Die sieben Todsünden

Entertaining film-á-sketch by different directors illustrating the seven more-fun-than-deadly sins in modern contexts. In turns glib, ironic, farcical, wry, witty, stylish, sexy and sophisticated, they're all watchable. In fact, even the least of them - it's difficult to say which that is - is downright impressive and full of good things - interesting simply for being French. Some are straightforward tales, others run like mini-features leaving you wanting more.

Sylvain Dhomme and Eugene Ionesco start off with a surreal account of Anger in which a fly in the soup leads to the end of the world. Edouard Molinaro delivers a chic, languid story of a maid and a movie star in Envy that may be the finest of all. Philippe de Broca's tale of Gluttony is a gently Tatiesque farcical interlude. Popular winner though, and most amusing on the whole, has to be Godard's piece on Sloth - filmed with the same panache as Breathless, it has Eddie Constantine wearily playing himself getting picked up by a chick and taken home; she's soon walking around in the buff but he's too lazy (or depressed, or cool) to get undressed. Lust, by Jacques Demy (doing Truffaut/Doinel) has Jean-Louis Trintignant and friend imagining scenes from Bosch in a café. Lots of nudity here. Roger Vadim does a classy piece on two-way adultery in Pride, dripping with sophisticated images. In Chabrol's lengthier effort to finish off (Avarice), a prostitute oversells herself to a bunch of soldiers and so becomes the prize in their lottery - a good mix of style, smut and comedy.

Quality ideas and film-making, most of it beautifully shot. Not greatness, just all-round artistry.

The seven deadly sins are divided into seven segments as follows: 1) Anger: (Director: Sylvain Dhomme) In a gentle French town, several men find flies in their Sunday soups. They have arguments with their wives, that grows successively to the streets, country and world. Very silly. (4) 2) Gluttony: (Director: Philippe de Broca) A family arrives late for the buffet of the funeral of the father of the patriarch. Very weak. (3) 3) Envy: (Director: Édouard Molinaro) The maid Rosette is envious of a movie star that is lodged in the hotel she works. Rosette seduces her lover and later she returns to the hotel as a client. Reasonable. (6) 4) Lust: (Director: Jacques Demy) Two friends discuss the meaning of lust. One of them recalls that when he was a child, he misunderstood the meaning of lust with luxury. Funny to see a boy smoking cigarette. Reasonable. (6) 5) Sloth: (Director: Jean-Luc Godard) An aspirant actress asks for a ride to the actor Eddie Constantine with the clear intention to seduce him. They go to his apartment, but Eddie is so lazy that does not have sex with her to avoid having to dress again. Very funny. (7) 6) Pride: (Director: Roger Vadim) One unfaithful couple cheats each other. The businesswoman has a love affair with a man that asks her to travel to Paris with him and get married when she gets the divorce. Her husband is a salesman that cheats her with her friend Heloise. Great short film. (8) 7) Greed: (Director: Claude Chabrol) Seven university students want to have sex with an expensive prostitute that charges 50,000 francs to spend a night with the client. They decide to make a lottery with 25 students giving 2,000 francs each. On the next morning, the prostitute asks the winner how he got money to be with her, and he tells about the lottery. She says that she will return his money but greed wins. The best. (8) My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Os Sete Pecados Capitais" ("The Seven Deadly Sins")

This is a blend of the bad, commercial work of journeymen French directors and the exciting new wave of Godard, Chabrol and Demy. Anger is the first sin to be treated, and Sylvain Dhomme does a terrible job with this silly story of flies in the soup provoking world catastrophe. Molinaro's version of Envy is no better. Philippe de Broca gets a fine hammy performance from Georges Wilson in Gluttony; some great satire of French country eating habits here. Jacques Demy is next with Lust, and he loses steam with a static visual style (none of the grace of Lola) and stiff acting. We can only surmise what he could have done with a better script.

Godard has the best segment, he's got Eddy Constantine playing a loafer for a change, not his Lemmy Caution-like nerveless violence. The cheesy Hawaiian music suits the story well. It's more verite than we are used to from Godard. After Sloth, we get Pride from Roger Vadim, and the banality of the story is relieved by some good acting by Sami Frey and Marina Vlady. I always thought it was a shame Vlady wasn't more popular; she had a gorgeous sleek cat's face and could do comedy. Chabrol is last with Greed, and he shows the usual facility and empty social commentary we have come to expect from him.

I saw this after Godard's "Breathless" & Truffaut's "400 Blows" and I found this the nicest of the three. I was immediately caught up in the surreal "Anger" and never felt let down by any of the "sins" that followed. The narratives are fine, the acting humane, and the directing lovely.

The 'seven deadly sins' were first introduced by the Catholic Church (needless to say!) in the sixth century. Since then they have proved an inexhaustible source of inspiration for creative artistes and provided boundless entertainment. Let's face it, they are infinitely more interesting than the seven deadly virtues and as Mark Twain observed:"you go to Heaven for the climate, to Hell for the company"!

A fair-to-middling portmanteau film about the capital vices had been made in France in 1952 but this later 'New Wave' version is nothing short of catastrophic. Most of the segments are worthless but by the law of averages there has to be just one that is redeeming. That one is directed by Roger Vadim and features Marina Vlady whose wifely pride prevents her leaving her husband, played by Jean-Pierre Aumont, when she discovers that he too is being unfaithful. The linear narrative here at least provides relief from the others. This is followed by a bizarre tale directed by Godard in which Michael Constantine plays a film star who cannot even be bothered to take off his clothes to have sex with a gorgeous starlet as it requires too much effort to put them back on. In keeping with its title 'Sloth' this has the effect of sending one to sleep.

The score, mostly by Michel Legrand, is intensely irritating even by his standards but Sacha Distel has written a haunting theme for the 'Pride' segment which would later become an international hit as 'The Good Life'.

Episodes 1, 2, 3, 4 and 7 are monumental misfires by directors trying to be 'clever' which must surely rank as the eighth sin!