Stage actor, director, and playwright Sacha Guitry became a giant of French cinema when he made the jump to movies as writer, director, and star of a series of witty and inventive films from the 1930s through the ‘50s. In his cynical black comedy La Poison (1951), Guitry gives the lead to the great Michel Simon, who plays Paul, a gruff bear of a gardener who plots the murder of Blandine (Germaine Reuver), his wife of 30 years, even as she in turn plots his. After hearing an interview with a lawyer (Jacques Varennes) celebrating his hundredth successful acquittal, Paul uses the lawyer to (unwittingly) guide him through the perfect murder. This is also a satire of small town gossip, judicial morality, and raging misogyny, played with an energetic and at times grotesque exaggeration. While Guitry is not in the film itself, he personally introduces the cast and crew like a master of ceremonies in the memorable credit sequence, and then lets his witty dialogue and creative storytelling techniques speak for him. Guitry uses the radio as commentary and counterpoint to the couple's wordless meals together, and a florist as a kind of Greek chorus, and he turns the murder trial into a wild piece of theater of the absurd laced with the cynicism of post-war France. Presented in a handsome restored edition by Criterion, extras include a new interview with filmmaker Olivier Assayas discussing Guitry's influence on French cinema, a 1965 episode of Cinéastes de notres temp featuring interviews with people who worked with Guitry, and a 2010 documentary on the collaboration between Guitry and Simon. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)
La Poison
Criterion, 85 min., in French w/English subtitles, not rated, DVD: 2 discs, $29.99; Blu-ray: $39.99 Volume 32, Issue 6
La Poison
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