Battement de coeur (1940) - film review

Arlette is young and pretty, but she is also poor.  On leaving a reformatory, she finds herself alone in Paris, without money or a place to stay.   But Fate smiles on her and she finds a position at a special kind of school run by Monsieur Aristide, a school where one is taught the art of theft.  In the course of her duties, Arlette falls for a handsome ambassador, who is in distress because he believes his wife is having an affair with another man, an attaché named Pierre de Rougemont.  The ambassador decides to put Arlette’s larcenous skills to good use, by asking her to steal a watch belonging to the attaché, a watch which he knows contains a photograph that will confirm his wife’s infidelity.  The plan works, but as surely as Arlette steals the watch, someone will steal her heart before the evening is out...

Lovers of French cinema who delight in the rich pantheon of supporting actors that punctuate the industry, like the sprockets on the film itself, will salivate just by reading the credits to this film: Dora Doll, Jean Tissier, André Luguet, Julien Carette and the great Saturnin Fabre.  Throw in stars such as Claude Dauphin and Danielle Darrieux, with the sure hand of Henri Decoin in the director’s chair, and we surely have another winner from the brilliant husband-wife director-actress team of Decoin and Darrieux.  

The wonderful thing about the films being churned out at this time in France is that, although the last thing that matters with teams like this is the story, the writers actually did spend a little time coming up with a decent plot and then honing it until it gleams.  Darrieux was still more or less confined to cute ingénue roles, ingénues who constantly seek new ways to get involved in off-the-wall situations, often involving an older man, and this film isn’t all that different.  Consequently, how Mlle Darrieux winds up as a pupil at Saturnin Fabre’s School For Lovable Rogues isn’t nearly as important as the magic that unfolds before the camera.  Yet another gem from the Decoin-Darrieux stable of excellence.

© Leon Nock (London, England) 2010 

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