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Reviews
Murder Is Easy (2023)
God kills those who stand in my way.
The first MTV version of "murder is easy " featured a legendary actress ,Olivia De Havilland.
This one does not, but it does not deserve such a low rating , certainly better than the mediocre "the pale horse" ;at least it's faithful like a dog to the murder mystery plot (murdered bird included) , even though it added social concern (the parvenu nouveau riche landlord rules the country) and a political look at colonialism ;the action takes place at the end of WW2,(one poster reads "food rationing end is in sight).
There 's a tendency in these Christie adaptations to invent a troubled past for the hero (Poirot in the "ABC murders " and in Brannagh's remake of "murder on the orient express ") Here Luke who is a Nigerian -the only major difference with the book-does not seem to have solved his problems in his native country but it remains confusing and does not amount to anything.
Bet you pretty soon we will know all about Miss Marple's unfortunate love story which made her a spinster
The problem is that the action is too hurried for comfort ,and the apprentice sleuth has almost no time to investigate ;he's literally overtaken by events muders that is .Besides the cast has a tendency to overact .
On the plus side , there's some humor when it deals with the English people 's naiveté and pejudices about a Nigerian man's life ;and the scenes between Lavinia and Luke have a charm the rest of the movie does not possess; too bad she should disappear so soon ,they would have made some kind of Marple-and -assistant team, investigating and savouring home-made caramels .
Between Two Worlds (1944)
The others
Perhaps inspired by Jean -Paul Sartre's "huis clos" , which was performed on stage the very same year "between two worlds " predates such works as "una pura formalitàor "the sixth sense"(1999)
Sartre used a lift to represent "the descent to Hell " which was "other people" ; here the travellers "in transit" are confined on a liner where there's only one bar- tender in the staff.
But the comparison with Sartre ends here ,for "between two worlds " ,although the name of God is never mentioned , is a doomsday of sort ;in short this is a Christian movie (although but avoiding the hints, it may be a non-Christian -God or Gods )The people's soul (or karma) depends on what they did during their earthly ride .Suicide is condemned by all the religions (hence the difficulties to impose euthanasia for suffering terminally-ill people ) , and the trick concerning Parker and her husband makes sense ;Sydney Greenstreet is an imperturbable Examiner ,keeping on repeating : "it's you who decide , our influence on your behavior is nul "The bar-tender became some kind of flying dutchman because he was not given the couple's chance.
Made when WW2 was not yet over , the movie was perhaps made to cheer up the crowds :death is not the end .It's a far cry from Sartre's existentialism .
Les amoureux (1994)
Painting the town red
After several years of absence, Viviane has settled down and returned to Montherme, a small town in the Ardennes where her parents and younger half-brother, Marc, live. In contact with this elder sister whom he has sublimated, this fifteen-year-old high school student will have a tough time learning independence.
Viviane has settled down. Oh really,she has? She actually leads a wild life and one never sees her work ,though she 's very clever (that's what we are told ,in fact ,it's hardly noticeable ) .She has her half teenage brother in tow who follows her in all her adventures and affairs :we're told he's got a school report so good his father wants to frame it (once again,he never studies,never opens a book ,and we're supposed to believe he's an A student )
The screenplay is desultory,consisting of parties where people roar Christophe 's "Aline ", of sleeping arounds ,including one with both principals. As for the boy,he takes a back seat to his half-sister , and his homosexuality comes at the most awkward moment ;to be convincing ,the movie should have focused on him and not to insist on the (finally true) romance of the fickle girl with a Pole working in France .
In the cafe John Cale 's "you know more than I know" is heard ;what do you suppose that means?
La coda dello scorpione (1971)
Even a sex maniac must pay his laundry bill....
A very good thriller ,full of twists ,nicely filmed on location in Greece ; the subject of the life insurance is hackneyed,but this giallo has a strong (if a bit complicated ) screenplay .Serie B George Hilton is a suave attentive escort ,surrounded by gorgeous ladies .
The supposedly heroine only appears in the first third in the "psycho" tradition ,but the dominant influence is Dario Argento's : the death of Lara followed by the chase on the roof will remind you of "l'uccello della piume de cristallo " and "il gatto a nove code ". Martino takes things in easily.
