M-FOR-MOVIES!!

Figuratively, the story about the length of drop on the rope: a man in an East Bourne hotel is seemingly rescued from suicide by a young girl. With the Grand Hotel setting, intermingling of past and present (real or imagined), shifting levels of ‘reality’, and the use of the out-of-sea-son resort as a symbol for inner desolation, it is not hard to see the influence of Resnais. And such pretensions are surprisingly welcome after the sub-11 plus level of most pity that the film’s central relationship cannot sustain credibility: the plot depends on too much verbal exposition; explanations are too predictable fro an essay on uncertainly; and the characters move from clinched stodgy middle-age and free-wheeling youth to stereotyped fugitives from deadening routine.

This tatty exploitation piece is simultaneously manic and repressed, silly and cynical, as paranoid as Invasion of the Body Snatchers and altogether a prime ’50’s artifact. Dupuis is the Pigalle babe, a nightclub singer hoping to marry her nice young man (Nicaud), but falling into lust with a killer (Gaven) and confiding all to her best friend (Carrel). But the nice young man’s a con artist, the killer’s an undercover cop, and Carrel is an insurance sleuth posing as a stripper. Talk about the age of uncertainty… Quantities of nudes swan about, while Alfred Rode et Son Orchestre (that’s right, a bandleader/cineastre) rip through a couple of numbers. This was the fifth of eight titles from Ropes-Dupuis, perhaps the cinema’s least romantic husband-and-wife combo.