Drole de Drame

Before shifting gears to emotionally potent tragedies such as Daybreak and Children of Paradise, Marcel Carne and favorite screenwriter Jacques Prevert collaborated on this priceless 1937 black comedy. A vegetarian serial killer, a botanist moonlighting as a mystery writer, a flamboyant milkman, and a hypocritical bishop are the featured characters in this broad farce in which the central murder is one that never actually occurrs. Using the same efficient, graceful camera control that would become his trademark, Carne stages the film, set in Edwardian England, in a magical world that makes no pretense towards realism. The backdrops are obviously artificial and the complications contrived, but the spectacular cast, led by Michel Simon, Louis Jouvet and Jean-Louis Barrault, performs gamely, and the film is years ahead of the curve in its satirical depiction of the media and public obsession with killers, as well as its willingness to lampoon the legal and moral institutions that blame violence in society on violence in art. As one of Carne's few commercial failures, Drole de Drame (called Bizarre, Bizarre in its American release) has been difficult to find, but while the disc transfer is made from a somewhat scratchy print with bland subtitles, this is still recommended, overall. (D. Fienberg)