Maybe the ending drags on a little but there are enough red herrings to sustain the interest throughout.
La porteuse de pain (1934)
The misfortune carrier
Unjustly sentenced to life imprisonment for forced labor for crimes committed by Jacques Garaud, who hid under another name, Jeanne Fortier escaped twenty years later and became a bread carrier.
"la porteuse de pain" belongs to the tradition
of French old melodramas of the nineteenth century serialized in newspapers .The most celebrated of them was Eugène Sue' s "Les Mysteres de Paris";Adolphe D'Ennery's "Les Deux Orphelines" was filmed by DW Griffith as "Orphans of the storm" in the silent era and remade by Maurice Tourneur in the thirties ) .
There has been a lot of adaptations of "la porteuse de pain" since the silent age ;this one is the first talkie version of Xavier De Montépin's tear-jerker .
It's construction is different from the novel : it begins when a distraught Jeanne is welcomed in a priest's vicarage ,and all the events that made the unfortunate mother of two a fugitive become a flashback during her trial ; as for the rest,it's not always successful :for instance the main character ,halfway through the movies , is absent during at least twenty minutes .As the part of the baker's boy was given to the most famous actor of the cast , Fernandel, it's fleshed out and he's is even given a joyous song (reprise in the finale);and the part of son Georges is reduced to the minimum.
La fête espagnole (1961)
I've witnessed your suffering as the battle raged higher
Essentially working for TV , Jean-Jacques Vierne made only three theatrically released movies ;the first one was was an adventure of Tintin with actors in the flesh ("Tintin et le mystère de la toison d'or")
His sophomore work could not be more different ,dealing with the Spanish civil war (1936-39).
A young man Michel,(Van Eyck) of Ukrainian origin, after fleeing the Red Army, he enlists in Perpignan in the International Brigades which fight Franco. A stateless person, he's lost his family and he seems to have seen it all before.
He falls in love with an American journalist (Daliah Lavi );this love affair is arguably the low point of the whole movie ;too much time is given to bed scenes and the chemistry between the actors is weak, to put it mildly; Lavi is particularly mediocre, complaining and whining .
After the first fightings (in which he loses a new friend (Roland Lesaffre ) ) ,the ruthlessness of his brothers in arms hurts him ,and,urged by his lover, he deserts .
He falls into the hands of the other faction - a warning is issued before the cast and credits-whose enemies are commies as much as general Franco;so he's arrested for being at the same time Russian, communist and deserter.
FIne score ,consisting of nostalgic Spanish guitar melodies.
José Bénazéraf ,who co-wrote the adaptation of the novel,became the father of French hard-porn .
Et ta soeur (1951)
I don't care
Leonard is a very small delinquent, but teased by the police(he's got a two-year sentence to serve), he decides to take the place of his sister Yvonne, the fortune teller, and disguises himself accordingly. The building's concierge keeps him under her thumb and becomes the most suspicious of mistresses. A notary shows up with an inheritance at stake. Leonard still has to marry Mrs. Margenot and become the father of a child.
Based on a play and it shows ,it's thoroughly preposterous , but enlivened by his two stars:Jean Tissier dressed up as a woman reading naive women's cards and reluctantly forced to learn English to give his mistress' s business an international audience is absolutely priceless;Pierre Larquey as the bespectacled notary , finding hard to read the will and repeating: "I bequeath ...." to his impatient client is up to scratch too ....
Not much food for thought ,but plenty of fun,never a dull moment ,who could ask for more?
Gene Tierney, une star oubliée (2017)
The Tierney gesture.
The title (a forgotten star) is a misnomer ;Gene Tierney won't be forgotten as long as "Laura" and "leave her to Heaven " remain classics for many cinebuffs ....
This biopic is based on the star's memories and a voice over makes her speak :"My portrait in "Laura" is more famous than me "The keynote is mystery and Tierney is as distant to the viewer as a star in the sky ; often used as an exotic love interest ,her legend went as far as to write she was born in Shanghai (which is untrue ,of course, but one can blame the doc for overlooking "the Shanghai gesture")
On the other hand ,much time is given over to "Laura" and to my favorite of hers "leave her to Heaven ": her face in the train which fascinates Cornell Wilde , her impassive look on the boat when she lets her disabled young brother-in-law get drowned , her jealousy when she discovers that her husband might prefer her sister which leads her to ruin them all even beyond the grave ,all filmed in glittering colors ,too bad she lost the AA to Joan Crawford's "Mildred Pierce".
