Film Review
Having been assistant to film director Henri Decoin for several years,
Michel Volkovitch, better known as Michel Deville, started his
directing career in 1958 with an average thriller
Une balle dans le canon starring
Mijanou Bardot (Brigitte's sister). Then, between 1961 and 1963,
he made three contemporary comedies -
Ce
soir ou jamais,
Adorable menteuse and
À cause d'une femme - which
brought a breath of fresh air to French cinema at the height of the
Nouvelle Vague. Deville seems to have made his mark and, after a
moderate success with
L'Appartement
des filles, there came
Lucky
Jo, on 11th November 1964.
The script, written by Deville and his faithful screenwriter Nina
Companeez, is based on the book
Main
pleine by Pierre Lesou, the author of
Le Doulos (filmed by Jean-Pierre
Melville) and
Un conde
(adapted by Yves Boisset). By 1964 it seemed that no one
wanted crime movies in the
Touchez pas au grisbi
tradition. Already (in 1963) director Georges Lautner had
adapted, with success, a book by Albert Simonin entitled
Grisbi or not grisbi into a famous
crime comedy,
Les Tontons flingueurs.
Lucky Jo should have been a small
gangster movie but ended up as an appealing bittersweet crime-comedy
whose charm and freshness still remain.
The cast is of high quality, although father and son Pierre and Claude
Brasseur (who played together for the first time) don't have the best
parts or scenes. Georges Wilson, Jean-Pierre Darras, Christiane
Minazzoli (seen with Eddie Constantine in
Les femmes d'abord and
À toi de faire mignonne)
were better suited for their roles. There is also the sexy
Françoise Arnoul (a star of French cinema since the 50s) and her
lovely tune, which she sings by herself.
But what about Eddie Constantine? Michel Deville got to
know the actor and so could really tease out his true nature, a
sensitive and kind man who had become trapped in a series of B movies
playing Lemmy Caution, the character that made him famous. When
Deville conceived the part of
Lucky
Jo for him (so-called because he only brings bad luck), he
brought Constantine to his finest performance, on a par with the one he
gives in Jean-Luc Godard's
Alphaville. His persona,
a relaxed man of action, serves the movie perfectly. The fight
scenes and comedy never spoil the sweet sadness of the film.
Lucky Jo gives a twist to the
well-defined codes of the thriller genre by adding a poetic
touch. Marred by just a few flaws, the script is smarter than
that of most French film noir thrillers of the time and avoids all of
the melodramatic clichés. The film betrays the book only
in its ending, but this is for a good reason.
Lucky Jo can only be found on DVD
in the first box of the four dedicated to Michel Deville's 50 year-long
career.
© Willems Henri (Brussels, Belgium) 2012
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Next Michel Deville film:
Martin Soldat (1966)