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Les Cinq gentlemen maudits
1931 Crime / Thriller / Drama
 Review
This early sound film from avant-garde French filmmaker Julien Duvivier
contains an odd mix of styles which range from an early attempt at
neo-realism (most noticeable in the location sequences) to a subtly
expressionistic approach that prefigures film noir. Les Cinq gentlemen maudits is an
unusually experimental work for Duvivier, using long tracking shots and
unusual camera angles (including extensive use of low and high angle
shots) in a way that achieves a striking fluidity and darkly oppressive
mood throughout. High contrast lighting adds to the sinister
atmosphere, with dark shadows conveying a sense of all-pervading menace
which is highly appropriate for the story. These daring stylistic
touches help to compensate for the bland screenplay whose denouement is
all too obvious to anyone who has seen the Sherlock Holmes film The House of Fear (1945).Even at this early stage in his career Julien Duvivier was able to attract high calibre actors and the cast for this film includes three of the biggest French actors of the decade: Harry Baur, René Lefèvre and Robert Le Vigan. Baur, a film and stage actor of enormous repute, had recently starred in Duvivier’s David Golder (1930), Lefèvre had just become a huge star thanks to his appearance in the René Clair musical Le Million (1931) and Le Vigan would go on to play Jesus Christ in Duvivier’s Biblical epic Golgotha (1935). The cast also includes Georges Péclet, a prolific character actor who would turn to directing in the late 1940s, his films including the wartime drama Casabianca (1951). Unusually for a French film of this era, most of the film was shot abroad on location, in the Moroccan towns of Fez, Marrakech and Moulay-Idriss. This provides the film with an almost documentary-style realism and authentically exotic feel which audiences of the time would have appreciated. It is interesting that Duvivier’s next film to be set in North Africa, Pépé-le-Moko, would be filmed entirely in the studio (although so convincing are the sets that you would think it was shot on location). In parallel with this film, Duvivier shot a German language version, Die fünf verfluchten Gentlemen (1931), which starred Anton Walbrook in one of his earliest screen roles. © filmsdefrance.com 2009 Write a review for this film...User Comments
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Director:
Julien Duvivier
Starring: Harry Baur, René Lefèvre, Rosine Deréan, Robert Le Vigan, Marc Dantzer Synopsis
Five disparate friends take a boat to Morocco for what they hope will
be a relaxing sightseeing holiday. They arrive in the midst of a
religious festival and immediately provoke the wrath of an old man when
they try to remove the veil of his young female companion. The
old man reveals that he is a sorcerer and promptly puts a curse on the
five men. With relish he announces that within the next
lunar cycle they will all die. Of course, the friends refuse to
take this seriously. But then, one evening, one of their number
accidentally drowns himself. A few days later, another member of
the group, an aviator, dies whilst performing at an air show in
Berlin. It looks as if the old man’s prediction is going to come
true. The three remaining friends are going to die, and there is
nothing they can do to prevent it...
Credits
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© filmsdefrance.com 2009