Les chiens dans la nuit

The Girl Can't Stop is an extra on the Mondo Macabro release of Ravishing Dany. The two films share the same director (Willy Rozier). Although usually a bonus film is a large step down from the featured film, this was a case where I found the two films about equal. In fact, I might have slightly preferred the bonus film simply because it is of a genre that I happen to like, the crime film.

Manuel Liparos is a playboy who has overspent and is now in danger of being poor. Fortunately, Liparos has an attractive wife who catches the eye of an assistant banker. So, the playboy uses his wife to get a loan, but this creates other problems. The assistant banker only holds his job because his suspicious uncle runs the bank. The uncle knows his nephew wrongly approved the loan. Manuel has a plan though. He happens to be friends with a once feared hood now an alcoholic gambler who will do about anything for money.

The description sounds like the assistant banker might be the one who is the protagonist. In fact, it is Manuel's wife who does everything for her younger brother, her only relative. She knows nothing about the murder plot until way too late. Xenia Kalogeropoulou plays Thassoula Liparos well.

The Girl Can't Stop is a low budget, modest thriller with a perhaps too easy conclusion. On that level, I was pleasantly surprised by how much it held my attention. It was a better than expected bonus film.

A shipbuilder is ruined. All he has left is a mortgaged house, a mortgaged yacht, and a mortgageable wife. As it happens, he finds a young high-roller, a banker in his spare time, a bit of a sadist around the edges, ready to take on the mortgage in question. Aided by his soul mate, a Turk, brother of his mistress, the shipbuilder throws his Greek wife ,Thassoula, into the arms of the high-roller . The latter falls madly in love with Thassoula.

Willy Rozier ,in his own way , is "an auteur" "Les chiens dans la nuit " is so far-fetched, with actors left to their own devices (Georges Rivière), so ridiculous and so cowardly risqué that,if no taken seriously, it can be watched with a guilty pleasure ; since his debut ,in the early thirties, Rozier had never been particular about details : in "Le Bagnard",doctor Geronimo (sic) is sent to a penal colony and must help his fellow men who suffer from yellow fever before being a true man again;in "56 Rue Pigalle",the two lovers are suffering and are almost dying;and maybe these sufferings will be their salvation.

"Les chiens dans la nuit "follows, in its way,the same pattern : there're some sadistic scenes (performed by a Turk , which shows a racism of sorts ), plenty of villains, a ludicrous love story between the ex-peeping tom high-roller who used to enjoy flogged women ,but now did find true pure love with the vapid heroine .

One thing for sure,Willy Rozier believes that man can redeem his soul. Here ,the way to redemption one finds in almost all the director's efforts,is represented by a noble virtuous -"all my pupils are my friends"-teacher who assures an edifying ending, as moving as a Harlequin romance .

This "evolution " was predictable : after directing a series of ho -hum Callaghan's adventures in the fifties ,it was only natural that he opted for a "daring" thriller with violence cum perils of Pauline before sinking into porno in the seventies ("Dora ,la frénésie du plaisir" aka "dirty Dora")

Word to the wise: Rozier's best movie is certainly "l'auberge de l'abime" (1942), a good depiction of the rural life in the Cévennes during "la terreur blanche" (the white terror) at the time of Napoleon's fall and the royalists' come back .