Let's get Past Jean Renoir.

Le domino vert - Darrieux

Despite being the most popular foreign language cinema in the English speaking world from the mid thirties on, our knowledge of French films is tilted and incomplete. I’m always curious about what lies outside the confined B.F.I., Criterion Collection, Mark Cousins coverage. Let's consider the titles that fill out the filmographies of  revered names and quite few more. You Tube offered a startlingly extensive chance to find out and, though their five hundred (!) vintage movie site appears to have vanished, there’s still enough left to explore - if you face up to soso, un-subtitled copies.

Film ininflamable!

UFA’s 1935 Le domino vert with direction credited to Henri Decoin and Herbert Selpin seemed a prime candidate. This is the simultaneous French version of Selpin’s German Brigitte Horney vehicle Der grüne Domino. Selpin  is remembered now as the director who died in a wartime 3rd Reich prison, when his criticism of the German navy upset Dr. Goebbels, though his splendid Hans Albers westerns Sgt. Berry and Wasser fur Canitoga are on the way to being the most entertaining German films of the late thirties. 

The French version, apparently filmed in Germany and using their top technicians, was a chance for the young Danielle Darrieux to do her so charming act again. She has a double role, starts off in a one piece swim suit tucking her hair into the bathing cap and graduates to the Green Domino columbine costume via a variety of smart modern and bogus period outfits. Charles Vanel comes on as the rugged sculptor, smashing a bottle against a statue in his glass walled studio, in frustration over the way husband Maurice Escande is treating Jany Holt and moves on to doing aged. His is the only substantial performance.

Rather than a fun romance, this one turns into a thinly plotted murder mystery. Young Darrieux’ uncle and guardian is asked for her hand, which exposes the secret that her dad is in jail for murder. In the chambers of Mâitre Henri Bonvallet, the old dossier is produced and we go into the flashback to 1914, which looks pretty much the same.

Well off art dealer Maurice Escande and blonde wife Jany Holt have agreed to go their own ways. We never get a good look at the painting Escande’s butler is carefully restoring but getting it locked away in the desk is a plot point.

When Darrieux’s mother Darrieux again comes into his gallery-book store, Escande is smitten and takes a horse cab to follow her to The Louvre, which happens to be shut that day. The pair hit it off and they go to the cafe where the sketch artist draws Danielle and the Master of Ceremonies introduces the Can Can girls who funnel up from the circular stage trap door followed by singer Lindia in a picture hat. This is the film’s most cinematic passage.

Le domino vert - Escande & Darrieux

Vanel takes a dim view of their kiss, silhouetted on the curtains at night and events come to a head when the couple, Holt, Vanel and the lesser characters converge on the Bal Masqué where the staging of the French cast’s footage is quite elaborate though we never see them in the same shot as the orchestra, presumably filmed for the German version.

Back in the (then) present, Darrieux manages to crack the case with the aid of suitor Daniel Lecourtois, getting the truth out of guilt ridden former maid Jeanne Pérez. Happy lakeside ending.

Stuck with a non event plot and undistinguished support, Selpin pours his efforts into the lavish ball room sequence. Did Decoin contribute things like the striking shot of Darrieux alone in the corridor?  He beat Albert Préjean’s time with Danielle and the pair were married and worked through a succession of subsequent movies together.

The technicians are on top of their game with the Otto Hunte-Schiller white painted doors, taller than the frame, a striking element. The one exterior of the speeding train stands out. Nicely lit & cut the production doesn’t seem to be able to manage fades. There is one murky chemical attempt and they give up on the hard edged wipes to black early on.

Le dessous des cartes  (Under the Cards) made by André Cayatte in 1948  is another forgotten  production with A feature talent going through their paces. This one belongs to the period where new director Cayatte was knocking out production line entertainments, before he got stuck into  his social interrogation movies,  think Gabin in le verdict or the alarming Nous sommes tous des assassins. It is a match with then contemporary thrillers like Fuga en Francia, Build My Gallows High and the Luis Trenker Barriera a Settentrione.

In the snow covered alps, Serge Reggiani is smuggling his rucksack full of bottled liquor past the frontier guards. “Je n’aime pas les gendarmes.” Meanwhile in the city, financier Enrico Glori has come under suspicion and does a runner. He arives at Édouard Delmont’s inn, where Reggiani is sparking Janine Darcey, the daughter of the house and Reggiani’s real life wife at that stage. We remember her with some enthusiasm from the Asquith French Without Tears - long time since that was about?

To avoid pursuit, Glori retains Serge as guide to cross the mountains. Walking with a stick, the city man can’t keep up (“je ne peux plus!”) and the two shelter in an (empty) mountain hut where Serge burns some abandoned timber to melt ice over the fire. Next day he points Gori towards civilisation, accepts his payment and starts back. However the fugitive is found hanging in the hut, at which point the film develops some traction. Widow, top billed Madeleine Sologne, discovers that his insurance won’t pay out on a suicide while agenda driven police inspector Paul Meurisse, totally in his element, is wheeled in to protect the interests of the influential people involved in Gori’s schemes. His arrival at the village inquest awes the locals and turns things around.

Like Monsieur la souris, the plot pivots on documents found on the dead man. Sologne shows up to look after her pay out and torpedoes the suicide theory at the reconstruction with the hanging dummy, demanding “Where’s the chair?” -  the one the dead man would have had to kick away. It looks like Serge will be done for murder. More interaction between him and Madeleine, of which Janine takes a dim view, and some cat and mousing between Paul and Serge, who stages his own reconstruction while the local authorities watch confused before deciding the self interested city policeman is a great detective - end of picture.

Madeleine Sologne.

Time and personal problems have not treated the star of L’eternal retour kindly and it’s a stretch to find Sologne’s blonded femme fatale an object of desire. The other leads are fine and the background registers, with Reggiani supported by a loud dog and a squad of kids who fall through the ice on the trough outside his jail cell, while there’s Tyrolean dancing at the Inn.

Cayatte handles the crime in the alps material with confidence - assured performances, unfamiliar setting and absence of process backgrounds. The only studio exteriors are for night scenes. Thirard’s camerawork is impeccable. There’s no editor credit and the film’s faults are in the script where five writers including Cayatte and Charles Spaak are involved.

 It’s always a disappointment to find so much French cinema is made up by films like this, where the talented people involved are spinning their wheels. Well, there are several hundred more. There’s always the hope that the next one will be like Macao enfer de jeu (gun runner Von Stroheim battles Sessue Hayakawa) François 1er (Fernandel in costume) or La terre qui meurt (drift from the cities). Even without, checking these out fills time nicely.

Barie Pattison 2022