I was stunned to see a very touching Michel Simon playing a lonely man who learns his fatal illness. He gets rich and pays a young and unknown woman to have a child to love before dying (both agree to separate after the baby's birth). She understands his lack of love when he plays with tenderness with a young boy they invite to eat : Genevieve Page is also very touching in this sequence, but she remains apart in other scenes. Michel Simon will not remain so sensitive when confronted with his family, he gets mad and we find back the eccentric Michel Simon, but these are just a few scenes directed in long shots, sensitivity is the main subject of the movie.
Michel Simon is helped by Yves Deniaud to express to the young woman his project. Yves Deniaud is a typical sincere and devoted french man with his cigarette stuck in the corner of the mouth. He is the opposite of the family's lawyer who tries to condemn him to madness so he cannot use his money. And this lawyer is Louis de Funès who finds one of his best character in his first part of career when still unknown : he is not grinning like in most of his comedies but plays cruelly the nasty lawyer.
A very sensitive subject, great cast, fine dialogues : the Austro-Hungarian director Géza von Radvànyi has directed and written an authentic sensitive gem I was glad to discover. And maybe there are more surprises in his filmography, he has worked in several European countries.
Michel Simon is helped by Yves Deniaud to express to the young woman his project. Yves Deniaud is a typical sincere and devoted french man with his cigarette stuck in the corner of the mouth. He is the opposite of the family's lawyer who tries to condemn him to madness so he cannot use his money. And this lawyer is Louis de Funès who finds one of his best character in his first part of career when still unknown : he is not grinning like in most of his comedies but plays cruelly the nasty lawyer.
A very sensitive subject, great cast, fine dialogues : the Austro-Hungarian director Géza von Radvànyi has directed and written an authentic sensitive gem I was glad to discover. And maybe there are more surprises in his filmography, he has worked in several European countries.