This is a movie that is retrospectively referential so much so that it could have been subtitled Tell Laura I Love Her which would lead film buffs to Dana Andrews, the cop who fell in love with the VICTIM of a crime as opposed to the cop here who falls for the main suspect. Director Anatole Litvak enjoyed a ho hum career punctuated with interesting titles - Sorry, Wrong Number, Anastasia - and here, in his fourth At Bat he unleashes a soft, fizzy drink from the right bottle. On the DVD Gabin is billed above the title whilst in the actual credits he's listed just above the guy who empties the spittoons. At this stage (1932) he had several films under his belt but was far more celebrated as a headliner in Music Hall. Also on hand making her film debut was Frehel, a popular singer who would go on to appear with Gabin in Pepe le Moko, Michele Morgan in L'Entraineuse and other well remembered movies of the thirties and forties. All in all this is a fascinating entry for lovers - and that includes me - of French cinema.
3 Reviews
In search of the lost Litvak works....
dbdumonteil2 August 2006
"Coeur de Lilas " is a worthwhile find.Its screenplay is original and its directing is often brilliant.
The movie begins and ends with a military parade:in the neighborhood,brats are doing the same till one of them says he has enough with soldiers and they play cops and robbers ...just to discover a dead body on the "Fortifications" (which do not exist anymore in Paris nowadays).The "game "subject will return as Jean Gabin and his pals do a travesty of a trial and in the last pictures when one of the kids says " a cop must not be moved",actually the moral of the story.
The first scenes of "Coeur de Lilas" suffer from an old-fashioned theatrical acting but as soon it takes place in the greasy spoon where Gabin and chanteuse Frehel sing "la Môme Caoutchouc" ( =rubber gal),the film hits its stride .Many of its elements would emerge again in other more famous French movies or in Litvak's future career.
-The bad gal falling in love with an undercover policeman (and sighing :"I wish there were not so many cops in this world":of course she does not know his true identity)who tries to worm information out of her would be used by Pierre Chenal in his "l'Alibi" (1937) -The guinguettes down by the river Marne where Fernandel (in one of his smallest part of a best man) sings for the bride would be a permanent feature of the French film noir :see "la Belle Equipe" (1936) by Duvivier and Becker's "Casque d'Or" (1952) -The desperate lovers surrounded by a farandole ,it's already the ending of "Les Enfants du Paradis" in miniature.
-The hallucinations during the heroine's running already display the director's interest in madness ("the snake pit",1946)
The movie begins and ends with a military parade:in the neighborhood,brats are doing the same till one of them says he has enough with soldiers and they play cops and robbers ...just to discover a dead body on the "Fortifications" (which do not exist anymore in Paris nowadays).The "game "subject will return as Jean Gabin and his pals do a travesty of a trial and in the last pictures when one of the kids says " a cop must not be moved",actually the moral of the story.
The first scenes of "Coeur de Lilas" suffer from an old-fashioned theatrical acting but as soon it takes place in the greasy spoon where Gabin and chanteuse Frehel sing "la Môme Caoutchouc" ( =rubber gal),the film hits its stride .Many of its elements would emerge again in other more famous French movies or in Litvak's future career.
-The bad gal falling in love with an undercover policeman (and sighing :"I wish there were not so many cops in this world":of course she does not know his true identity)who tries to worm information out of her would be used by Pierre Chenal in his "l'Alibi" (1937) -The guinguettes down by the river Marne where Fernandel (in one of his smallest part of a best man) sings for the bride would be a permanent feature of the French film noir :see "la Belle Equipe" (1936) by Duvivier and Becker's "Casque d'Or" (1952) -The desperate lovers surrounded by a farandole ,it's already the ending of "Les Enfants du Paradis" in miniature.
