User Reviews

Despite a 50 year career that began with the 'Silents' in 1917 and extended to the Age of Television (1967) Maurice L'Herbier was at best a Journeyman director, a Gallic equivalent if you will of Hollywood's Edward Bernds or the UK's John E Blakeley yet Journeymen occasionally turn out something worth more than 80 minutes in a flea-pit and L'Herbier has done so here with a story at once enigmatic and complex with information deliberately withheld from the viewer which, for 1934 was sophisticated to say the least. To bare-bone it a loner (Charles Boyer in his pre-Hollywood days) who ekes out a living sketching for a newspaper attempts to kill a popular entertainer (Gaby Morlay) whose repertoire include the chanson 'Le Bonheur' (Happiness). For his pains he is given 18 months medium time and on his release may well form a relationship with Morlay whose marriage is just a tad less solid than a strawberry Jello. To add to the mix THIS film ends just as a film ABOUT these events is starting shooting which, again for 1934, was ultra-modern and links it to such later works as Chicago, itself based on Roxie Hart, in which a murder trial is 'dramatised and/or vaudevillised as entertainment for the masses. Boyer is admirable in the leading role and Morlay is adequate in support. French cinema buffs will relish Michel Simon as a limp-wristed art director and Paulette Dubost weighs in with her usual reliable solidity. Fairly obscure but worth seeking out.