Although he'd been directing films since the very early silent days Maurice Tourneur displayed no impatience to graduate to full-length features and was still turning out two, three and four reelers well into the 1930s. This melodrama is a case in point, made the same year as another short, Lidoire, this featured another actor destined - like Fernandel (Lidoire) to sustain a cinematic career over several decades.If Charles Vanel never achieved the stardom Fernandel enjoyed he did lend a definite cachet to virtually everything in which he appeared. In this early example he plays a man quite happy to lobby for the release of his brother-in-law from a mental institution in order to get his hands on the money tied up in the patient's bank account. He ignores both the terror and pleading of his wife to say nothing of medical advice and just as we wait for the ex patient to do something violent Tourneur springs a surprise and throws an anticlimactic bone to our doggedness. Well worth a look.
2 Reviews
Fathers day
dbdumonteil30 April 2008
A very interesting short (about 40 min) by Maurice Tourneur.
A man (Charles Vanel) wants his brother-in-law to be released from the insane asylum he's been confined to for years.Nothing sentimental:for his business,the guy needs money which the mentally sick has got.
The wife is scared:he tried to kill her for very obscure reasons.Actually ,he is a paranoid who thinks there are threatening conspiracies against him.
In the doctor's office ,we feel how this unfortunate man is a real head case.At home ,he's looking through his window:there are two men in the streets ,might they be ????When the night comes,the wife's terror rises..
The end is completely unexpected and proves how sublime paternal love can be!
A man (Charles Vanel) wants his brother-in-law to be released from the insane asylum he's been confined to for years.Nothing sentimental:for his business,the guy needs money which the mentally sick has got.
The wife is scared:he tried to kill her for very obscure reasons.Actually ,he is a paranoid who thinks there are threatening conspiracies against him.
In the doctor's office ,we feel how this unfortunate man is a real head case.At home ,he's looking through his window:there are two men in the streets ,might they be ????When the night comes,the wife's terror rises..
The end is completely unexpected and proves how sublime paternal love can be!
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