Dragées au poivre (1963) Directed by Jacques Baratier
Comedy
aka: Sweet and Sour
Film Synopsis
Gérard is a tennis player of no mean talent - he has just beaten
the top seeded Frenchman - but his real passion in life is
cinema. With a group of like-minded film fanatics, he sets out to
make a cinéma vérité film, armed with his hidden
microphone, a camera mounted on his shoulder, and miles of film.
A school for strip-tease artistes, German tourists, a prostitute, a
legionnaire... these are just a few of the subjects that the budding
filmmaker includes in his masterpiece. When his film proves to be
a great success, Gérard instantly becomes famous. With his
girlfriend, he sets out for Hollywood where a great role awaits him,
that of Voltaire...
It was American film noir and pulp fiction that kick-started the craze for thrillers in 1950s France and made it one of the most popular and enduring genres.
Franz Kafka's letters to his fiancée Felice Bauer not only reveal a soul in torment; they also give us a harrowing self-portrait of a man appalled by his own existence.
American film comedy had its heyday in the 1920s and '30s, but it remains an important genre and has given American cinema some of its enduring classics.