Piège pour Cendrillon

This is the eleventh Andre Cayatte film I've seen, and only the second (after "Au Bonheur des Dames") I've found disappointing. I can't understand the enthusiasm of the first two reviews, and find it hard to believe that Jean Anouilh, one of the leading French playwrights of the last century, co-wrote the script and was responsible for the dialogue. On the plus side Madeleine Robinson was excellent as the scheming Jeanne Mureau, and there are sympathetic performances from Jean Gaven as Dominique's lover and Rene Dary as a kindly doctor, but the other characters are unpleasant. That's not usually a problem (villains are more fun to watch), but it is when they're boring. Another minus is that Dany Carrel, who was 30 at the time, talks like a little girl, an irritating trait which is not unknown among French actresses (Marlene Jobert, star of another Japrisot adaptation "Rider on the Rain", is another culprit.) The film starts intriguingly, but is so interminable that I soon lost interest in the twists and turns, and has no interest in how it would be resolved. I rarely disagree with the incredibly knowledgeable dbdumonteil, but this time I have to.

This movie has not been available for years ,and its reissue is cause for celebration ;it's not representative of Cayatte's production and it probably took his audience aback at the time : no miscarriage of justice, no trial, no good cause ,none of his usual trademarks ,but a pure film noir ,a complex -perhaps too complicated- plot .

Adapted from a Sebastien Japrisot novel by the director, Jean Anouilh and the writer himself (Jean-Baptiste Rossi is a transparent anagram ,get it?) ,its treatment of amnesia was nothing but derivative ; the novel did not conclude ,but the movie did : the truth (?) is revealed halfway through ,but the movie does not suffer for it : it does not matter when you deal with actresses such as Madeleine Robinson -her piercing eyes really give the jitters- and Dany Carrel ,in her lifetime part ,playing two (and even three) characters convincingly with aplomb :she has the chops to portray a very sexy nymphomaniac spoilt rich kid , her "Cinderella-esque" cousin, and the poor lost amnesiac : quite a feat and it's really too bad she was not given more interesting roles afterward. Both actresses' playing verges on camp ,and it sometimes recalls Robert Aldrich 's sixties female duels .

It' s definitely a deadly female movie; a story of domination : Do is Mi's punching bag whom she loves to humiliate ; but both girls are manipulated by Jeanne (Madeleine Robinson) ; the rapport the latter has with both cousins has discreet lesbian undertones ,(which the awful English remake "trap for Cinderella " shamefully exploited,with disastrous results )..

It's mainly the story of a distraught girl in search of her identity ; the cast and credits are pure subjective camera , with blurred figures ,which makes sense in the case of an amnesiac ; the more the poor girl tries to find back her past,the more she's confused ; is she Mi ,the heiress,or Do the unfortunate cousin? The movie becomes a giant jig saw puzzle, the piece of which does not really fit together .The male cast , apart from seasoned René Dary as the good surgeon ,provides the movie with its low point: none of them can hold a candle to the outstanding actresses.

And the writers put the heroine in a harrowing search : in the garage ,she tries to catch her cousin but it looks like a nightmare , a girl desesperately trying to find the other herself ; the spoilt girl who thinks that she can have everything and everyone (the scene in the elevator when she imprisons Do's boyfriend is revealing ) .But the dominatrix is Jeanne : a pushy ruthless matron who tries to create her own girl : one of the best scenes shows both woman looking themselves in a mirror; a mirror which is often used all through the movie,quite rightly so.

Don Malcolm included it in his "the French had a name for it" San Francisco film noir festival. And he's a connoisseur of the French cinema!

The sixties were a new phase in André Cayatte's career ;he sometimes championed causes ,his trademark ("Le Glaive Et La Balance" ,"Les Risques Du Métier" )but he also tried new tacks with some success;of course panned by the would be heroes of the new wavelet ,he nevertheless innovated :"La vie Conjugale" was two different movies ,depicting a couple's life ,from the husband's and from the wife's point of views;" Le Glaive Et La balance" renewed the movie-trial ;the only real horror was "Les Chemins De Kathmandou")

And there's 'Piège Pour Cendrillon";Cayatte was not exactly in his field when he broaches this pure psychological thriller;by and large ,I do not go much for Japrisot's stuff ,which is ,IMHO ,no match for Boileau-Narcejac ,Frederic Dard (his thrillers of course),let alone Agatha Christie.

That said ," Piège Pour Cendrillon " is a different matter;the subject is not new ("Spellbound" , the contemporary " the third day " ( 1965) "shattered" and countless others dealt with amnesia );but the treatment,including four parts ,each one containing the same verb in four different tenses of French conjugation was downright disturbing;and the ending was all the more baffling since the mystery was not solved .(It was the reader who decided :Jean Anouilh's screenplay opted for a "moral" ending )The book was the subject of many serious studies and essays by psychoanalysts ,which was not the case for stuff such as ,say,"L'Eté Meurtrier".

A devilish conspiracy involving a victim of a fire who awakes in a hospital ,suffering from amnesia:is she Dominique or Michèle? Might she be a criminal?

We already knew that Cayatte had a certain flair for film Noir,as certain aspects of "Le Glaive Et La Balance" showed;abetted by two excellent actresses,he succeeded in building a threatening atmosphere.Madeleine Robinson gives goose flesh in her portrayal of a calculating woman :too often overlooked ,she was definitely one of our very best thespians .Dany Carrel found here her lifetime role: she played two parts (two different personalities in flashbacks);the more she goes back in the past and tries to find who she really is ,the more she's confused and lost .

René Dary,a veteran from the silent age (Feuillade's Bébé),appears as the surgeon .

Remade in England ("trap for Cinderella" 2013):this time two different actresses play the amnesiac ,but the movie succumbs to contemporary clichés (lesbianism,nudity,flashy cinematography).

Yes forgotten, only one reviewer (the usual french cinema passionate conoisseur). I sadly get used to this general ignorance in french film noir. Shot in 1965, it's one of the last black and white french film noir (and the last black and white Cayatte movie). It's gripping from the stressful first scenes to the scary ending, it has a strong cinematographic writing. The story is built around the three characters played by Dany Carrel. If you love Dany Carrel like I do, it's definitely her must see in these three different and opposite characters, one being close to Falconetti in "Passion de Jeanne d'Arc" by Dreyer, and there is even Madeleine Robinson playing Jeanne Murneau, couldn't it be kind of testimony of Cayatte to Black and White? Madeleine Robinson is still great with her tense presence from "une si jolie petite plage" to "les Louves" and others. in her book "l"Annamite", Dany Carrel said she was glad to play these three characters and find actors she had already played with, Jean Gaven and Madeleine Robinson (often as her mother). Journalists and critics loved that movie, but the movie didn't have success in theatres, only on tv some years later. Author Japrisot is adapted by great Jean Anouilh, so there is a large panel of dialogues for each very opposite characters. All settings are well chosen, from italian villas to typical french garage (that have mainly disappeared today).