The Story of a Cheat (Sacha Guitry, 1936)

Marguerite Moreno and Sacha Guitry in The Story of a Cheat

Cast: Sacha Guitry, Marguerite Moreno, Jacqueline Delubac, Rosine Deréan, Roger Duchesne, Elmire Vautier, Serge Grave, Fréhel, Pierre Assy, Henri Peiffert. Screenplay: Sacha Guitry. Cinematography: Marcel Lucien. Art direction: Henri Ménessier. Film editing: Myriam Borsoutsky. Music: Adolphe Borchard.

The word that occurs to me for Sacha Guitry's The Story of a Cheat is "droll." It reminds me of a Gallic version of those postwar Alec Guinness comedies, like Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer, 1949) and The Lavender Hill Mob (Charles Crichton, 1951), in which people do criminal and even cruel things but the film remains lighthearted. It begins, after all, with the death of 11 people, all members of the protagonist's family, when he is 12 years old. Eventually, he is seduced into a life of thievery by three women. In the film, he is in his 50s, writing his memoirs at a table in a café, narrating the film in voiceover -- there is little actual dialogue. For those of us who aren't fluent in French and rely on subtitles, it's almost like a silent movie with a constant flow of title cards. Guitry -- writer, director, and star -- is a charmer whose work was profoundly influential on French film, and I hope to see more of his work in the coming weeks.