Seasoned film buffs will hardly need reminding that both Robert Siodmak and Billy Wilder worked on Menshen am Sonntag in Germany but it may be useful to remind ourselves that both arrived in Hollywood via France and both of them directed at least one exceptional film there; in Wilder's case it was Mauvaise Graine which was, as it turned out, his only French film whilst Siodmak made several but would have had his work cut out to improve on this terrific effort which reunited him with Eugen Shufften and for good measure had sets by Sandy Trauner and Pierre Prevert as Assistant Director. Non-French film buffs tend to think that in terms of leading men in thirties French cinema there was Jean Gabin and then all the rest whereas in truth Raimu was Gabin's equal as an actor but didn't take on the flashy 'outsider' roles in which Gabin specialized and as a rule neither did Harry Baur, another who, with Michel Simon and the other two made up a formidable quartet. Here, in something of a change of pace Baur plays a gun-running sea captain - his vessel is aptly named, Minotaur - who comes home to Dunkirk and a shrew of a wife played magnificently by Gabrielle Dorziat, dies and is given the next best thing to a Viking funeral by his first mate, Albert Prejean, and crew. Siodmak and Shufftan contrive to great camera movements like the eye-glass shaped mirror - reminiscent of the billboard in The Great Gatsby in which Marcel Dalio is reflected as Baur comes looking for him - and director and cameraman are not above their own Shanghai gestures when, in a nod to Joe Sternberg they give us a cluttered waterfront half in shadow half in light. The last nod must go to Charles Spaak who turned in yet again a script liberally sprinkled with mordant dialogue. Add it to your list of must-sees.
Review of Hatred
