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Reviews
Conduite à gauche (1962)
If I could start over ......
Everything happens in a daydream in a hospital waiting room. While his young wife has just been seriously injured and is undergoing surgery, the husband relives, in his memory, the reality of their recent past, or what he would have liked his marital union to be. At the beginning, this young couple took as their model the famous couple from "Dangerous Liaisons" and their line of conduct: complete freedom allowed to each, as long as they confide in each other about their adventures...
Guy Lefranc's first efforts were certainly promising :"knock" who owed a lot to Jouvet though, "une histoire d 'amour" and "capitaine pantoufle" ;afterward, the slump began.
"Conduite à gauche" showed a tendency to look towards the NV: cult of youth, navel-gazing, loose screenplay ; the story is an interminable flashback , divided into two parts : the first told in the past tense ,the second in the past conditional where the husband thinks about his errors ,how he neglected his wife ;thus involving minimal expenses (same characters, same places).
This is cinema de papa masquerading as NV .It's all the more infuriating since Dany Robin had already been through this kind of movie before : in Julien Duvivier 's masterful "la fête à Henriette" (1952) she lived different lives according to the screenwriters' whims. Avoid Lefranc's poor film and watch this great director's .
Robin's co-star,Marcel Amont is better as a singer than as an actor.
Les patates (1969)
For a few potatoes more.
The sixties were a hard time from all the great directors who worked before the N. V . Autant-Lara's work in this era can be classified into two categories : the commissioned movies ("vive Henri IV Vive l'amour" ,"le comte de Monte Cristo " "le magot de Josepha") and the ones he was anxious to make ,dealing with taboo subjects : A conscientious objector in "tu ne tueras point" (1963) and abortion ("journal (et nouveau ) "journal d'une femme en blanc" (1965-66); so the great rebellious director of "douce" " le diable au corps" and "l'auberge rouge" was still present .
Like his precedent effort "le franciscain de Bourges " (1968) , "les patates ' takes place during the occupation ; comic singer Pierre Perret (who was also capable of deeply moving anti-racist songs as "Lily ") plays the lead and his jovial face fits the atmosphere like a glove .
This is a farce which put off many people at the time , but hindsight shows that his next-to-last movie was his swan song (as for the last ,"Gloria" ,if you can't say something nice...); in occupied France , people living in the country were not as starving as in Paris (as depicted in "la traversée de Paris" ) ,but in the forbidden zone, here les Ardennes , people were not sure to have something to eat when their supply run
out .
Hence the necessity to get potatoes (check the title) ,which ,as the comedy turns to drama , becomes the hero's obsession ; Autant-Lara and his screenwriter Jean Aurenche do not pass over in silence the collaborators who stuff themselves with fine food ,but they also expose the selfishness of the hero , his property instinct hated by his fellow men ; all in all ,he's responsible for the final tragedy .
Le comte de Monte Cristo (1961)
The Dantès redemption.
How many versions of the famous novel are there in the world? Even the "best movie of all time "(sic) ,according to the IMDb users ,"Shawshank redemption", owes a lot to Alexandre Dumas and his count: Andy is Dantès and Red is Faria. Lewis Wallace 'said that "Ben Hur" was inspired by Edmond Dantès' fall and vengeance .And so on and on and on....
In France , the versions considered best were both Robert Vernay's (1942,black and white ,1953,,color) but it seems that it's now overshadowed by the 2024 film featuring Pierre Ninney,the unexpected blockbuster of the year.
Claude -Autant Lara 's effort was made at a time as a potboiler so that he was able to finance the works he was anxious to make ;the follow -up to his "Monte Cristo" was a taboo subject,the case of the conscientious objector ("tu ne tueras point" 1963)and he spent every last penny for a movie which scared everybody and of course was not a box office hit
So it's obvious that "le comte de Monte Cristo " is a commissioned film ;but it does not mean that it's a bad movie :it shows respect for the audience ;like Vernay's previous versions , it was divided in two "époques" (eras) , and the audience had to come back to the theater to see the whole (a three-hour French production was not profitable ;so the audience had to pay twice; the 2024 version was released as a whole of course and it's about as long as the 1961 effort)
Louis Jourdan was of course too old to portray a 22-year-old sailor ,but as the story spreads over twenty years , it's not a big problem ;Jourdan ,like Jean Marais in the fifties ,had the aristocratic look and a dash of mystery that work quite well in the second part ;the best scenes in the first part are those with Abbé Faria whose philosophy will be more important than the famous treasure ;the second part was simplified ,and sweetened as far as Mercédès's fate is concerned ;her husband's is much different from the novel ,and the part of Haydée is reduced to the minimum .
