#891: GUITRY, Sacha: La Poison (1951)

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GUITRY, Sacha (France)
La Poison [1951]
Spine #891
Blu-ray


The writer, actor, and director Sacha Guitry emerged from the theater to become one of France's best-known and most inventive filmmakers, and La poison marked his first major collaboration with another titan of the screen, the incomparably expressive Michel Simon. With Guitry's witty dialogue and fleet pacing, this black comedy is the quintessential depiction of a marriage gone sour: after thirty years together, a village gardener (Simon) and his wife (Germaine Reuver) find themselves contemplating how to do away with each other, with the former even planning how he'll negotiate his eventual criminal trial. Inspired by Guitry's own post-World War II tangle with the law — a wrongful charge of collaborationism — La poison is a blithely caustic broadside against the French legal system and a society all too eager to capitalize on the misfortunes of others.

85 minutes
Black & White
Monaural
in French
1:33:1 aspect ratio
Criterion Release 2017
Director/Writer



A

Film Rating (0-60):

60

The Extras

 The Booklet

Twenty-four page booklet featuring an essay by film scholar Ginette Vincendeau and a tribute to Guitry by filmmaker François Truffaut.

Commentary

None.

Interview

With filmmaker Olivier Assayas on writer-director Guitry’s influence on French cinema.

Sixty-minute episode

Of Cinéastes de notre temps from 1965 featuring interviews with some of Guitry’s collaborators.

On Life On-screen: Miseries and Splendour of a Monarch

A sixty-minute documentary from 2010 on the collaboration of Guitry and actor Simon.

Extras Rating (0-40):

39

60 + 39 =

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