Film Review
Although Sacha Guitry is credited with directing
Les Trois font la paire he actually
had very little to do with it on that front. Once he had
completed the script, he was too ill to direct it - that honour fell to
his close friend Clément Duhour, the producer of several of his
previous films and an actor with a supporting role in the film.
Duhour would take none of the credit for this film, even though Guitry
was hardly ever on set and had next to no directorial input. It
would perhaps have been kinder for Duhour to have taken the director's
credit, as he patently had none of Guitry's flair and the film is way
beneath Guitry's usual standard. Duhour's 'generosity' made it
easy for Guitry's usual detractors to slate the film - an ignominous
end for the director of such masterpieces as
Le Roman d'un tricheur (1936),
who died two months after the film's release in France. Duhour
went on to direct another film scripted by Guitry,
La Vie à deux (1958) and
then the dismal comedy
Vous n'avez
rien à déclarer? (1959).
Les Trois font la paire starts
with a typically Guitry-esque premise - namely that everyone lives his
life in much the same way that a film director makes a film. The
film begins by introducing the three main players in the story as they
wake up in bed and reflect on what the day holds for them. They
are like actors contemplating how to play their roles, and each of them
bemoans the fact that he has not been given a bigger part.
Unfortunately, Guitry seems to lose interest in this promising idea and
it all gets washed away as the plot takes over, the whole thing ending
up as a fairly routine comedy. Michel Simon, the star of several
previous Guitry films (notably
La Poison), reputedly loathed
the script but agreed to appear in the film out of loyalty to a
director he admired more than any other. Saddled with a
lacklustre script and an uninspiring supporting cast (which appears
even more feeble when names like Daniel Gélin and
François Périer start to get bandied about), the film
would be a pretty grim ordeal were it not for the sparkling
contributions from the leads, Michel Simon and Sophie Desmarets.
Guitry puts his stamp of approval on the the whole
unedifying venture by appearing at the top
and tail of it, but throughout the main body of the film he is
conspicuous by his absence.
© James Travers, Willems Henri 2013
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Sacha Guitry film:
Bonne chance (1935)
Film Synopsis
Jojo's sole ambition in life is to become a gangster, but to gain
admittance to a gang he has to prove himself by committing a daring
act. To that end, he kills a stranger in broad daylight, not knowing
that his victim is an actor who is playing a scene in a film. The
murder is caught on film, leading Commissaire Bernard to think that the
killer will be easy to find. Sure enough, Bernard soon makes his
arrest, a clown from a circus, but then he faces a seemingly
intractable problem. The clown has an identical twin, who is also
a clown with the same circus. Just when the case was so close to
be closed each of the twins confesses to being the murderer...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.