Although impersonal,for a man who was one the greatest directors France has ever had ("douce" "le diable au corps" "la traversée de Paris" )the movie was made with care and is never dull ;it's certainly enjoyable, even for today's audience.
Au pays des cigales (1946)
Nothing new under the sun.
Henri is in Marseille, and is a song publisher. He is kindly in love with Mariette, the daughter of a fairground worker whom a competitor persecutes and wants to ruin in order to obtain the young girl's hand. After a few adventures, Henri finally exposes the villain .
It's a musical,for the star,Henri Alibert ,was a singer and the music was written by Vincent Scotto,par excellence the composer of the operetta taking place in the country of cicadas (check the title),that is to say the Provence and the French Riviera .
The screenplay is extremely poor, and has absolutely nothing in store for the viewer;so if you do not like this music style, pass it up.
High Wall (1947)
Past imperfect.
Released at a time when "psychiatric " movies were the craze "high wall" (very adequate title) does the trick quite well ; one often thinks of "spellbound", with his shrink-and-patient pair, Robert Taylor and Audrey Totter recalling Ingrid Bergman trying to break the walls which imprisoned Gregory Peck's memory.
Of course the treatments are obsolete,but with the second induced flashback,the story comes full circle ; the old man sufferingfrom arthrosis is a good supporting character and both the scenes of the aquarium and that when he's delivered forever from his pain are solid film noir. The depiction of the insane asylum is out of time ,but not without a touch of irony (they have good music in here).
Torna! (1954)
Mama don't goooo ! daddy come home!
This is melodrama,the whole melodrama ,nothing but melodrama starring the king ,Amedeo Nazzari and the queen,Yvonne Sanson ,of the genre ;to compare the Italian melo to Douglas Sirk is absurd :his is the ironical ending ,the false happy end and women are not poor victims of fate (in "imitation of life" the heroine favors her career over her love affair; in "written on the wind,"she reigns over the black oil kingdom; in "all that heaven allows" , she turns back from a hypocrit society and selfish offsprings)
Here the mom suffers suffers suffers , falling into the hand of a former cynical suitor (the role of the villain was tailor made for Franco fabrizzi), who trashes her, and she's not able to react to events she endures the most terrible humiliations. All she has to do is cry.
But what fate lies in store for daddy is not better: himself an illegimate child (in the first scenes, his cousin's false friendship speaks volumes about that) , the jealous relative makes him believe he did not father her adorable little girl .And in the end ,all he has to do is cry too....
It's melodrama through and through , if you like it ,like me, you'll enjoy .If not,pass it up.
Mam'zelle Spahi (1934)
Night moves
The colonel of the 32nd Spahis has a friend whom he has installed in a nearby hotel. He tells his wife that maneuvers take place every night in order to free himself.
Lieutenant Gilbert, for his part, tries to break off a cumbersome affair. And everyone ends up at the hotel.
But soon the secret will slowly begin to become known.
Also known as "night maneuvers ",which makes sense ,for when they receive fiery messages from their lovers , the colonel and his lieutenant tell their wife and fiancée that the duty calls ...
To take their revenge on their lovers who treat them like "prostitutes for soldiers" ,both women dress up as spahis (some kind of legionnaires), justifying the title ,"miss spahi" ;two orderlies do the same and become "the prefet's cousins ;but it's a far cry from "fanfare d'amour",released the same year,the German remake of witch spawned "some like it hot".
Conflict (1945)
Did she rise from the dead?
