Caprices (1942) watch online HD

... providing of course you have a penchant for soufflé's prepared to perfection in the French style and are not averse to a touch of the Cinderellas around the edges and like to go to the movies occasionally just to escape and be entertained rather than lectured at or be coerced into 'raising' your conscience. Leo Johannon directed some 30 or so movies and wrote or co-wrote as many again with arguably his most enduring credit the co-writer on Julien Duvivier's Pot-Bouille. Albert Prejean was an early Maigret and a very reliable leading man in pre-war French cinema, certainly good enough for Marcel Carne to cast opposite Francoise Rosay in 'Jenny', the first collaboration with Jacques Prevert. This brings us to the name above the title: Danielle Darrieux will turn 90 in May of 2007 and is still going strong and delivering fine performances.

People still sometimes ask me why I go to Paris three or four times a year to see movies and I'd be hard put to furnish a better answer than this: There are absolutely NO cinemas in London, a major capital city, that would devote several weeks to a 'season'/'retrospective'/'homage' call it what you will, of an individual performer, writer, director (okay, the National Film Theatre does something similar but that is specialized), In Paris you have literally dozens, right now, for example you can see 'seasons' of Sacha Guitry, Marcel Carne and Ernst Lubitsch. Nobody's going to make a fortune here, they screen one film five times daily to an average audience of thirty or forty people BUT THEY KEEP ON DOING IT YEAR AFTER YEAR. This is a town that Loves movies old and new whereas London is a town that loves a buck. Anyhow Darrieux walks away with this entry from 1942 as what? Actress? Florist? Both, if anyone asks you but above all as DARRIEUX. She had - and still has - that elusive quality that someone (I think it was Ellen Terry) describes as 'that little something extra' which other, less poetic souls have called 'star quality'. Darrieux has it in spades and her effortless rapport with Prejean and her supporting cast is a joy to behold and Johannon even throws in some clever camera angles, shooting, for example, down through a chandelier onto the night club below (Jack Webb would do something similar at the climax of Pete kelly's Blues some twelve years or so later). Would that some enterprising person would issue some fifty of the hundred and thirty movies she made on DVD.

Joannon's last works were unintentionally funny:it was a dreadful hodge podge of Saint -Sulpician images,finer feelings and religious concerns ("le Défroqué" "le Désert de Pigalle" and "Tant d'Amour Perdus" ) were peaks of kitsch.One should note he directed the last Stan and Ollie "Atoll K" (1957) But those works of the thirties and the forties were harmless pleasant stuff :"Vous N'Avez Rien A Declarer "was ahead of its time,depicting a case of impotence!"Caprices " is another rather enjoyable comedy,in spite of a desultory script;the Cinderella syndrome was better applied on Roger Richebé's "les Amants de Minuit" (1952),but Darrieux has plenty of go,and ,considering the limitations she is working under,it 's quite a feat!From a little flower lady to a sophisticated actress complete with cigarette holder to the socialite ,she runs the whole gamut.She is given strong support by aging Albert Prejean ,in his last part of a womanizer.

Best scene: the chandelier which might fall on the guests in the chic restaurant.