La poison
Directed by Sacha Guitry • 1951 • France
Starring Michel Simon, Germaine Reuver, Jean Debucourt
The writer, actor, and director Sacha Guitry emerged from the theater to become one of France’s best-known and most inventive filmmakers, and LA POISON marked his first major collaboration with another titan of the screen, the incomparably expressive Michel Simon. With Guitry’s witty dialogue and fleet pacing, this black comedy is the quintessential depiction of a marriage gone sour: after thirty years together, a village gardener (Simon) and his wife (Germaine Reuver) find themselves contemplating how to do away with each other, with the former even planning how he’ll negotiate his eventual criminal trial. Inspired by Guitry’s own post–World War II tangle with the law—a wrongful charge of collaborationism—LA POISON is a blithely caustic broadside against the French legal system and a society all too eager to capitalize on the misfortunes of others.
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La poison
Directed by Sacha Guitry • 1951 • France
Starring Michel Simon, Germaine Reuver, Jean DebucourtThe writer, actor, and director Sacha Guitry emerged from the theater to become one of France’s best-known and most inventive filmmakers, and LA POISON marked his first major collaboration with anothe...
Extras
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Olivier Assayas on Sacha Guitry
In this interview, filmmaker Olivier Assayas discusses his love for the films of Sacha Guitry and how pioneering and influential they have been in French cinema. The interview was conducted in New York in October 2016.
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On Life On-screen: Miseries and Splendours of a Monarch
In this hour-long documentary from 2010, French filmmakers and scholars examine the collaboration between director Sacha Guitry and actor Michel Simon, and the making of LA POISON.
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“Cinéastes de notre temps”: Sacha Guitry
This hour-long episode of “Cinéastes de notre temps” creates a portrait of director Sacha Guitry through interviews with those who worked with him, both onstage and on-screen. Directed by Claude de Givray, it originally aired on May 20, 1965.