More a suspenseful Hitchcockian story than a film noir, it is an excellent thriller ;Bogart's sly look when he warns his missus , recommands her to drive carefully for the.mountain roads are dangerous; his very smart alibi and his appearance from nowhere before his stupefied wife will make your blood run cold
The perhaps botched job ,the dead who might or might not be dead and who sends things and calls on the phone,the empty apartment, all this anticipates the French classic "les.diaboliques " (1955) ; and it was made ten years before !The hero thinks he's losing his mind, just like the heroine in Clouzot's famous work .The fact that he's in love with his victim's sister (and thus jealous of her suitor) adds to the tension ;outside the USA, this jewel(with an extremely scary finale) should be more known.
The Locket (1946)
Diamonds are not always a girl's best friend.
Excellent psychiatric thriller in the vein of " spellbound" "cat people " or "secret beyond of the door" in the forties; it boasts a masterful construction :no less than four successive flashbacks ,the last one ,the best ,explaining the heroine's behavior ; it is mainly when you are a child. That you feel deep in your heart unfairness,humiliation and it follows you all life long : the harsh face of the wealthy woman will never leave the little girl's mind who still remembers it when she's walking down the aisle.
The picture of eyeless Cassandra gives an eerie side to the movie (like Salvador Dali 's dream in "spellbound" ) and Robert Mitchum's final scene is impressive .
Le guêpier (1976)
Le guêpier =sticky situation.
Renaud, who divides his time between gambling halls and racetracks, discovers that someone is paying off his debts. In exchange, he is asked for a favor: to steal a briefcase full of currency on the Paris/Lausanne express. Hesitant at first, he ends up accepting. On the train, Renaud meets ravishing Melba, a cabaret artist who does her Marlene Dietrich act .
Former actor Roger Pigaut's last theatrically-released work, it's sadly his less successful ;as an actor ,he starred in great movies ("douce" "sortilèges" "les frères bouquinquant ") ;his debut as a director began with a film aimed at the children's market "cerf-volant du bout du monde" ",one of the best movies ever released in this field ;his other efforts are moderately good
. Thrillers "comptes à rebours" and "trois milliards sans ascenseur "
.
"Le guêpier " is more tongue in chick , more a comedy than a thriller ;it takes time to take off ,and it does (moderately ) when both principals meet ; all in all , it's the actors who carry the film on their shoulders : Claude Brasseur as a rather grumpy misogynous amateur thief and charming (and rather limpet-like ) Swiss Marthe Keller ;both enliven a bit this trite and muddled script.
Master of the World (1961)
Madman across the atmosphere
Based on two Verne's books , the screenplay was written by Richard Matheson which guarantees a certain quality ; the message is intact ,it was also VIctor Hugo's : destroy the weapons and demob the armies ,and presto !no more wars. But Matheson does not pass over in silence the latent danger : the tyranny of a man whose megalomany knows no bounds .
Even among the so-called heroes ,it's not black and white ;Mr Prudent is a "master of war " and Philippe is a coward,whose attitude is obnoxious in the escape scenes (and he is not blamed for that);on the other hand , Strock (Bronson) appears first as an informer before revealing his true colors .
Of course the special effects will seem quaint and cheap for the 2024 audience, but this film retains the freshness of the those adventures cum sci -fi films of long ago. And Vincent Price is ideally cast as Robur ,one of these outlandish characters of Verne's books, the likes of capitaine Nemo .
Le cavalier noir (1945)
Tongue in chick Robin Hood cum Dick Turpin
Gilles Grangier's most salutary quality was his flair for films noirs , the 1955-1959 era plus "danger de mort" (1947)
"Le cavalier noir" (called "the black count" ,not "the black horseman" in the story ) is tongue in chick Robin Hood cum Dick Turpin adventures ;besides as the hero , Georges Guétary, is primarily a singer , it's also a musical and his songs,if your taste don't run that way, get in the way .
Guétary and co-star Nicole Maurey are bland and devoid of panache and charisma ;thus the best moments come from the old guard ,Jean Tissier and Alerme: the first is an officer in charge of fighting the smugglers :at the time ,there was in France a salt tax ,the "Gabelle" ; and he's so dumb one can wonder why his master,the marquis, never fired him ; the noble is not very smart either ;the first sequences are really funny : the officer takes the enemy (the black count) to the marquis' s desirable castle where both men reveal their plans to the outlaw ; the old local country squire tells about his numerous trysts in Versailles of yore .He and his henchman make a riotously funny pair, but the film quickly loses steam .
