La poison

The everyday life of Paul Braconnier (played by the famous Michel Simon) and his wife Blandine (Germaine Reuver) is far from what one would describe as a marital bliss. Paul Braconnier reproaches her that she's old and ugly and that she drinks too much. They hate each other as much as they possibly can - to the point that they want to murder each other. One day, Paul Braconnier hears about the champion lawyer Maitre Aubanel (played by Jean Debucourt) who just won his 100th case. Paul decided to promptly visit him to know how he can kill his wife without going to jail. Delighted to hear that murder without consequences is possible, he decides to stab his wife when she is about to poison him. With a lawyer like Aubanel, he is certain to get away with his crime. What follows is probably the funniest trial sequence in film history.

'La poison' is the funniest movie that Sacha Guitry made after WWII. As always in the work of Sacha Guitry, this story is a satire of marriage. This black comedy is delightful due to the performance of Michel Simon (once more!) in this role of a colorful rogue and to the high standard comical writing of Sacha Guitry. The name of the main character (Braconnier, which is the French word for poacher) was not chosen randomly: it is a description of the attitude that the main character has throughout the movie, i.e. that of a character behaving against the law. The tone of the movie is definitively anarchist and the character played by Michel Simon is not far from that of Boudu (another great performance by Michel Simon in 'Boudu sauve des eaux by Jean Renoir, 1932).

Guitry adds to our pleasure by introducing the complete credited cast during the opening sequence (much alike Orson Welles introducing his actors in the movie Othello and in the trailer of Citizen Kane) congratulating Michel Simon for his acting. Louis de Funes (at this time not as popular as he would be more than a decade later) can be seen in a small role. Pauline Carton (who played in most of Sacha Guitry movies) is present as well.

This movie is a gem. Highly recommended. 10/10.

I thought I'd emptied out the mine of great French directors and then just this week discovered Sacha Guitry and am both overjoyed at the riches on display in this film and bewildered at its lack of recognition. It's as good as any French film I've ever seen: why have I never heard of it before?

Everything about La Poison is charming, thoughtful, cheeky, brave and subversive, from the opening scene of the director walking about the set greeting and thanking everyone (literally everyone) that worked on the film to the hilariously frank courtroom scenes at the end, and every frame of Michel Simon throughout. My God, was there ever such an actor? Only the gorgeously hypnotic ugliness of Charles Laughton would seem to compare.

Like the films of Max Ophuls from the same time, Le Ronde and Le Plaisir, these are grown-up films dealing with God, Sex, Death and Existence with both incontestable beauty and brutal honesty at a time when practically all American film was made for children, and feel to me almost like an alternate timeline in which cinema developed without the censorship of the Hays production code of the 30s onwards, a cinema of genuine poetry and art winning out over puritanism and commerce.

The only American films I can think of from this time that are anything like comparable to La Poison are Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux and Charles Laughton's Night Of The Hunter. Verdoux, a markedly inferior work to this one, got Chaplin hounded out of America for good and Hunter assured Laughton never directed again. Whereas the French loved their great artists and celebrated them for their minds and their magic.

I am reminded too, watching this, how much I prefer the savage and poetic French Old Wave to the empty faddish inanities of the Nouvelle Vague. I will happily take any 20 minutes of La Poison or La Ronde or Boudu Saved From Drowning over every single film by Truffault or Goddard.

This is a practically perfect film in every respect, and the only complaint I can really offer up is that the English subtitles of the two different versions I have found are both not as good as they could be, and with as deliriously barbed dialogue as this, where every line is saying something considered and integral, that's something of a crime in itself.

Several years ago, I saw and enjoyed "A Crime in Paradise". However, I knew it was a remake and wanted to see the original. I was thrilled when the Criterion Channel added it recently...and it turned out to be every bit as good as the remake...perhaps a bit better.

The beginning of the movie is most unusual. The writer and director, Sacha Guitry, introduces the cast and crew...and has a short thank you speech for every one of them!

