Those who love Wilder can and will find something to love in even his most blah projects - The Emperor Waltz for example - and this is no exception. It's fascinating to notice little 'touches' not necessarily commonplace in 1934 like the early scene when the protagonist, recently stripped of his car by a tough-love father 'sees' another car reflected in a shop window and we can almost pinpoint the moment when he decides to steal it yet Wilder refuses to follow this shot with the next logical one, i.e. the car being actually stolen; instead we cut to another car containing two men which effectively 'masks' the theft and THIS shot is followed by our protagonist now at the wheel and blithely speeding away. This is a film full of wheels and circles or, to put it another way, motion. This is not to say the trademark Wilder wit is not evident as there are gags a plenty. At seventeen years old and already a veteran actress Danielle Darrieux is virtually unrecognizable physically but the talent was there right from the beginning. No Wilder collection is complete without this and once again I'm indebted to an ultra kind Frenchman who taped it for me.
Review of Bad Seed