-The hallucinations during the heroine's running already display the director's interest in madness ("the snake pit",1946)
"The creeping glove!"
morrison-dylan-fan24 March 2019
Warning: Spoilers
After finding Flight Into Darkness and Sorry, Wrong Number (1935 and 1948-both reviewed) to be superb,I decided to take a close look at auteur film maker Anatole Litvak's other credits. Taking part in ICM's French film viewing challenge whilst prepairing for the upcoming best of 1932 poll,I was thrilled to find Litvak's work from that year, which led to me meeting Lilac.
View on the film:
Opening and closing with the same long panning shot of soldiers marching pass as boys play soldiers/ cops and robbers, co-writer/(with Dorothy Farnum and Serge Veber) directing auteur Anatole Litvak & cinematographer Curt Courant bring the tale full circle with Litvak's continuing motif of crossing the Melodrama and Film Noir. Tracking down the seedy corridors of Lilac's workplace, Litvak holds Lilac up as a shining light In a building darkened by murky cops and robbers, as beautifully held soft close-ups lock eyes on Lilac's love, and circling wide-shots in the buildings during mass sing-songs touch on rare moments of true companionship in the place. Pulling the opening shot down to a dead body, Litvak superbly seeps in the Film Noir doubt Lilac has over who she can trust, in striking side angle shots uncovering what is out of Lilac's vision, leading to an astonishingly highly-stylised set-piece of Lilac running away from monstrous faces covering the screen driving her to madness.
While the limited settings do signal the Charles-Henry Hirsch and Tristan Bernard's stage origins, Farnum, Veber and Litvak's adaptation wonderfully breaks the stage down in the interplay between the Melodrama of Lucot keeping his cover round the falling in love Lilac,with the forensic Film Noir investigative work Lilac is doing with his fellow officers to solve the murder and check to see if Lilac herself lines up to clues of the identity of the killer. Working as a temptation to Lilac and a determined cop, Andre Luguet gives a terrific performance as Lucot, who is given a sweet reserved nature when Lilac, that Luguet twists into a quick-witted spring the moment a clue pops up. Shining in the middle of the dirt surrounding her, Marcelle Romeo (who tragically died in 1932 from a suicide age 29) gives a mesmerising performance as Lilac, thanks to Romeo capturing in her expressive face the wave of love running across Lilac's lips for Lucot, with a bubbling doubt over Lucot's honesty to her over his real job.
View on the film:
Opening and closing with the same long panning shot of soldiers marching pass as boys play soldiers/ cops and robbers, co-writer/(with Dorothy Farnum and Serge Veber) directing auteur Anatole Litvak & cinematographer Curt Courant bring the tale full circle with Litvak's continuing motif of crossing the Melodrama and Film Noir. Tracking down the seedy corridors of Lilac's workplace, Litvak holds Lilac up as a shining light In a building darkened by murky cops and robbers, as beautifully held soft close-ups lock eyes on Lilac's love, and circling wide-shots in the buildings during mass sing-songs touch on rare moments of true companionship in the place. Pulling the opening shot down to a dead body, Litvak superbly seeps in the Film Noir doubt Lilac has over who she can trust, in striking side angle shots uncovering what is out of Lilac's vision, leading to an astonishingly highly-stylised set-piece of Lilac running away from monstrous faces covering the screen driving her to madness.
While the limited settings do signal the Charles-Henry Hirsch and Tristan Bernard's stage origins, Farnum, Veber and Litvak's adaptation wonderfully breaks the stage down in the interplay between the Melodrama of Lucot keeping his cover round the falling in love Lilac,with the forensic Film Noir investigative work Lilac is doing with his fellow officers to solve the murder and check to see if Lilac herself lines up to clues of the identity of the killer. Working as a temptation to Lilac and a determined cop, Andre Luguet gives a terrific performance as Lucot, who is given a sweet reserved nature when Lilac, that Luguet twists into a quick-witted spring the moment a clue pops up. Shining in the middle of the dirt surrounding her, Marcelle Romeo (who tragically died in 1932 from a suicide age 29) gives a mesmerising performance as Lilac, thanks to Romeo capturing in her expressive face the wave of love running across Lilac's lips for Lucot, with a bubbling doubt over Lucot's honesty to her over his real job.
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