Tierney's grandson appears in the doc.
La petite prairie aux bouleaux (2003)
Night and fog.
1955: Alain Resnais, at the request of the Second World War History Committee, visited the places where thousands of men, women and children lost their lives. These are Orianenbourg, Auschwitz, Dachau, Ravensbruck, Belsen, Neuengamme, Struthof. With the help of archival documents, he retraced the slow ordeal of the deportees. The crowds were deeply upset but these pictures, it has remained standard reference work.
Half a century later, a former deportee (wonderful Anouk Aimée) comes back to the place of her suffering; she knows that, as a survivor, it's a tribute to pay to the thousands who were exterminated ;it 's all the more important to her since she feels guilt about one of her mates whom,she tells us , she could have saved .Her wandering along this tracks overgrown with grass is filmed with a great sense of decency :no flashback is needed , when your memories come back to haunt you.
The meeting with the young man (August Diehl,who speaks very good French and thus is not dubbed ) is pivotal ;he too feels guilt,and for a good reason ; the heroine's first reaction is disgust ,but eventually she realizes that ,for him,too , it's an exorcism of sorts. What the point of carrying on with hate after all those years ?
An embarrassing moment : Claire Maurier's tatooed number on her arm mistaken for her phone number .Not funny ,let alone witty .
But this slow-moving movie should be seen.
Mon amour Mon amour (1967)
Another man,another woman.
An architect has a lover who is a young woman who aspires to become a singer. She ends up getting pregnant but refuses to tell him because she plans to have an abortion.
Probably made to capitalize on the success of "un homme et une femme" ,it's Jean-Louis Trintignant's then wife Nadine's first effort ,reuniting her husband with his suicidal wife featured in Lelouch 's film .
It' s her most mediocre effort : Francis Lay 's syrupy score, sea,sex and sun ,navel-gazing, hollow characters , pretentious frames of mind in voice over , stating fortune-cookie philosophies , actors who appear and disappear without bringing anything to the thin plot , all the worst aspects of the Nouvelle Vague.
Trintignant is an architect (father of a little girl,played by his own ill-fated daughter Marie ); Lagrange wants to be a singer : in real life ,she was ,doing easy-listening in the sixties ,then turning punk rocker in the eighties.
Marie Trintignant would make more coherent films later,notably " le voleur de crimes' "ça n'arrive qu'aux autres" or "défense de savoir" , but this one is a big bore.
William Wyler, un Alsacien à Hollywood (2024)
Vive William Wyler !
In Mulhouse, there's a William Wyler Street; and that's not all : to celebrate their native son,the Mulhouse region equipment company (SERM) created a promenade park in 1995 ;in 2024 the Wyler family announced a Wyler scholarship .
Proof positive they did not a bear a grudge against a country which at a time was under the dictatorship of the Nouvelle Vague critics and the absurd "author theory", despised one of the greatest American directors.
The tables had started to turn at the beginning of the century, when the re-issue of "the children's hour" was hailed by a new generation of critics .
It was about time!!!
This doc is absorbing ,mainly if ,like me,you 've seen almost all his filmography .""the letter" opening sequence,had it been signed Welles or Hitchcock ,would be studied today "I hope it is anyway ; too bad that the doc overlooked the third Davis / Wyler masterpiece "little foxes ".
The director was remarkable ,but such was the man :after directing "Mrs Minniver " the final scene of which was a call to fight for the democracy ,he joined the army where,like his good friend Huston ,he filmed the fighter pilots under the fire and lost part of his hearing ; the doc focuses on "the best years of our lives" ,probably his most personal film and shows how the three main characters represent himself ;during the witch hunt,his attitude was always admirable .
"Ben Hur" ,the unheard success of which went against him in his native France (then Germany before WW1)
Suffice to say ,it's better than the flat Wallace novel (which was inspired by Dumas' "le comte de Monte Cristo "), and better than the silent version,the MTV effort and the dreaded 2017 remake ;it stands as one of the greatest epics of all time.
