directed by Marcel Carné
written by Jacques Prévert
designed by Alexandre Trauner
photographed by Eugen Schüfftan
Something I watched at the UConn Film Society when I was a student, maybe sixteen or seventeen years old at the time. The first of the Carné/Prévert pictures I got to see. Projected in sixteen millimeter and well worn, but better than not seeing it at all. A movie that makes me laugh uncontrollably, as it should.
It's a feast for actors, Françoise Rosay, Michel Simon, Jean-Louis Barrault, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Louis Jouvet, Nadine Vogel, Pierre Alcover. Finest of their time.
Watched it again the other night, then read a couple of essays regarding it. Then came up with my own interpretation, especially on the central threesome of Rosay, Simon and Barrault. Barrault, the serial killer enables Simon as the writer and horticulturalist to love his wife as well as his Mimosas and Carnivorous Flowers. The killer also enables the Wife to see that she is capable of being loved. At picture's end Irwin Molyneux the Horticulturist must die so that Felix Chapel the Novelist can live (and receive the inheritance that his wife's aunt has bequeathed him in that name.)
Better to be thought of as a killer than as one who has fallen beneath their station in life.
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