Rue des Saussaies (1951)
cops and robbers mix-up
Inspector Leblanc was chosen by Jeanne to avenge her brother who was murdered by Brasier, who, despite his honest appearance, is involved in criminal activity. But the real leader of the gang is Cortedani, whom no one can meet. Leblanc, following the chain, discovers Cortedani, then spends an unpleasant time.
The story may seem rather simple ,but it is actually terribly muddled and it is often hard to tell apart the cops and the robbers ;it was Ralph Habib's first effort ,and the following movies did not improve on it;his directing is flat and does nothing to enliven the paucity of the screenplay;female star Anne Vernon would see better days (Jacques Becker's works ,"les parapluies de Cherbourg").
This 'rue des Saussaies " became notorious duting the Occupation:it was the gestapo headquarters.
The Prodigal (1955)
A rich boy took his father's bread and started down the road
This extravaganza will remind you of your Sunday school of yore ,although only the beginning and the ending of the movie are inspired by Christ's parable ,and the prologue has something of the good Samaritan .
While Father is fattening up the calf , sonny is dallying with Samarra , the high priestess of Baal and Astarte , the nasty Gods who demands such horrors as human sacrifices ; but Jehovah is petulant and is not prepared to accept such lies (and unfair competition) .Lana Turner plays the temptress , a puppet in the hands of wicked priests who starve the poor people (although one has never the feeling they are starving). Edmund Purdom was one of the regular performers of these peplums (see also "the Egyptian ", which is much better ,for it is based on an absorbing book).
My Man and I (1952)
The story of a good man.
In the unforgettable "wild boys of the roads " (1933),Eddie who stands accused tells the judge about his plight ;the young actor was so convincing that he could effortlessly drive you to tears. Chu Chu did the same when he reads his letter to the president (of the US). Both believe in justice, both got a raw deal; people unfairly treated was a grave concern for the great William Welman : "the ox- bow incident"is certainly one of the most revolting films that has ever been filmed.
Chu Chu is proud to become an American citizen. He believes in the dream , in democracy and Lincoln's country cannot be wrong ; in direct contrast with him ,Nancy ,an alcoholic loser , has lost all her illusions ; but neither she nor the vilain,Ames ,can destroy Chu Chu's faith ,joie de vivre and hope for a better future .
The world can't be thoroughly black or white;even in his most desperate work, "ox -bow " ,seven people were the just against a maddening bunch ; Chu Chu is a good man who would not hurt a fly ,and the members of the jury (it's rare) do think it's a travesty of a trial ; and the way Chu Chu's friends torment Ames to awaken his conscience is pacifist, friendly persuasion, through and through ( going as far as to give a kitten to the wife)
Montalban ,Winters,Corey and Trevor are all excellent.
Mireille (1934)
South side story
Mireille, the only daughter of a wealthy Provençal landowner, swears to marry only a man she truly loves, even if he is poor. Mireille has already made her choice: Vincent, a basket maker. During the Arles feria, Mireille rejects the advances of Ourias, a wealthy breeder. Jealous that Mireille prefers Vincent to him, Ourias provokes him and beats him violently. Learning that her love is wounded, Mireille ventures alone into the mountains to find him.
Based on Frederic Mistral's long poem in Provençal ( Nobel prize 1904) and Charles Gounod's opera , after a first version in the silent age , this one 's half a musical ;the actors fell into oblivion , they both only made a handful of movies ;so did the director ,René Gaveau, whose only movie you can find today is his stupefying "Adam est.... Eve " ,a French Ed Wood's "Glen or Glenda?"
It was restored with good results , the pictures lovingly depicted the Camargue -some scenes seem to have filmed on location ,but the informations on this film are rare .
Its depiction of life in the Camargue is endearing : the women in their folk costumes,the guardians ,French cowboys,the farandole,the mas (farm in Provence).
As the story ,it's a tragic love story ,not unlike Alphonse Daudet 's "l'Arlésienne" -which also became a Bizet's opera- and was filmed in the thirties too .
Directing is Ok in its depiction but it falls flat when it comes to story -telling :the drowning of the brute is a mess ,and Mireille's long walk under a blistering sun ( impressive in the text ,translated into French of course ) is not convincing at all ;in the final scenes in the church ,using close shots , things go a little better .
