul Meurisse who blows everyone off the screen every time he comes up ;on the other hand ,Italian B movie starlet Cristina Gaioni puts on her Brigitte Bardot act ,but only BB is BB, and her exaggerated swagger makes her a caricature of a nymphomaniac ;too bad for her character is not unlike Danielle Delorme's in Duvivier's highly superior "voici le temps des assassins " (1956) the best scenes of which took place in a guinguette too ; she's a sex kitten ,but she's pure evil too :don't we learn that her grandma's fall in the stairs was perhaps not an accident?
Half comedy and half drama ,it's certainly watchable even though the guinguettes have become a thing of the past.
C'est arrivé à Aden... (1956)
Who sows the wind will reap the whirlwind
A French traveling theater troupe finds itself stranded in Aden during a foreign tour. The officers of the English garrison take the opportunity to woo the three stars who have landed in their city and Albine, the young first, becomes Captain Burton's mistress. In the meantime, and on the very day of the performance given by the troupe, the Prince of Khamarkhar arrived in Aden to sign a treaty with England. He attends the performance and appreciates everything...
Michel Boisrond 's works do not go in history ; the most watchable flicks remain his fifties comedies , "le chemin des écoliers" "cette sacrée gamine" or "un soir sur la plage " an intriguing thriller;afterward ,he would keep up with the fashions : yeah-yeah generation, spy thrillers , bourgeois sex liberation, even hateful male chauvinism .
I was expecting the worst from this exotic comedy ; much to my surprise, it's an enjoyable comedy thanks to a seasoned actors ;some kind of "Viva Maria" of the fifties , it's full of riotously funny scenes , of unexpected twists.
The way they butcher Shakepeare's "Othello" ,including extra -lines and the intrusive dog is just a joy ; the three unconscious soldiers who take the actresses to a picnic in a particularly dangerous valley are a poor man's Hathaway's Bengal lancers ; the commander of the garrison insists that scandal be avoided , assisted by a holier-than -thou minister with two twin nieces in tow , one of whom will be " dishonored ". The prince falls for charming actress Dany Robin but as far as the treaty is concerned ,he wonders how a woman (Queen Victoria!) can take an interest in politics.
A great cast and a good time is guaranteed for all!