When the story begins, Paul Braconnier (Michel Simon) is complaining to the priest about his ugly wife. She drinks constantly and is a loathsome person...and he's sick of her. Later, Paul listens to a talk show on the radio and a very successful defense attorney is talking about his career defending murderers. Paul likes what the guy says and realizes that this attorney should defend him...when he actually gets around to murdering his wife!

Soon, Paul shows up at the attorney's office and tells her he's just killed his wife. The fact is, Paul hasn't yet done it...he just wants to figure out how best to do it in order to be acquitted in court! Well, the lawyer doesn't know that and inadvertently helps Paul formulate the murder!

Paul goes home and plans on killing his wife. What he doesn't know is that she is also planning on poisoning him...and he ends up killing her before he drinks the poison she's given him! Soon, he's in court...and all his neighbors come to speak on his behalf...because apparently, they also couldn't stand her! So what comes of all this? See the film.

This is a super dark comedy...so much so that I am certain many won't enjoy it or will find it a bit unseemly. I thought it was of course dark, but also funny and clever....and well worth seeing. Well crafted and worth your time.

Sacha Guitry is not a movie director, let alone a screenwriter. Guitry claims so in the opening credits sequence: "I daresay this is stage play." As for me this kind of heavy-handed foreword is out of place in a movie. "L'auteur, bien entendu" shows off and introduce us to the whole cast starting with a grand praise of Michel Simon. The monologue is good but Guitry is insufferably pedantic while we're supposed to get in the movie. Yet I admit this clunky device worked for Le Roman d'un tricheur, but only because 1/Guitry was the lead 2/he played a lifelong cheat and 3/he told us his life in a series of flashbacks.

Now La Poison would have been really poor indeed were it not for Michel Simon's talent. Once Sacha Guitry lets the movie start it rolls up pretty good. The satirical tone tends to be heavy but with Michel Simon playing at times borderline dramatic that sets a good balance... until the movie gets clunky again. Michel Simon has a very good scene with his presumptive lawyer followed by an awfully serious one involving the lawyer and the visiting general attorney. There you can see that the movie needs Michel Simon as a driving force (and Germaine Reuver as the main resulting force of course) : that's a very low and overstretched point made just before the climax. The Climax: Guitry shoots it quite on the nose but the scene is so meaningful it doesn't require much more.

The problem is after the climax the movie has nowhere to go. The satirical tone? It was good enough for the setup but it keeps playing like it's a light comedy (I'm sorry but satirical tone + murder doesn't necessarily make a dark comedy). So the people from the village keep playing the regular types they were assigned to and the trial is totally farcical. There you can only regret that the lawyer's part had been so blatantly undersized. As for Michel Simon if you let him become too strong a character he will overshadow everyone in the scene. And that's what happens: from the climax down to its end La Poison errs and cannot make up for Guitry's poor cinematographic vision.

One is perfectly justified to see this as social satire, but for me Guthry's "La poison" (1951) is, above all, an easygoing, darkly humorous and witty pastiche on acting in all its forms – taking on roles in marriage, in society, in one's own eyes, in others' eyes, and of course, in a film. The opening introductory credit sequence sets the mood perfectly, as there we are explicitly shown that we will witness a performance that has been carefully planned, all actors, actresses and staff selected. I don't think this is just a stylistic whim of exuberance, it's an actual set-up for us. There are several references to theatre with exits and entrances through doors, and space is handled with confines, scenes as separate entities, spaces as separate entities. And then there's the central scene in the lawyer's office, where they literally create a fabrication that when inverted becomes the desired reality for Simon's character. Reconstruction, deconstruction, all of this means the same in this wonderful scene.

The chimera and the clown, death and joy – that's what the film is also about. This contrast of tragedy and comedy, its light-hearted darkness, presents itself also in the title, playing with the meaning of poison ("le poison" in French, with the masculine article) and the mocking identifier "la poison" (with the feminine article) given to… well, by all means watch the film and you'll find out.