La mala semilla (1934) (English: Bad Seed) is a 1934 French action comedy directed by Billy Wilder (in his directorial debut) and Alexander Esway. The screenplay by Wilder, Jan Lustig, Max Kolpé, and Claude-André Puget focuses on a wealthy young playboy who becomes involved with a gang of car thieves.
Although Wilder and Esway shared the directing credit, in later years leading lady Danielle Darrieux recalled Esway had been involved with the project in some capacity but clearly remembered she had never seen him on the set.
Although Wilder and Esway shared the directing credit, in later years leading lady Danielle Darrieux recalled Esway had been involved with the project in some capacity but clearly remembered she had never seen him on the set.
On La mala semilla (1934), you can sense Billy Wilder's wry personality imprinted all over the tone and style of the film which is a gleefully cynical boulevard farce. The editing, the freewheeling cinematography, and the use of outdoor locations reflect a playfulness and sense of improvisation that most studio-produced films of that era lacked. In fact, it's easy to see Mauvaise Graine as a model for the French New Wave films of the sixties, particularly Jean-Luc Godard's Sin aliento (1960) which seemed to imitate this film's use of jump cuts, ellipses and shaky camera movements. The film's visual celebration of Paris alone is reason enough to see the film; you get a whirlwind tour of the city's parks, its broad avenues and narrow side streets, the cafes and the rustic countryside. Of course, it's a Paris that no longer exists except in literature and this film which captures the city's eternal allure.
In the scene where Henri hijacks the Buick convertible and is pursued through the streets of Paris, the chase goes through the Pont de l'Alma tunnel, now famous as the site of the 1997 car crash that killed Princess Diana.
"According to Wilder," in Ed Sikov's biography, The Life and Times of Billy Wilder, "not only did they have to improvise much of the filming, but "for lack of money we couldn't use rear projections --- the camera and the projectors were placed on a truck and it was rather dangerous." Yet, "as much as Wilder himself claimed to have detested the overwhelming responsibilities of directing it, Mauvaise Graine is the work of a visual stylist, not a wordsmith." His distinctive ear for sharp, witty dialogue would emerge later in satires like Ninotchka (1939) and Midnight (1939).