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thierry-guffroy
Reviews
Bad Sister (1931)
There is no such thing as a wrong part for Miss Davis
I just watched "Bad Sister" as a document, today.
Nobody would leave its editing with such a slow pace nowadays.
Most of the actors seem to play their parts as though they were not quite in the room yet, not talking together for real anyway.
Where was the director ? And first of all, who "the hell" was he ?
So, wrong title, here : it should announce "Bad Weed", not "Bad Sister".
But ...
Miss Davis, directly coming from stage to a movie set, was already at ease in just about any type of role, and she intended to stick to that for the rest of her career, playing good persons in a few other films (watch her in a second role as late as in "Phone Call From A Stranger", for instance).
Why she was regarded as being impossible remains a mystery to me.
She was said to be very nice ... if your deserved it ! Only, she was demanding, and very right to be that way, in my opinion.
Here, she does something out of poor clothing, already well aware of the importance of her costume to create a character. It makes you remember why "Now Voyager" will be such a hit, years later.
She sort of became the heroin, here, the minute she appeared in that scene with her little brother, and no longer a second role (I didn't care much for Fox, quite inconsistent). That's when she kneeled to burn her diary in the fireplace, being joined by wonderful child actor David Durand. Her future as a star made no doubt, then. I bet Jack Warner saw that scene too !
The film says a lot, socially, about those days, and how people would think twice before they spoke then. You can watch more and more of restless people as time goes by, especially in the post war productions.
(By the way : Davis may well have had to change a diaper, in her scene with a new born baby, but she is not seen doing so ... like said in the Trivia above. That take does not exist, apparently ...).
Why on hearth David Durand did not become a star (although he remained in show business for quite a few years after that, also appearing in westerns, until WW2) is another mystery to me. Here, it looks like nobody told him he didn't have to sugar-coat it, though, but the boy has a unique presence. I remember this film just because of him.
Farandole (1945)
Not the turkey they said it was
Just saw this movie on YouTube.
Speaking of films which deserve to be remembered as part of the French Golden Age, WW2 was far from being a sad period of time for the motion picture industry in occupied France, thanks to The Continentale Company, and others.
This film (whoever produced it) has got all the qualities and all the defaults of the average French production : It's focusing on its actors only, not on the director. French people wanted to watch their favorite actors all the time, no matter what they had to play.
Think of what this could've been without the great Lise Delamare (from the Comédie Française) who personifies a fascinating courtesan in a Suzy Delair type, without Dubost (who lost 50 000 francs, by the way, not twenty ... check at 24'39'' when she says it loudly), the tremendous Blier, the star Morlay (talking too fast, speech hard to catch here), and of course, without their dialogues.
I believe Jeanson also worked on the trial scenes, in court. The punchy lines written for the attorneys are certainly his, as the prosecutor and the defender harshly and so brilliantly confront themselves.
Nevertheless, to me, this film looks more than a sketch or a draft, simply because the cast does it all, as usual in the French cinema, with even more imagination inspired by that strange direction. Not at all the average main program you would have expected in a theater of that time ...