Noël Rambert and his son, little Jacques, live in dire poverty until the worker loses his job in an accident. To save his son from poverty, Rambert allows himself to be accused of murder, the culprit having promised to give his son a solid education.
Based on one of these countless melodramas dealing with unfairly treated poor people ("la porteuse de pain" "Roger la honte" ,etc)in the second half of the nineteenth century, Gaston Roudès took the genre to an exponential degree; it's so "enough is enough" that,in its own way ,the film becomes a true festival of camp and must have made people of the thirties shed streams of tears and use tons of handkerchiefs (there were no kleenex then) .
It's also the first French indictment against death penalty ; twenty years before Cayatte's "nous sommes tous des assassins " , the film depicts,with lavish detail the ceremonial of an execution ; one can even talk about a "Hitchcockian " suspense in the finale .
The trial is a purple passage ,which takes overplaying to new limits: the harrowing plea of the once unfaithful mom, the comic relief with the obese concierge , the pedantic speech of the defense which includes Greek Philosophers , the final despondency of the innocent victim of blind justice ....
A stand-out camp scene shows little Jacques declaim La Fontaine 's "le Loup et l'Agneau " , accompanied by Pauline Carton's funny faces ,which proves that the strongest's reason is always the best .
Oddly,the film begins with a long tracking sideways along the banks of the Seine , with people full of joie de vivre.
Ideal for Father's Day.
