Prisão de Mulheres

Viviane Romance as a singer in a Montmartre cabaret, I couldn't miss this one, and she plays just like Arletty (who's better at that game). There's also Marguerite Deval as the colorful old lady "helping" poor lost young girl, what a fun ("Police in my bedroom?"). In this melo, a young girl (Renée Saint-Cyr) with no parents comes out of jail after have robbed and injured her abusing employer. Her jail friend has sent her to the old lady (Marguerite Deval) "helping" lost girls and she becomes victim of blackmail by the disgusting hoodlum played by Georges Flamant. We already had appreciated him in "la Chienne" : during the shooting he fell in love with the main actress, Janie Marèse, and as it was his first movie, he didn't control his new movie star profession, bought a sport car and had a crash with Janie who died. It didn't help him for the next movies, but married Viviane Romance and had already played together in "le Puritain" and "l'Etrange Monsieur Victor", then again in "Gibraltar", "Angélica", "la Tradition de Minuit", "Vénus Aveugle", "Cartacalha, Reine des Gitans", "Feu Sacré", "Une Femme Dans la Nuit" (their last one, they divorced in 1942). Don't miss the scene when they meet again when Viviane Romance gets out of jail, they sure look happy. But what a sad beginning of career with that car accident, it happened also to Tod Browning and even Clouzot after the war.

Roger Richebé tackles here a subject which was not common in the thirties:women in jail.Although inevitably dated,his depiction avoids the usual clichés: voyeurism,sadism ,lesbianism,etc .It's so sober it almost predates Robert Bresson ("les Anges Du Péché" ).The prisoners are not allowed to talk aloud,so they whisper in the night and that scene when Renée Saint-Cyr and Viviane Romance have a conversation in their cells is probably the best in the whole movie.

The title is partly a misnomer though.Only a small part really takes place in jail.And the rest is not very satisfying.The screenplay,using a long flashback plus a small one for good measure is a bit desultory. Viviane Romance sings two songs which are mostly filler.Only Marguerite Deval,as Madame Gaby ,stands out.The precedent year ,in Jean Gremillon's "Gueule d'Amour" she was a mother who urged his daughter to sleep with all the rich men around to lead a life of luxury.Here Madame Gaby is a "nice" woman who helps the ex-convicts with their "rehabilitation": a hostess job in shady nightclubs for instance ,not to mention blackmail when they marry a wealthy man.Dig this line of hers: "A field officer told it so: women get a promotion in reverse ,the older they get ,the less they make money".

Madame Gaby is a forerunner of Madame Alice,a character featured in Richebé's highly superior "Gibier De Potence" where Arletty takes care of young....men and provides them with jobs in pornographic photographs.

At the time,Richebé was more at ease in comedies ,as "Madame Sans-Gene" (1939) and "L'Habit Vert" (1937) show.