Carrefour (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Carrefour |
| Country of production | France |
| original language | French |
| Publishing year | 1938 |
| length | 84 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Kurt Bernhardt |
| script |
Robert Liebmann Kurt Bernhardt Lilo Dammert (anonymous) André-Paul Antoine (dialogues) based on a novel by Hans Kafka |
| production | Eugene Tuscherer |
| music | Paul Dessau |
| camera | Léonce-Henri Burel |
| cut | Adolf Lantz |
| occupation | |
| |
Carrefour is a French fictional film drama from 1938, produced by German exiles under the leadership of Kurt Bernhardt , starring Charles Vanel in the leading role of a crook with a new existence and Otto Wallburg in his last film role as a German hospital doctor, who again this amnesia war disabled Teaches reading, writing and speaking.
action
Roger de Vetheuil, a successful and wealthy manufacturer, has suffered from amnesia since he came under shell fire on the Somme Front in 1917. Since then he has been tormented by his past, he doesn't really know who he is. But one day his past catches up with him and it doesn't seem particularly rosy. He is accused of being a wanted criminal named Jean Pelletier. Pelletier and Vetheuil disappeared at the same time in December 1917 on the same sector of the front. When there was a lawsuit against Pelletier, the testimony of a certain Michèle Allain weighs heavily on him. She swears stone and bone that Vetheuil was in truth Pelletier and she was his lover at the time. The ambivalent Lucien Sarroux, on the other hand, testifies that he saw Pelletier die in a hospital in Morocco where Pelletier served as a Foreign Legionnaire. So it comes to acquittal, and de Vetheuil believes he is the winner and thinks that he can return to his decent, home-style atmosphere and that he has protected his family. But he's wrong, because Sarroux is a crook and Pelletier's former accomplice. He makes it clear to the astonished Vetheuil that he, Sarroux, of course immediately recognized him as Pelleter and that he is now demanding a decent financial reward for his silence.
Now Vetheuil goes on a search for traces himself in order to shed light on the repressed darkness of his first existence. He visits Pelletier's mother, who appears very upset, and Michèle, who had incriminated him heavily in court. Finally he begins to remember and confesses his past wife Anna. Both have been in love for ten years, and therefore Anna stands by her husband, also to protect their son. Sarroux begins to demand money again, and ultimately the two men fight over it. Sarroux wants to flee with Michèle, his accomplice, but the police provide the crook couple. Sarroux doesn't care about anything: he wants to reveal Vetheuil's true identity as Pelletier in front of the police, but is shot shortly before by Michèle, who still loves Pelletier and therefore doesn't want to see his current existence destroyed. Then she corrects herself. On her deathbed, she revises the true statement she had given in court and now tells the judge who questioned her that Pelletier actually died in 1917. Pelletier, alias Roger de Vetheuil, can now finally look to the future without worry or fear for himself and his little family.
Production notes
The film was shot in April / May 1938 in Paris, and it was premiered on October 26, 1938, also in the French capital. Given the abundance of German refugees from Hitler's Germany involved in this film, Carrefour was not admitted to a performance in the Reich.
The film constructions come from Jean d'Eaubonne and Raymond Gabutti .
Carrefour is considered the most important French exile film by German-Jewish refugees before the Hitler regime. Participants were the director Kurt Bernhardt from Worms, his brother-in-law Eugen Tuscherer , who originally came from Bohemia, who produced the film, the ostracized composer Paul Dessau who wrote the film music, and the former star author Robert Liebmann , who had been unemployed for four years and who contributed to the script , as well as the colleague Adolf Lantz , who was accommodated here as an editor, and Berlin's former star comedian Otto Wallburg. For him, Lantz and Liebmann, Carrefour would be the last job in a film. Liebmann and Wallburg, who, unlike Lantz, who moved to England, subsequently stayed on the European mainland, were victims of the Holocaust during the Second World War .
Reviews
“The doppelganger motif, the split psyche of the hero, is reminiscent of the German expressionist film of the twenties as well as the American film noir of the forties, which CARREFOUR seems to anticipate. Nevertheless, this melancholy film is a French melodrama - and yet again it is not. CARREFOUR was produced by Eugène Tuscherer, who worked as a production manager in Germany until he emigrated in 1933. His brother-in-law, Kurt Bernhardt, directed. Before the National Socialists came to power, Bernhardt had worked successfully as a director in Germany and made several films with Tuscherer. The journalist Hans Kafka was responsible for the script of CARREFOUR and, as an unnamed co-author, Robert Liebmann, an accomplished scriptwriter. Another Berliner, Adolf Lantz, did the editing. All three had worked in the German film industry until 1933 and then emigrated. "
"The tale unfolds with the interest of a well-planned mystery film and the mounting suspense of a man-hunt which is no less inexorablyable because the hunter and the hunted are one. De Vetheuil is his own Javert, his own Valjean, his own crime. Were it not for his author's pity for the relentless truth-seeker he had created, he should also have served as his own judge and executioner. As it is, he is saved by the narrowest of melodramatic margins — and by one of the most familiar. But that may be for the best. Too much logic might have destroyed the film. The drama has been played as interestingly as it deserves. Charles Vanel as de Vetheuil is a model hound of destiny, driven relentlessly by his conscience, tortured by an unreasoning — yet psychologically natural — sense of guilt. Jules Berry plays the blackmailer, Sarrou, with the proper degree of rascality, and there are admirable portrayals of the wife by Tania Fedor, the mistress by Suzy Prim, the attorneys by Boverio and Jean Tissier and the German physician by some, alas, unidentified player. "
Individual evidence
- ↑ Horak: In Abroad on filmportal.de
- ↑ This actor (“unidentified player”), not recognized by the US critic, was Otto Wallburg
Web links
- Carrefour in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Carrefour at filmportal.de
- extensive review in The New York Times