Porte des Lilas

I found this a pretty strange film at times. Rene Clair was a great stylist as anybody who has seen A nous la liberte, I Married a Witch, Les grandes manoeuvres and others knows. Here he has moved onto Marcel Carne's territory. I kept thinking of Le jour se leve, or Les portes de la nuit or L'air de Paris: somebody else's aesthetic and content. Pierre Brasseur, who always projected a great confidence and sometimes a ferocious masculinity, here seems out of place as a timid man who drinks too much and has too few outlets for his energy. He really breaks loose in the dancehall scene when he picks up Dany Carrel and spins her around, daring anybody to stop him. Otherwise he goes glumly around the neighbourhood, bearing the brunt of children's insults (these kids are the most overactive in any French film). Georges Brassens made no more films after this one; he shows little talent for acting but boy, can he sing. And you get a lot of his singing here. Raymond Bussieres and Carrel as father and daughter do very good work, Henri Vidal (who had a lot of muscles, as well as being Michele Morgan's husband) plays a homicidal creep well enough. Overall, a minor work by a great director whose best days were past him.