Jean Boyer's writing and directorial career spanned over thirty years but sadly his films failed to draw much attention outside his native France. Here he has served up a delicious trifle containing the finest ingredients notably Arletty, Michel Simon, Gabrielle Dorziat, Marguerite Moreno and Pierre Larquey. Despite being an unholy bore an Egyptologist played by Simon has managed to accrue four wives the first of whom has died. Whilst he is away his biological son commits a serious indiscretion and his three surviving wives descend and start playing 'mother' with mixed results! Father returns home to realise how neglectful he has been. The secret of this piece is in the playing of it. Boyer maintains 'allegro vivace' throughout and we have a masterclass in comedic timing for those lucky enough to appreciate it.
3 Reviews
Cast out the threes...
dbdumonteil2 April 2006
...and you'll understand that three mothers do not replace a good father.If you think it's misogyny ,you miss the point.The screenplay puts the blame on the absent father.
They often say Jean Boyer was a drudge ,but there are ,in his huge production (about 40 or 50 films) ,now and then,some entertaining comedies,the best of which remaining his priceless "Circonstances Attenuantes" featuring Michel Simon and Arletty who had teamed up the year before for "la Chaleur du Sein".
"La chaleur du Sein" is a gleeful mess ,a cock-and-bull story involving a self-conscious boy,his three mothers (his biological one died when he was born),his father, an Egyptologist on his way back home on a luxury liner ,an old English spinster who is crazy about him, table tennis,hieroglyphs, an idiotic song ("the little pigs " a ditty which might be double-entendre for people with a dirty mind),you name it.
Michel Simon and Arletty have only one or two scenes together,that's the biggest disappointment of an entertaining movie.Historian Jean Tulard told that Boyer could have been a great director ,had he forgotten the cash register .His film has sometimes strange accents ,it even verges on tragedy:his young hero committed suicide (but he failed) ,and his best friend (François Périer in a single scene) lost both his father and his mother when he was seven.And the fact that he has to get used to three different (over-possessive) mothers has a strange contemporary feel,in our times when one gets married and gets divorced at the speed of sound.
Marguerite Moreno almost steals the show from Arletty,in her part of the wealthy English woman who sticks like a leech.
They often say Jean Boyer was a drudge ,but there are ,in his huge production (about 40 or 50 films) ,now and then,some entertaining comedies,the best of which remaining his priceless "Circonstances Attenuantes" featuring Michel Simon and Arletty who had teamed up the year before for "la Chaleur du Sein".
"La chaleur du Sein" is a gleeful mess ,a cock-and-bull story involving a self-conscious boy,his three mothers (his biological one died when he was born),his father, an Egyptologist on his way back home on a luxury liner ,an old English spinster who is crazy about him, table tennis,hieroglyphs, an idiotic song ("the little pigs " a ditty which might be double-entendre for people with a dirty mind),you name it.
Michel Simon and Arletty have only one or two scenes together,that's the biggest disappointment of an entertaining movie.Historian Jean Tulard told that Boyer could have been a great director ,had he forgotten the cash register .His film has sometimes strange accents ,it even verges on tragedy:his young hero committed suicide (but he failed) ,and his best friend (François Périer in a single scene) lost both his father and his mother when he was seven.And the fact that he has to get used to three different (over-possessive) mothers has a strange contemporary feel,in our times when one gets married and gets divorced at the speed of sound.
Marguerite Moreno almost steals the show from Arletty,in her part of the wealthy English woman who sticks like a leech.
Mum's The Word
writers_reign1 October 2006
Warning: Spoilers
Arletty made three movies in 1938 but one of them was Hotel du Nord which means that the other two - and this was one of them - got lost in the shuffle. It's beyond dispute that the four finest films she made were that quartet with Marcel Carne at the helm - Hotel du Nord, Le Jour se leve, Les Visiteurs du soir and Les Enfants du paradis - but it would be foolish as well as wrong to dismiss her other films as chopped liver. This one, for example boasts not only one of the finest French actresses of all time in Arletty but also probably THE finest French Character actress in Marguerite Moreno who all but wipes the floor with Michel Simon and that's not easy given that Simon himself was up there with Jean Gabin (they appeared together in Quai des Brumes in this very same year) in terms of great French actors. The light-hearted plot sees Simon as an Egyptologist on his way home to France and plagued by the attentions of Moreno, who is obsessed with him. His wife, who was the mother of his child, Gilbert, now 18, is long dead and Simon has become embroiled with three women since then all of whom feel over possessive toward Gilbert who, as our story opens, has just attempted suicide due to the fickle feelings of a cabaret artist. There isn't much more to it but it's well played by all hands including Gabrielle Dorziat, Francis Perier and Pierre Larquy among others. Director Jean Boyer was responsible for some 60 plus movies most of which are forgotten but most of which are certainly worth a look or, as in this case, more than one.
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