Mireille ,the first name,is the Provençal form of Myriam or Marie. The film ends in Saintes Maries de La Mer town , where the legend has it that Mary- Magdelene and two of her companions would have landed .
Apartment 7A (2024)
Dancing with Mister D.
A prequel to Polanski's horror masterpiece ,since this "apartment " tells the story of Teresa Gionoffrio aka Terry whom Rosemary meets in the sinister basement ; Terry was studying to become a secretary ,here she wants to be a ballerina (her rival plays the role of Donald Baumgart ,being ousted thanks to the coven's curse ),which is certainly more prestigious (shades of Dario Argento's "suspiria" (1976))
All the characters of Levin's book but Rosemary ,Guy and Hutch are present ,and even the young couple briefly appears (don't leave when the cast and credits begin to roll); if you want to get acquainted with Mrs Garden(ia),this is the place .Sometimes it looks like a grotesque spoof on the classic ,my all-time favorite horror movie ; it shows how cheap and clumsy the 1968 work could have been, hadn't it been directed by a master .
The best thing is certainly the way they twisted the lyrics to Spector's Ronettes pop classic "be my baby" ;some black humor , Minnie says : "it's better to be in a coma than dead " ,but the good lines are few and far between ; the special effects and the nightmares are so poor that they show the gulf between a third-rate director and a great one such as Polanski (one had first a proof of that with the so so MTV miniseries )And no actor can match the fabulous Farrow/Cassavetes/ Blackmer /GORDON foursome !
Fans of "Rosemary baby" can watch it out of sheer curiosity ; the others can pass it up.
Doctor Zhivago (2002)
The doctor was a poet.
Many people complain about the adaptation of the novel;Lean's version is my favorite of this director ,but it was sweetened too.
Komarovsky's part was fleshed out and in the first hour,Sam Neil steals the show :his affair with both the mother and the daughter is more detailed ;besides the relationship between this lawyer and Yuri's father is not passed over in silence ;neither is his presence at the funeral (a flashback tells us about Yuri's father's suicide ; Robert Bolt 's screenplay states that the hero is an orphan and that's it .)
Another plus is the presence of Micha, perhaps Youri's only (male) friend ; the second wife ,Marina ,after the return to Moscow , is absent but this MTV work does not suffer from it ;we learn about the sad fate of Lara (which was not revealed in the 1965 version)and her presence in front of her love's coffin with her (and his) little son -in the book,it was a girl (who might or might not be the one played by Rita Tushingham in Bolt's screenplay-makes sense .
The ghostly reappearance of Pavel Antipov after Lara's and Komarovsky's departure is featured :the actor does not cut Tom Courtenay's performance though .
The war scenes are more realistic ,particularly during the revolution ;what's lacking is the wide screen used so magnificently by Fred A Young ,not only for the war scenes ,but also for the numerous sequences featuring a train (the train is often a recurrent feature in Russian litterature :see " Anna Karenine" );and the principal lacks Omar Sharif's charisma ,all that makes Youri and Julie Christie's Lara a legendary couple.
That said , this MTV work is quite watchable and its insistence on "The doctor was a poet " (his poems are featured as an epilogue of the novel) is welcome.
Chansons de Paris (1934)
A street singer becomes an opera star.
Georges, a street singer with a golden voice in 1930s Paris, is noticed successively by the director of a cabaret, then the director of a circus. His friend Armand, smarter than he seems under his simple exterior, manages to organize a hoax to show Georges that all these people are only interested in exploiting his voice at the lowest cost.
From a street singer to cabaret to circus to opera ,it is a short step,if we are to believe the screenwriters ; the principal is a tenor ,and his friend serves as a comic foil to him ;this is a far-fetched story , the purpose of which is to enhance Georges Thill 's golden voice and his songs : half melodrama and half musical , it features an unusual animated scene in the cabaret and an act with the singer dressed up as a (very cheap) automaton .
L'été nucléaire (2020)
It's a hard rain gonna fall
Filmed in 2019 , in its own way,the film ,unwittingly anticipated the immediate future :replace the nuclear threat by the covid epidemic and these people are locked down ,waiting for ministerial /prefectoral directives on their TV .