The end of the doc is less interesting :it passes over in silence "the children's hour " and "the collector" and too much time is given over to "funny girl" instead ;but it inspires ,as Quentin Tarentino points out ,Wyler's eclecticism he admires .His swansong effort " the liberation of LB Jones "bears this out ;from a musical to an antiracism plea ,it was a bold move ;this final effort contains the most horrible scene he ever filmed -not included in the doc-but few have seen it.
It 's about time to reevaluate WW!
Deux de l'escadrille (1953)
Don't shoot me,I'm an ally!
The aspirant Pierre Dourdan is characterized by an absolute lack of luck . Returning from a mission with an unhooked bomb under a wing, his landing is laborious. Summarizing the "glitches" that occurred to Dourdan, his superiors decide that he needs a little relaxation and send him, accompanied by Lieutenant Chardonneret, to spend a few days in Marrakech. During the journey, Dourdan mistakes an American plane for a German and shoots it down.
Dourdan 's reputation is so dismal he is nicknamed "la saucisse" (sausage);Jean Richard and Roger Pierre are good comic actors ,but the best scene ,which takes place in a house where the heroes have a warm welcome after shooting down a would be German fighter plane ,sees omnipresent Noel Roquevert steal the show from them: enthused by the so called pilots' feat ,he begins to tell his own story in WW1.
Based on a novel called "les cochons n'ont pas d'ailes " ( pigs don't fly),some good fun moments ,but do not ask too much.
Le roman d'un spahi (1936)
Breaking through cultural differences.
Based on a novel by Pierre Loti , this movie was made in praise of the French Spahis ;from 1831
to 1962 ,they were soldiers in the cavalry units of North Africa or Senegal, supervised by French officers.
But there were natives among them ,and one of them is good friends with the hero and his sidekick ,who serves as a foil to him. Nyaor,the third "musketeer " is never ridiculous ,and his sister Patou's desperately in love with the handsome dashing Peyral. When he finally realizes that the fickle Cora (Mireille Balin , the femme fatale of "gueule d'amour" and the romantic Parisian in "Pepe Le Moko",both taking place in North Africa ) despises him and rejects the soldier for a general,he finds solace in Nyaor 's sister 's arms ; this affair is blamed by the hierarchy (Pierre Larquey tells him so ) but here lies the modernity of the movie, the young spahi defies the white society and soon Patou is pregnant by him .The end of the novel was sweetened , for the child is not yet born when the tragedy strikes .
Historically ,this legionnaire movie , the remake of a silent one ,was one of the first not to consider the natives as big kids ,though Patou speaks "pidgin French" (on the other hand his brother's language is grammatically correct).
The Virtuoso (2021)
White river , white light,white heat
Certainly better than the rating ;this par excellence professional killer keeps violence, gore and sex to economical levels and verges on psychological thriller with plenty of voice over depicting the hero's frames of mind .As for supporting Anthony Hopkins,he is decidedly one of the best actors in the world, managing to get his awful immoral "vindication " of a soldier's acts through.
This is a slow-moving screenplay ,and that might be off-putting to some ; it borrows some revealing tricks from "the usual suspects" towards the end, but in this enclosed place of the hotel ,it recalls the British murder mysteries ,a whodunit in reverse of sorts .And the ending does not allow a " Virtuoso 2" ,which is a good thing.
La promesse verte (2024)
Midday express.
In an attempt to save her son Martin, who has been unjustly sentenced to death in Indonesia, Carole embarks on an unequal fight against the palm oil producers responsible for deforestation and against powerful industrial lobbies.
The film met mixed critical reception in its native land , and the imdb rating is average ; when the dust settles,one has to admit it's a courageous movie, not always convincing , but which will grab you till its ending ,in spite of a rather conventional denouement ,with the obligatory deus ex machina , the revealing photograph and the magic of computering.
The first part is the most successful ,IMHO ; the cinematography is splendid , using the wide screen with taste , enhancing this wonderful forest ,the lungs of our planet ; thus, my favorite scene is the stroll through the forest when the native kneels down before his "father" a giant centenarian tree ; but the following scene shows the company workers ,chopping down the trees to get this palm oil ,which will make money in the name of ecology ; the Asian girl speaks about the forest wildlife , all these animals who desert their habitat .... The people 's dispensary and the Canadian doctor ,though ,are at least as important as an anthropology student and his tesis (which gives its title to the movie) , that's why the ending is downright embarrassing for that matter IMHO.
