Film Reviews by Mr Aquarium

This film is so rare that it's not even mentioned in my 2017 Radio Times Film Guide. The director [Henri-Georges Clouzot] is, however, famous, having directed the thriller to end all thrillers - "The Wages of Fear" - in the 1950s.

Although it's a crime film with several murders, it's a blackly humorous film [well, 1940s French humour] and well worth watching if you're OK with b&w subtitled French films. There's a twist at the end of the film.

A young boy in the USA of the late 1950s or early 1960s has an oddball, sometimes insensitive father, a loving but progressively unwell mother, and two very eccentric uncles. This has engaging characters, some effective acting, and one or two powerful scenes, but there's a sense that the screenplay is uneven. The film begins as driven by the eccentricities and their effect on the boy, but then the film is increasingly shaped by the mother's illness. It's not quite in balance; you sense that with more work on the screenplay, a better film would've emerged.

Got this on the basis of liking Dylan Moran in his later sit-com, "Black Books", and also of seeing the late Charlotte Coleman as a reliably interesting performer. However, the Dylan Moran character here is more annoying and dopey than amusing. In addition, his father-in-law and brother-in-law are set up as antagonistic, but too much so; they seem to be acting like people from "Straw Dogs" rather than a sit-com. Charlotte Coleman doesn't seem to have enough to do.

Thus, we gave up after the first three episodes. Obviously, things might have improved after those opening episodes, and humour is a very personal thing, so you might still want to give this a go.

Jealousy, music halls, murder, feverish police interrogations, Hitchcockian twists and turns; apparently amoral at first glance, yet very contemporary in its nods towards a sympathetic lesbian and a policeman unashamedly proud of his mixed-race child.

Wonderfully restored Blu-ray version.

The director's other films are worth pursuing, especially the nail-biter of all nail-biters - "The Wages of Fear".

These episodes are set in the late 19th century, from 3 short stories by the great Guy De Maupassant. The central episode, about a group of prostitutes on an overnight visit to a Normandy village is especially delightful. As you would expect from the director [and from Maupassant], conventional expectations about brothels and respectability are quietly but firmly challenged. There's a light but adult touch to it which is very French. [Imagine a British Victorian writing about the same thing ....]

Delightful topsy-turvy comedy, with a wonderful performance from the great Charles Laughton. His butler manages to be at first quietly disdainful of all, but then gradually excited by the chance to throw off his subservience; imagine Jeeves losing control and then being transplanted to a barely-tamed US frontier town...

Taste in comedy is very personal thing, but I agree with LA's review; very individual, almost silent movie in effect at points, and with some wonderful touches - look for the tie rack at the crematorium, and for who helps when the heroine is sure that she doesn't need a guide out of the cemetery...

Apart from the 2nd & 3rd stories, these are light-hearted, slightly silly in an engaging way, and Charles Laughton, as always, commands the screen without apparently meaning to. Marilyn Monroe only appears for about 20 seconds, but does engage attention when she does so! There's a pleasing period feel to the film, set as it is in about 1900.

Yes, the French landscape is beguiling, and the start of the film demands a little bit of patience, but there's an underlying sadness here; the main male character is the victim of a charmless father, and reluctant to help the family out. His return to the family business provokes emotional storms, but in a gradual and often understated and convincing way.

Along the way, another of the troubled family has an apparently quiet encounter which is underplayed to devastating effect. I won't say any more. It's a scene to remember.

The customer encounters are played for a kind of truthful humour. I agree with the previous reviewer that the story is, in many ways, predictable, but it didn't feel that way to me when watching it. The ending has some elements of wry redemption, but in no neat Hollywood fashion.

GDS

This is billed as "Comedy Drama, Black Or Dark Comedies". The label on the Cinema Paradiso envelope simply says "comedy". This is misleading. There's some light humour in the main female character's fantasies, and possibly some black humour at the end, but this film features a shocking killing - all the more shocking if you're expecting a comedy!

However, having said that, if you approach this as a Hitchcockian film, or as something in the way of a Claude Chabrol thriller, then you won't be disappointed. It plays with us and with the chief culprit in an intriguing way. From that point of view, well worth seeing.