The main quality of this movie is to avoid the usual clichés: no computerized special effects, ,no stereotyped characters , no panic-stricken crowds ; it's similar , in its form ,to "malevil" (1981) : the ending of both movies is virtually the same .
"Eté nucleaire " is more realistic, with splendid panoramics: compare the luminous country where one of the characters is jogging with the thretening gloomy landscapes of the finale ;the main problem is the dialog : it never rises above the small talk , and what can be worse than the nuclear threat, when your life has just begun.?Too young to have known the events of Tchernobyl (1986) ,these youngsters are not totally clueless: they use a Geiger counter ; the last lines are radiation exposure rates .
Watch it anyway : it's definitely off the beaten track .
Crashout (1955)
Dark cave and white snow
A brilliant uncompromising film noir; escaping from a jail does not make you free men : their first prison is a cave ,darker as the darkest dungeon, where the horrible fate of the doctor who helped the injured convict sets the tone for the things to come :it's the law of the jungle ,where even one of them becomes their victim.
There is not the faintest glimmer of hope: a girl met on the train by the youngest of the band and a mature woman ,an abandoned woman with child , are not decorative but provides the movie with fleeting but necessary moments of a happiness which eludes them .
But they all are leaving on borrowed time. The survivors, beginning their miserable odyssey in the darkness of a cave ,end in a snow storm .
"There's no soap in the world that could wash it off"says Arthur Kennedy , one of my favorite character actors, here part of an uniformly excellent cast.
Un homme à abattre (1967)
Hangmen also die.
Philippe Condroyer only made three films: they are as different as can be : from "Tintin et le mystère de la Toison d'or" ,feat Hergé's hero ,to "la coupe à dix francs" ,his very best film which should have met a more tolerant audience .In between , "un homme à abattre " was an UFO in the sixties French thrillers ; a political movie devoid of Costa-Gavras' appeal ,whose movies were accessible to a wide audience , it is an uncompromising work , not palatable , fatally doomed at time of release : do not let Trintignant's presence fool you :it's not the thriller you expect ; the female star ,Valérie Lagrange , who was his wife in "un homme et une femme " (1966) , has an insignificant part and seems only in it to give the revealing "birthday cake" clue .
The film begins with a very long black and white amateur film depicting ,unbeknownst to him, a former Nazi torturer's whereabouts ; the characters are mysterious and long after the beginning , we know about nothing about them and their target. And almost the whole movie takes place in a house , sometimes recalling "suddenly " (1954) without hostage-taking.
Many things and motives will remain mysterious ,and the final panoramic was the best ending such an offbeat movie could offer .
This movie and "la coupe à dix francs " should have got critical acclaim and made Condroyer a name to be reckoned with;it was not to be and those works are never screened on French TV .
Mon oncle du Texas (1962)
Texas cook.
In 1911, Arnolphe Combalette left his corner of Provence to seek his fortune in the Americas. Fifty years later, a letter from him arrived in the village: "No, I'm not dead yet, but it won't be long now. You should send me a Combalette here to settle a big money issue." The family then held a council and delegated their youngest son, Dieudonné, a cook by trade. Without incident, Dieudonné arrived in New York, but very quickly found himself penniless.
To recreate the sheer extent of the Texas territory in a studio is a feat in itself and it speaks volumes about the paucity of the budget. Only three or four actors are Americans ,including Jess Hahn who was never cast in a movie shot on the soil of his native land ;all the cowboys and the Indians are played by French, the squaw fiancee wearing a ridiculous wig which can't fool anyone .
That said , the first half of the movie is rather funny ,thanks to Henri Tisot ,ideally cast as the big ninny sent to America ; the family naively thinks that , to thank La Fayette ,French is spoken in the USA . L'"Oncle D'Amérique" (the rich uncle who made his fortune in oil has been a French myth for years )sends the clueless hero to America ,where his tribulations to join the wealthy parent are pleasant to watch ; after the discovery of the uncle's "fortune" ,though,the slump begins ; the last half is a spateful of clichés, with gags recalling the silent age ,and the screenplay is as dumb as can be .
The director made French series in the sixties,and it shows.
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 .