Women are to blame for everything
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Women are to blame for everything |
| Original title | Les plus belles escroqueries du monde |
| Country of production | France , Italy , Japan , Netherlands |
| original language | French , Dutch |
| Publishing year | 1964 |
| length | 108 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 18 |
| Rod | |
| Director |
Hiromichi Horikawa , Roman Polański , Ugo Gregoretti , Claude Chabrol , Jean-Luc Godard |
| script | Hiromichi Horikawa, Roman Polański, Gérard Brach , Ugo Gregoretti, Claude Chabrol, Paul Gégauff , Jean-Luc Godard |
| production | Pierre Roustang |
| music |
Keitaro Miho , Krzysztof Komeda , Piero Umiliani , Pierre Jansen , Michel Legrand |
| camera |
Asakazu Nakai , Jerzy Lipman , Tonino Delli Colli , Jean Rabier , Raoul Coutard |
| cut |
Jacques Gaillard , Rita van Royen , Hervé de Luze , Agnès Guillemot |
| occupation | |
| |
The women are to blame for everything (original title: Les plus belles escroqueries du monde ) is an internationally produced episode film from 1964.
action
Five episodes depict the life of crooks and fraudsters in five different metropolises:
1st episode: The five benefactors of Fumiko ( Les cinq bienfaiteurs de Fumiko ) - Director: Hiromichi Horikawa
A young geisha meets an old man in a bar in Tokyo who used to work as a composer and wrote a famous song. The man boasts of having spent a fortune on his new platinum set of teeth and carries thick wads of money in his pocket. When the geisha notices this, he lets him take her to his apartment. This turns out to be small, dirty and messy. The man simply claims that he owns the entire house and that he only lives in the caretaker's apartment out of thrift. When the man choked on noodles - due to the bad teeth in reality - the geisha stole his supposedly valuable teeth in order to exchange them for cash in a pawn shop.
She then went to a jewelry store, where she - believing that she could later exchange the platinum bite for money at the pawn shop - spent all of her savings to buy a valuable pearl necklace that she had liked for a long time. A short time later she is arrested by the police and suspected of murdering the old man. A police officer finds the old man's teeth in her apartment. However, it turns out that the dentures are not made of platinum and the man was really poor. The woman is then released.
2nd episode: The River of Diamonds ( La rivière de diamants ) - Director: Roman Polański
A young woman is walking in Amsterdam . She visits a diamond cutting shop and looks at a valuable necklace in a display that is far beyond her financial means. When she meets a rich diplomat, she lets himself be seduced by him. The two go to his house together, where she learns that the diplomat is married and has a daughter. His family and housekeeping are currently absent. When the diplomat has to go to work, they arrange a later meeting.
The woman then visits the jeweler, whose display she viewed at the beginning, and orders him to the diplomat's house for later, pretending to be the diplomat's wife, showing the business card that was previously given to her. The diplomat and the woman meet and eventually go back to his house, where they play tag and she takes a bath while the diplomat prepares for more fun in the bathroom. When the jeweler comes by and puts on the valuable necklace, the woman with the necklace escapes from the house, only to exchange it a short time later for a parrot that she likes.
3rd episode: The Plan ( La feuille de route ) - Director: Ugo Gregoretti
When a young prostitute refuses to show herself naked to the local police chief, she has to leave Naples because of his false statement . However, she secretly returns and asks her former pimp for help. However, he also chases them away - he could not do anything against the police chief either. Her path then crosses with that of a law student who has an idea: if he marries her to a man from the local retirement home, she can legally stay in town. Her pimp agrees to the plan, intending to keep her living with him and working for him. In order to implement the idea on a larger scale, he also wants to set up a large brothel company, for which he brings back many prostitutes who also had to leave the city in the past and marries them to men from the retirement home. When the pimp throws the old man officially married to his prostitute out of his house, the student ensures that the old man reports the pimp to the police for “adultery” and “leaving the household”.
4th episode: The man who sold the Eiffel Tower ( L'homme qui vendit la Tour Eiffel ) - Director: Claude Chabrol
A man named Alain des Arcys broke down in front of a rich German's house. When he asks the German for help, he learns that he is crazy about the Eiffel Tower . Alain then leads him to believe that France wants to auction the Eiffel Tower and invites him to Paris . There Alain and a few friends succeed in getting the naive Germans to hand over a large sum of money with which they have now bought the city's landmark. When the German drives to the Eiffel Tower, he is arrested by the police because he refuses to pay for tickets for "his" Eiffel Tower.
5th episode: The great deceiver ( Le grand escroc ) - Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Patricia Leacock, a young American journalist, is arrested in the Marrakech market when she is about to pay with counterfeit money. During the interrogation that followed, she stated that she did not know how she came into possession of the counterfeit money, whereupon she was released. Shortly afterwards she tracks down the counterfeiter. As a curious reporter, she films and questions him. This justifies what he does with the fact that he - in contrast to politicians, who usually talk a lot and do little - does practical charity, as he passes the money raised through his forgeries to beggars.
background
The film was shot in July 1963. It premiered on August 14, 1964 in France , where it was seen in cinemas by more than 113,000 people. Even before the premiere, producer Pierre Roustang had decided against the fifth episode Le grand escroc by Jean-Luc Godard, which was eventually cut out. In Germany , the film with the remaining four episodes was released for the first time on July 9, 1965. In France and the United States , the film was released on DVD and Blu-ray in 2016 and 2017, respectively , with the episode by Godard added, but that of Roman Polański removed at his request.
Reviews
“Only Roman Polański's contribution stands out from the staid routine and worn piquancy of these scenes,” judged the lexicon of international film . The Protestant film observer found the "[four] ural episodes of two well-known and two unknown directors about rip-offs in Amsterdam, Paris, Naples and Tokyo [...] partly entertaining, partly depressing".
Web links
- The women are to blame for everything in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ cf. jpbox-office.com
- ↑ a b Women are to blame for everything. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed February 19, 2020 .
- ↑ cf. olivefilms.com
- ↑ Evangelischer Filmbeobachter , Evangelischer Presseverband Munich, Review No. 305/1965.