Maybe the funniest of the shorts from the " Sueurs Froides" miniseries ,full of black humor and plenty of hilarious lines;a screenplay which verges on absurd but which will keep you glued to your seat.
The title is a pun lost in translation : "Mise A L'Index" means "blacklisting " in French , and the cans contain indexes and other fingers.
A journalist is relegated to trivial events ;for dinner,he and his wife have to content themselves with a can of sardines:much to their horror,the can contains ... human fingers in oil ! The grocer is not that much impressed 'I've been in my shop for fifty years and I've seen so many new stuff,from condensed milk to red wine powder! "
His wife urges him to investigate :opportunity knocks and it can be the scoop he has been waiting for years !So he goes to the canning factory where he meets the manager...
Jean Carmet who had worked with Chabrol twenty years before -he was the pitiful owner of a boarding house in "La rupture" - is marvelously cast :his flabbergasted look works wonder all along the movie :you should see his face when the manager overwhelms him with percentages and statistics ;"and when you 're out of stock?" he naively asks him.
Although neither Hitchcock nor Chabrol directed this short,you can feel the American master's touch : the can full of fingers in oil in the foreground ,with the couple shivering on their sofa behind.
A vital remark :CC was part of the Nouvelle Vague I do not go much for,but he possessed something his colleagues had never had :an unmistakable sense of humor ,which can be felt when he hints at film critics in a memorable last line.
The title is a pun lost in translation : "Mise A L'Index" means "blacklisting " in French , and the cans contain indexes and other fingers.
A journalist is relegated to trivial events ;for dinner,he and his wife have to content themselves with a can of sardines:much to their horror,the can contains ... human fingers in oil ! The grocer is not that much impressed 'I've been in my shop for fifty years and I've seen so many new stuff,from condensed milk to red wine powder! "
His wife urges him to investigate :opportunity knocks and it can be the scoop he has been waiting for years !So he goes to the canning factory where he meets the manager...
Jean Carmet who had worked with Chabrol twenty years before -he was the pitiful owner of a boarding house in "La rupture" - is marvelously cast :his flabbergasted look works wonder all along the movie :you should see his face when the manager overwhelms him with percentages and statistics ;"and when you 're out of stock?" he naively asks him.
Although neither Hitchcock nor Chabrol directed this short,you can feel the American master's touch : the can full of fingers in oil in the foreground ,with the couple shivering on their sofa behind.
A vital remark :CC was part of the Nouvelle Vague I do not go much for,but he possessed something his colleagues had never had :an unmistakable sense of humor ,which can be felt when he hints at film critics in a memorable last line.