La poison

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.

In an opening credits segment that's certainly original, writer-director Sacha Guitry appears in front of the camera and personally greets the actors and the rest of the crew who worked in this film. At one point, he mentions that he still sees film as theater (where he began his career), and you can tell - there are long scenes with two people sitting opposite each other talking, which on one hand allows you to admire the wit of the dialogue (the more French you pick up, probably the better), on the oher hand it makes the film feel sometimes talky and belabored. With that said, in other aspects "La Poison" is definitely ahead of its time - especially in the uncompomising, merciless blackness of its comedy. I doubt anyone in Hollywood could get away with this type of ending in 1951 (they could, for a while, before 1934 and the Code). Look out for a young Louis de Funès with plenty of hair! **1/2 out of 4.

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.

Guitry could never get over the way he was treated after the Liberation;his "De Jeanne D'Arc A Petain"(1942) (see this title which is never screened on French TV) was not exactly a work longing for freedom and the fact that he was given coal for his town house by the occupying forces led him to a (brief) internment.

Some of his post-war works are bitter,even cynical and made French justice an object of ridicule .If Guitry had been a mediocre director/writer ,his latter days works could have sunk into oblivion ,the work of an aging embittered old duffer ;but Guitry was a master ,with wit ,humor and (yes) genius going for him .At the time,only Henri Jeanson could write as well as he did .

"la Poison" begins with a presentation of all the people who made the movie (proof positive that Guitry was neither self-centered nor ungrateful) ;it was not the first time he had done this ,but this time ,he speaks with the actors,the technicians ,the script girl and it lasts about five minutes .Guitry was the one director in France to show such respect for his collaborators.

It was the first time he had directed Michel Simon ,who is another genius ,one of our five best actors ever .They would team up again in another Guitry's masterpiece ,"La Vie D'Un Honnête Homme " -for the record ,Louis De Funès ,who has a small role in "Poison" ,is in that movie too-If they would redo (God preserve us!) ,I really wonder WHO could reprise this part.Simon is so subtle an actor he is able to show all the tragic side of his character ;the scenes when he eats his dinner with his missus ,an alcoholic shrew, with the radio on so they do not have to talk are sheer genius .

Even the scenes which would seem at first out of place are necessary : the villagers waiting for a miracle,asking the vicar for help ("I can only pray ";and God heard him and took heed of it)At the time , the vicar ,with his servant (La Bonne Du Curé) played a prominent part and he was the local shrink ;Simon visits him before consulting a lawyer.

All the scenes featuring the lawyer are Guitry at his very best ;if you are sick and tired of those movies in which the brilliant lawyer always wins ,"La Poison" was made for you.Reductio Ad Absurdum that justice is unfair and that if you want to be acquitted ,you need a piece of advice from the man of law before you act .As if it were not enough,the children have their own trial too.

Guitry's hatred for justice is even more glaring in his overlooked "Assassins Et Voleurs" .People who liked "La Poison" must see it too.