Die sich selbst betrügen

I blow hot and cold over Carné. He really can be a puzzle for me. I think perhaps his inspiration left him a little earlier than it did for other directors of his generation. Certainly a man who came to maturity in the Thirties with the Popular Front seems ill at ease in the France of the Fifties, with its rampant commercialism and heavy American influence. He is almost thirty years older than his young stars, and it shows. The party scenes go on much longer than they should, as if he were trying to buy time for the anemic scenario to work. Roland Lesaffre's character--he plays Pascale Petit's older brother--seems to exist only to reassure the director that his old-style ideas are still sound.

At two hours, this picture is far too long. Still, let me praise Pascale Petit for her game performance; she was a natural who should have challenged Brigitte Bardot for sexpot supremacy, but somehow lost her way. Andrea Parisy is excellent too as the girl who gets pregnant and wants Charrier to marry her and make her baby legitimate (yes, they still thought that way in the Fifties). Laurent Terzieff is the only French actor who could play an anarchist convincingly: he is great here as he rescues a cat from death, then remarks he can't stand cats. Jacques Charrier only reminds me how mediocre he was as an actor, with that constant little grin and those blank eyes.

Andrea Parisy, Jacques Charrier, Pascale Petit and certainly Laurent Terzieff could have been part of the Nouvelle Vague that was washing over France, and splashing over other countries at the time. They certainly had the acting ability to be part of it. The problem as I personally see it is that the supposed 'new' cinema (with all the arrogance of the new) did not recognise the full spectrum of cinema, or that Marcel Carne's films were distinctly great films and part of that spectrum. The Nouvelle Vague films made themselves special by taking the camera out on the streets (which also happens in 'Les Tricheurs') instead of being studio bound, and prejudice against the supposed 'ancien regime' was rife. 'Les Tricheurs' (forget the English title 'Youthful Sinners' which is nonsense. The title for the UK and elsewhere should have been 'The Cheaters') is a very good film indeed, and both the acting and the direction perfect. It is nonsense also to call it an existentialist scenario. It is quite simply the relationship between four central characters, and how love is destroyed because all of the four cannot take on the responsibility of loving. A lot of the action takes place at parties and a deadly verbal game sets the tragic climax into motion. No spoilers. Charrier is excellent as the less open of the four to open relationships, and Terzieff equally excellent as a young man who has his own mysterious agenda to destroy emotions. Pascale Petit is very good as the young woman who is troubled and confused, and so is Parisy as the jaded woman who holds parties and seduces as many men as possible. This film arguably was part of the Nouvelle Vague (see Chabrol's 'Les Cousins' for a prime example) and 'Les Tricheurs' should be better known and valued as an excellent film. Only seven reviews here shows to me that it should be restored and not undervalued.

The poet Carne disappears (didn´t he disappeared with Prévert?) and is followed by the judge Carne. The director wants to give his own vision of a youth that he doesn´t understand and he doesn´t want to. It´s a long way from the wonderful "Les enfants du paradis"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

many people think that the first period of marcel carné is the best,marcel carné is certainly the best french director from all time,the cheaters was realy dynamite at the time ,at the same time wasthe beginning of the so called "nouvelle vague" all the actors were wondurfull certainly laurent terzieff ,but also jacques charrier,pascale petit were great

This late 50s French study of disaffected youth (in their early 20's, actually--"grown up", but not yet settled down into the adult world) probably missed the mark by a mile in terms of being an accurate depiction of 1958 French youth (don't virtually ALL youth films made by adults do this? The ones that don't--River's Edge comes to mind-- are rare indeed), but director-writer Marcel Carne, of Les Enfants du Paradis fame, is too accurate an observer of humanity to NOT provide an insightful view of the essence of these characters. In a sense, the details are not important--you could change the details and set this film today and it would work just as well--but the loneliness and insecurity and superficial passion and self-righteous anger of the characters is captured well. The young Pierre Brice and Jean-Paul Belmondo are in supporting roles, but leads Jacques Charrier, Laurent Terzieff, Pascale Petit, and Andrea Parisy play the roles with subtlety and depth. There is also a fine jazz score, which you can get on the CD JAZZ IN PARIS--JAZZ & CINEMA VOL. 2. Unlike some who have commented on the film, I don't really see director-writer Carne as sitting in judgment on these characters--he seems as though he is an objective observer to me. Of course, these middle-class characters may seem like people who are spoiled and have nothing to whine about to some working-class viewers of the film, and I think Carne is certainly aware of this. For this American viewer (I watched a dubbed, fairly literally I'd say, version of this titled THE CHEATERS), the film provides an interesting window into the France of the 1950s. It also is self-consciously poetic (the scene on the ledge, saving the cat, is but one example of this) and has intellectual aspirations in that charming way that only French films can get away with--I can imagine the heavy-handed, melodramatic, shallow way this kind of material would have been handled by an American studio production, and the sensationalistic, moralistic, suggestive way this kind of material would have been handled by American drive-in/exploitation filmmakers. I feel that Marcel Carne has captured the essence of that period between, say, high school graduation and when, by one's early 30s, people have largely settled into a routine, whatever that routine may be. Those willing to watch the film with an open mind and not fire away at the many easy targets it offers should find a serious and valuable study of people in their early twenties. And even if you don't want to do that, you can go in the other room while the film is playing and simply enjoy the fine soundtrack, with great 50s jazz and instrumental pop, including the wonderful original score by an American "Jazz at the Philharmonic" group including Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz (spelled "goetz" in the credits), Roy Eldridge, and Ray Brown.