Sacha Guitry: Four Films 1936-1938

Sacha Guitry was a prolific playwright and busy stage actor who brought his boulevardier persona to the cinema as star, writer, and director of sly drawing-room comedies and costume pictures. This four-film set makes a great companion piece to Criterion's Eclipse DVD set Presenting Sacha Guitry (VL Online-9/10), offering more films from the late 1930s—Guitry’s most prolific period—all adapted from his own plays and costarring his then-wife, Jacqueline Delubac. Indiscretions (1936), his first solo directorial effort, is a comedy of manners between two society couples. Apart from a prologue in Paris traffic, Guitry makes no effort to break out of the drawing room set-up, but his direction is crisp and he moves the dialogue-driven film at a lively clip. My Father Was Right (1936) is a sour comedy about a father teaching his son to be wary of women, which features a misogynistic streak running through the witty dialogue. Let's Make a Dream (1936) centers on the seduction of a married woman and is largely stagebound, but Guitry plays with the limitations in a clever way. Finally, Up the Champs-Élysées (1938) breaks with the drawing-room comedies to tell of the famous titular Parisian street as a history lesson by way of a costume pageant. Delubac costars in each film, which are all entertaining but also lesser efforts than the ones in the Eclipse set. Presented in a Blu-ray/DVD Combo edition, extras include an introduction and select scene commentaries by French film historian Ginette Vincendeau, video essays, and interviews. A strong optional purchase. (S. Axmaker)