Louis Jouvet

Synopsis:
No one would think that Manuel Ismora, an esteemed society photographer, is an audacious thief and con artist. The newspapers are ?lled with accounts of Ismora’s criminal exploits, which involve the fraudulent sale of a château and the theft of some valuable jewels, but the police are slow in bringing him to justice. Instead, it is Gabriel Dupon, a modest button salesman who bears a remarkable physical resemblance to Imora, who ends up being taken into custody. Positively identi?ed by Imora’s many victims, Dupon is branded a criminal, and even when he is released by the police through lack of evidence, his reputation is in tatters.Read More »

Saint-Maurice, an ordinary peaceful village, lived healthily so much so that the local doctor’s practice was scant. But that was before Dr. Parpalaid retired and was replaced by a charlatan by the name of Knock. A real genius this one, for he soon managed to persuade everyone that they were ill. And not only didn’t they resent him but they even loved their physician, who made a fortune and brought prosperity to the village by turning it into a big hospital.Read More »

A full decade ahead of the New Wavelet Christian Jacque, Louis Jouvet and a belle equipe were showing the Godards and Truffauts how the Big Boys do it and neither Godard nor Truffaut ever made anything even remotely as good as this and Godard never will. It all comes together like clockwork from Henri Jeanson’s caustic script, written at times with a quill dipped in vitriol, to Christian Jaque’s perfect direction which coaxes performances close to perfection from Louis Jouvet on down. Ludmilla Tcherina is especially effective in her very first film which gives her lots of chances to remind us that she was first and foremost a great ballerina and Francois Perier shines as the callow youth besotted with her to the point of attempted suicide. Louis Seigner was still popping up fairly regularly in films at this time (1946) and etches a standout portrait of a ruthless businessman prepared to sacrifice his son on the altar of Mammon and let us not forget Marguerite Moreno adding yet another unforgettable portrait to her gallery of grotesques.Read More »

Quote:
L`Hôtel du Nord is an award-winning novel of the first Prix du Roman Populist and is a loose collection of sentimental tales about simple people residing in a hotel. The novel begins with Monsieur and Madame Lecouvreur buying and transforming a rundown hotel. The film begins with the hotel already up and running and gives no real mention of how the hotel came about. So too, the novel ends with the Lecouvreur`s reluctantly selling the hotel to a large company that plans to construct an office building on the site and the tenants must unhappily leave and separate. The film`s ending is entirely modified and not only is the hotel not being demolished, but the film ends with the sense that this place and the people there are left standing in time untouched by the outside world. So too, the film focuses on criminals, prostitutes, and vagabonds, and develops the novel`s sentimental, rather than political, themes.Read More »