It turns ecological ,economical and political thriller in its second part ; Alexandra Lamy gives a restrained but effective performance ,the director insisted she do not wear any make-up. To a lesser degree ,the same can be said of Felix Moati .The treatment recalls then the trail-blazer in this field ,André Cayatte 's,so often unjustly despised by the French biased critic .Perhaps there're too many things : the French farmers urging their government to tax the palm oil (whereas their colza produces a less polluting green fuel ); the listlessness of this government because France has capital invested in the oil company , the deputy probably more interested in her electorate (and telling the distraught mother that there has been no executions for twenty years in Indonesia ,it takes thoughtlessness to new limits ). An unpleasant short look at the people ,who,unlike the highbrows, seem unable to sympathise (the woman in the café ); and the hunting scene verges on grotesque .
In spite of these reservations ,"la promesse verte" is to be recommended ,and its final lines on the screen are apivotal warning to all of us
Only 50% of the dialogue is in French ,40 % in English and 10% in Indonesian ,which may be off-putting to some ;my copy had no subtitles at all , I hope the other viewers will be luckier.
Open Season (1974)
Must be the season of the witch !
This is a disturbing film ;take the first sequences : the police station where a mom whose daughter was raped is not taken seriously ; then housewives are enjoying a party when a man (William Holden,in an one-minute appearance ) entrusts his mentally-retarded child to the ladies. It's important to cast an universally known actor for this cameo , but you are puzzled .
After this strange prologue whose connection with the plot escapes us during most of the movie ,the real action begins ; a couple is abducted and mistreated by three sadists ,it recalls Collinson's first effort "the penthouse" ; the bank executive appears first as a victim but further acquaintance shows that he's a coward ,trying to escape while abandoning his girlfriend to her sad fate ;Fonda, Lynch ,and to a lesser degree, Law are credible psychopaths ;after a while ,the film turns "the most dangerous game" ,but the ending will be totally unexpected ;the recorded tape and a whodunit of sorts may remind you of "and then there were none" ,which ,coincidence , would be Collinson 's (failed) follow-up .
The moral about the war will seem highly questionable to many , but the story will keep you glued to your chair ,in spite of the sordidness of the situation ; and unlike today's numerous thrillers which deal with the subject ,the characters' past (the Vietnam War horrors, which De Palma will later show in his own "outrage" ) might explain their madness.
L'incantevole nemica (1953)
How to conduct a witch hunt.
Italy, in the early 1950s, in the midst of the Cold War . Mr. Albertini, director of a large cheese factory, lives in exaggerated fear of a communist revolution. His staff has gone on strike to demand the reinstatement of two laid-off workers. Only one member of staff is present at the roll call, the young accountant Roberto ( Robert Lamoureux ), a newcomer to the city. Intrigued by the behavior of this zealous worker, Albertini follows him to find out where he lives and notes with horror that he is staying in the premises of the PCI (Italian Communist Party). In a small common room, Roberto explains to a few workers his plan to improve working conditions in the cheese factory, which consists of decorating the courtyard with geraniums, according to a plan he draws in chalk on a board........
;.....but when he draws a cross on the board , the boss' s fear knows no bound anymore : this seemingly harmless employee is a commie terrorist and he's going to assassinate him ,blow up his precious cheese plant .So he decides to make friends with this dangerous "enemy " and he invites him in his luxurious dwelling ;before ,he removes the portrait of a bishop (no connection with the high clergy!) but leaves the samovar (it's Russian!) and makes sure that Russian salad is served ;then begins a dialogue of the deaf which will continue all along a delightful side-splitting comedy ; in this field ,Italians are much better than the French ,and Robert Lamoureux finds here one of his best roles ; icing on the cake, two other French actors, Raymond Bussières and his real -life wife Annette Poivre appear in a scene which opens the clueless accountant's eyes .
All in all , it's a comparatively harmless and reasonably justified plea for a square deal for the proletarians ,but it is a very funny comedy to be recommended .
Special guest star :Buster Keaton!!!!
Le judoka, agent secret (1966)
Minus ten ,if it were allowed!
This is the first "Judoka" movie in a serie which died on the vine ;quite righty so.
