Mauvaise graine

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title Evil brood
Original title Mauvaise graine
Country of production France
original language French
Publishing year 1934
length 86 minutes
Rod
Director Billy Wilder
Alexander Esway
script Max Kolpe
Hans G. Lustig
Billy Wilder
Claude André Puget (dialogues)
production Georges Bernier
music Franz Waxman
Allan Gray
camera Paul Cotteret
Maurice Delattre
Fred Mandl-Wilder
cut Therese Sautereau
occupation

Mauvaise graine is a 1934 French crime drama directed by Billy Wilder and Alexander Esway . Danielle Darrieux and Pierre Mingand play the leading roles .

action

Playboy Henri Pasquier lives in lively Paris in the 1930s. He is supported by his wealthy father, the doctor Dr. Pasquier, who regularly gives him money and has also made a luxury car available that means a lot to Henri. But at some point, Dr. Pasquier made the decision that he had financed his son's idleness long enough and that it was enough. He then stops paying and sells the Buick, hoping to get Henri to finally find a decent job.

Henri then leaves home and joins a gang of car thieves. There he befriends the youngest male gang member Jean and falls in love with his very young sister Jeannette, the only female member of the gang. Her job is to lure rich men away from their luxury vehicles so the gang can steal them.

Henri soon clashes with the gang leader over both the division of the booty and Jeannette. This confrontation leads to the desire to kill Henri in a staged car accident. However, like Jeannette, the young man has had enough of continuing his life this way. So both decide to book a ship passage to Casablanca in order to bring order to their lives there.

Production, background

Mauvaise Graine (German: Böse Saat literally: bad seeds ), a production of the Compagnie Nouvelle Commerciale, is the first film directed by Billy Wilder . Before that, he wrote the scripts for a number of successful films in Germany, such as the silent film Menschen am Sonntag and the crime children's comedy Emil und die Detektiven . After Wilder had to emigrate from Berlin after the National Socialists came to power, he first fled to Paris , where Mauvaise Graine was created. In his memoirs, Wilder describes the modest means with which the film had to be completed, but also the great enthusiasm with which those involved contributed to the creation of the work. The film was shot on original locations in Paris and Marseille ; the beach scenes were made in L'Isle-Adam .

publication

The film premiered on July 5, 1934 in Paris, France. On December 17, 1934 it was published under the title Curvas peligrosas in Madrid, Spain, in March 1940 under the title Amore che redime in Italy. It was also published in Brazil (title Semente do Mal ), Greece (title O kakos dromos ) and Poland (title Zle nasienie ). In the Federal Republic of Germany it ran on February 25, 1980 at the Berlinale as a retrospective. The international title of the film is Bad Seed , alternatively Bad Blood .

The film was released on November 26, 2002 in the original French language on DVD with English subtitles, published by the Image Entertainment studio.

criticism

Jeremy Carr delved into the film, which is Billy Wilder's directorial debut, for Mubi and said that Mauvaise Graine had a lot in common with other French films of the era, especially with those of René Clair , and already had the frankness of the French New Wave movement anticipated. What makes Mauvaise Graine above all an “undervalued gem” worth reassessing is a remarkably progressive narrative and energetic-formal approximation of a scenario in which cars and engines play a central role.

swell

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mauvaise Graine Information about and pictures from the film adS dvdbeaver.com (English)
  2. ↑ Jeremy Carr: "Mauvaise Graine": Billy Wilder's Swift and Satisfying Directorial Debut adS mubi.com (English). Retrieved October 19, 2017.