User Reviews

This is relatively late Guitry but no worse for that. There's a certain 'feel' to a film by Guitry that's elusive and resistant to conventional methods of nailing it down but once you've encountered it you'll know it anywhere. Of course having stumbled on something of a signature - a penchant for introducing the actors and technicians at the beginning of a film - he was prone to milk it but it's more than that but what exactly I'm not sure. This time around he casts himself as the Baron of Cantanec who, in middle age, returns to the family seat in search of family heirlooms and in passing transforms the lives of the villagers. Charm is a fairly elusive quality yet Guitry's films abound in it as they do in slightly off-the-wall sequences like the one here in which the whole village takes to wheels via bicycles, tandems and even a bicycle made for three. I wish someone would offer the entire Guitry canon on DVD but until or if they do so we can be thankful for the small Revival Houses in Paris like the Champo which is currently playing 25 titles in Repertory.