The second episode "casse -tête chinois pour le judoka" was more professional , more painstaking ,but all in all, was a (very) poor man's James Bond .Marilu Tolo is featured in both ,but she does not play the same character,if one may use such a term .
The first installment is a mess , extremely badly directed , with a cock and bull screenplay , absurd sequences :the long audition in the studio takes the biscuit, when innocent people who have done nothing wrong , can hear a long-haired secret agent masquerading as hippie pop singer strum his guitar ; "it's not strong enough musically" the artistic director (Perrette Pradier, often cast as the villainess in those sub-Bond flicks) says. A gentle euphemism !I bet you Assurancetourix is much better!
For the rest ,there's a fight every fifteen minutes because we deal with a judoka,just the same! A lot of scenes were filmed in Orly airport , which might have impress yesterday's audience that did not often take a plane (if they did).
The best actor of the lot, French-English Michael Lonsdale would show much more ambition afterwards and enjoy a brilliant career .
So Little Time (1952)
The exception
Based on a French book which sank without a trace and was overshadowed by another one with an eponymous title by Nicolas Fargue ; a salute to the French ,the cast includes Gabrielle Dorziat as the mother ,a very famous actress in her native land .
"Je ne suis pas une heroine" (I'm not a heroine ),the French version took back the name of the novel .
It took a lot of nerve to show a woman who, through the love they share for music ,falls for a German officer,thus becoming a traitor to her homeland ,much to her family 's shame. And one of them is a resistant fighter who urges the shameless treacherous girl to inform them about the enemy's plans .
Maria Schell's smiling face brightens up the whole movie and Marius Goring matches her all along the film.
And Soon the Darkness (1970)
Beware of darkness.
A smart viewer would save himself a lotta time by avoiding the awful remake starring Amber Heard and springing for the 1970 original ; the "modern version " spoils any suspense by showing in a girl tied and tortured by a psychopath as an unappetizing prologue .
"And soon the darkness " (1970) has stood the time quite well ; neither gore nor sex but after half an hour , the film becomes more and more disturbing and there's no letup as it continues to build in fear and apprehension as the heroine is meeting persons who might be enemies ;do not forget that Pamela Franklin was no bimbo but a seasoned actress who played opposite first-class actors such as Dirk Bogarde ("our mother's house" ),Deborah Kerr ("the innocents" ) , Maggie Smith ("the prime of Miss Jean Brodie" ) ,even Marlon Brando ("the night of the following day ")
The sunny French country with its villages and its bistro is well depicted :the French audience knows very well Jean Carmet ,who plays the café owner and who rejoices when a crime attracts the clientele ;ominous warnings ("bad road" "bad road" ) ,two shady policemen , a halfwit ,all these sinister-looking (or handsome)characters become living threats for a desperate girl in search of her lost companion ; suspense is sustained till the very end , without the contemporary paraphernalia of the horror flicks and with a great economy of means .
To be recommended ; for Heaven's sake, avoid the remake.
Double messieurs (1986)
Double bore
François, an ordinary executive, leads a peaceful life, surrounded by his wife and children. One day, he discovers on the cover of a detective novel the portrait of his old accomplice Léo, whom he has not seen for 25 years and whom he once knew at summer holiday camp. The latter has become a movie stuntman but has remained an eternal teenager. Together, they decide to find Kuntchinski, the third thief of the gang, to start again the game they loved so much during their adolescence.
The movie was critically-acclaimed when it was released;today it's difficult to understand what the praise was all about ;some call it artistic ,I'll call it arty ;the screenplay is loose, and recalls the worst aspects of the Nouvelle Vague ,the actors left to their own devices : Yves Alfonso hams it up all along the way and he's almost unbearable ,beautiful talented Carole Bouquet plays here like a zombie and wonders what the hell she's doing in this business .
Nostalgia can be a wonderful subject,but it's not that much new :in George lampin's 1950 "les anciens de saint-Loup" where former students meet again in a school after all those years : in spite of an unpleasant macho side -which is also present in "double messieurs "-, the director already pointed out that memories do not matter that much when you grow up ; in his extraordinary epilogue of "la meilleure façon de marcher" (1976),Claude Miller put the holiday camp in parenthesis .
For highbrows.
Beatrice Cenci (1956)
family plot
The conspiracy against the tyrant -father actually involved mother,brother ,Béatrice and her lover ; the poisoning by two of her lovers was historically accurate but failed .
The movie takes liberties with history ,which was sweetened ,as far as the heroine is concerned but it does not matter when you deal with Riccardo Freda ,the king of the popular cinema in the noblest sense of the term ;he's the king of the costume drama as " il cavaliere misterioso," "Spartaco" "le sette spade del vendicatore" testify ,to name but three .
He does know how to tell a story and his directing is efficient ,particularly in the night scenes ,in which he uses knowing lightnings ; most of the actors rise to the occasion ,particularly French Micheline Presles as the hypocrit fiendish stepmother and Gino Cervi ,the colorful father in love with his daughter ,almost a variation on the "beauty and the beast " topic . On the other hand ,Mireille Granelli is rather bland and one can wonder why Freda did not cast his magnificent wife ,Gianna-Maria Canale.
Best moments: the banquet ,with the poisoned pheasant ; the murder made to look like an accident .
Even if the denouement is well known , Freda creates some suspense ,not a small feat!
Stéphane Audran, la complice de Chabrol (2024)
Chabrol's golden years starring Audran.
First of all, it allowed me to live and then he's a charming guy, I got a good deal! (..) And while you're making your wife work, you might as well make her bring in money!" Stéphane Audran and Claude Chabrol are first of all a very funny couple who reveal a tender, cheerful and wildly creative complicity! Between filming and interviews, a love story and cinema take shape...
A must for the actress's and the director's fans, it focused on the films they made together ,most of them (1967-1973) remaining the crème de la crème of Chabrol's work:"les biches" "la femme infidèle" , his indisputable masterpiece "le boucher" , "la rupture " (the breach)(often overlooked in France but. A hit abroad),"juste avant la nuit" and "les noces rouges "; with the exceptions of earlier works such as "les cousins " or le beau Serge " and latter achievements such as "Violette Nozières " and his last masterpiece "la cérémonie" , the late sixties /early seventies were the perfect time for the winning team ;it's not mentioned in the doc, but their marriage was on the rocks circa 1970 at the time of "the breach" ,and by 1972,they went their separate ways;yet they were always the best of friends and their collaboration lasted for years .
The doc shows a joyful couple, bons vivants (Chabrol's fondness for gastronomy is legendary ;he chose the Périgord for "le boucher" because of their fine cooking there )Oddly , one non-Chabrol movie is featured ,but it's Bunuel's classic "le charme discret de la bourgeoisie "
Cry Wolf (1947)
What lies beneath
Excellent Gothic thriller, whIch possesses everything you love in the genre: a stately but lugubrious castle, a wicked uncle (played by cast againt type Errol Flynn ), a perhaps scheming but determined woman (the role was tailor-made for Barbara Stanwyck), a frail damsel in distress (the sister in law ,played by Geraldine Brooks) whose boyfriend we hardly catch a glimpse of,and who seems frightened by all of them ,including a sinister-looking housekeeper ,in the mold of Rebecca 's Miss Denvers
Some bizarre events occur in this place where Stanwyck's husband died (but did he really die? His sister heard him scream in the night)Don't we learn it was actually a marriage of convenience ,for the calculating uncle intended to get his nephew's fortune ?; and what does he do at night in this mysterious lab? Would he be a mad scientist?
Much suspense ,notably when Stanwyck sneaks into the lab, or the disturbing meeting in the woods at night.
And to top it all ,a stunning unexpected twist ,and ,considering all that happened before, a coup de théatre that makes sense .
No Way Up (2024)
Way down.
What have we learned after watching that?
1) After the plane wreck ,stand close to the little girl: as she 's sure to be safe and sound in the end , you will too...
2) Do listen to your bodyguard's piece of advice :he's old enough to know better .
3) Be a governor's daughter :the attempts to save your life to find the beloved child won't be fruitless ,whereas ,if you are simple chap.....
4) Never humiliate the steward and treat him like a dog.
5) Never say "I'm an engineer" to impress the others
6) Have a former military nurse (a lieutenant preferably)at hand ,it's useful.
7)Be part of the main characters,you do not stand a chance if you're just an extra.