La Poison (1951)
Directed by Sacha Guitry

Film Review

Towards the end of his life, Sacha Guitry was a bitter man, and this bitterness is reflected in the last few films that he made, none more so than his deliciously caustic black comedy La Poison.  Guitry had good reason to be bitter.  Before the war, he had been the most prolific and the most respected playwright in France.  He was also an accomplished filmmaker, whose grand historical pageants were well-received by critics and audiences alike.  Guitry remained active throughout the period of Occupation, and used his influence (at the risk of his own life) to secure the release of fellow artists who had been arrested and were destined for the Nazi concentration camps.   But in the feeding frenzy that followed the Liberation, Guitry's reputation was virtually destroyed when he was arrested under the hateful charge of being a wartime collaborator.  Although he was acquitted, having spent two months in prison, Guitry never regained his earlier esteem and he remained an easy target for vilification right up until his death in 1957.

La Poison isn't only a vitriolic attack on the French judiciary, which Guitry characterises as being arbitrary and lacking in common sense; it also condemns society in general - our willingness to make celebrities out of wrongdoers and derive personal advantage from immoral acts.  It is a film that takes great delight in mocking a legal system that can so easily be manipulated to the advantage of the unscrupulous, and also a film that laments the kind of herd mentality which renders objective criticism and real justice virtually impossible.  By inter-cutting the trial scene with a child's enactment of it, Guitry is reminding us that we are essentially all children who reduce a serious matter of justice to the level of a pantomime for our own amusement, encouraged by the self-serving press, publicity-seeking lawyers and businessmen in need of a cheap gimmick to boost trade.

For Guitry, La Poison was not only an opportunity to settle a few scores, it also allowed him to fulfil his longstanding ambition to direct Michel Simon in a leading role.  Simon had previously made a brief appearance in the director's earlier film, Faisons un rêve (1937), and he was equally keen to work with Guitry, a man for whom he had a profound admiration.  So in awe of Simon was Guitry that he took the actor up on his word when he requested that each of his scenes in the film be shot once and once only.  What Simon hated most was having to replay scenes over and over again for directors who are more interested in getting a take that is technically perfect rather than one that is truthful.  "The second time [I perform in a scene] I am acting and it's a lie", Simon admitted, and he felt honoured when Guitry gave him the gift of only having to perform his scenes once.  This necessitated meticulous preparation and rehearsal beforehand, and Guitry's decision to shoot his film using two or three cameras simultaneously complicated matters.  But the effort was worth it.  Perhaps because the film was shot in just nine days, it has a spontaneity and fluidity that is rare for a French film of this period, and the result is one of Guitry's most technically inventive and accessible films.  It is interesting to compare this film with Jean Becker's 2001 remake Un crime au paradis, which starred Jacques Villeret and Josianne Balasko.  Lacking Guitry's inspired directorial vision, Becker's film feels slight and soulless, having none of the charm and impact of the original.

Perhaps because Guitry acquiesced to his wishes, Michel Simon turns in a performance that ranks as one of his best, a mesmeric character portrayal that is as funny as it is grotesque.  So taken in are we by Braconnier's cunning and self-pity that we quickly become willing participants in his crime, actually willing him to commit an act which, if judged coldly and rationally, would result in him being guillotined.  How can we have any sympathy for his wife, the "poison" of the film's title (magnificently played by Germaine Reuver, a frequent collaborator of Guitry's father Lucien)?   A slovenly, evil-faced shrew who is constantly drunk and barely able to string together a coherent sentence, she is not someone we could ever identify with.  How could it be wrong to kill something that more closely resembles a cartoon caricature than a human being?

The anticipation of the murder soon becomes unbearable.  We end up almost willing the bread-knife that is placed so temptingly on the table in the foreground to rise of its own accord and put the foul-smelling hag out of her misery and set her poor husband free.  When finally Braconnier manages to do the deed, which he has cleverly worked out beforehand with a lawyer who unwittingly tells him how to commit the perfect murder, we are on his side - as the rest of the world will be once it has become a cause célèbre.  Once in court, Braconnier finds it remarkably easy to defend his abhorrent act, coming up with a defence which turns the law back on itself and makes his acquittal a virtual certainty.  (If the court finds Braconnier guilty, it is inevitably condoning his wife's attempt to murder him because he would surely have died if he did not kill her.)  Meanwhile, his neighbours are enjoying the fruits of his notoriety - thanks to the publicity of the murder and trial, the village is enjoying a heaven-sent economic boom.

What Guitry presents through the gently distorting prism of comedy is a grim portrait of a society that has become so morally warped and self-absorbed that it fails to recognise a crime when it has been committed. The law no longer has any moral legitimacy; it has become merely a device by which calculating minds can (literally) get away with murder.  The humour may make us laugh but it is a depressingly bleak commentary on the way the world is, a world from which Guitry felt increasingly alienated in his declining years.  His follow-up satires, La Vie d'un honnête homme (1953) and Assassins et voleurs (1957), would be just as cynical and scathing, but you would expect nothing less from a man who had had all if his illusions shattered and his reputation ruined beyond repair just when he was at the height of his popularity.

As happened with virtually every film that Sacha Guitry made after the war, the critical reaction to La Poison was overwhelmingly negative.  Most of the criticism concentrated on the five-minute long opening sequence in which Guitry praises each and every member of his cast and crew, beginning with an excessive but sincere dedication to his lead actor.  Self-indulgent the sequence may be, but it shows the extent to which Guitry valued his technicians and artistes and it also allows him to make a sly allusion to his period of incarceration (the set of the prison cell is exact, he casually remarks).  Guitry may not have been flavour of the month with every critic, but there were some reviewers who, in the twilight of his career, became ardent champions of his work, and who would be greatly influenced by his auteur approach to filmmaking.  These included the staff on the newly founded review magazine Les Cahiers du cinéma, most notably a young firebrand named François Truffaut...

Film Synopsis

After thirty years of married life, Paul and Blandine Braconnier have grown to hate each other so much that each contemplates murdering the other.  As Blandine prepares to kill her husband with rat poison, Paul pays a visit to Maître Aubanel, a defence lawyer who has just celebrated his one hundredth acquittal.   Confident that Aubanel would save his neck if ever he was tried for the murder of his wife, Paul pretends he has already done the deed so that he can gauge the reaction of the lawyer and decide whether his plan will work.  Reassured, Paul heads back home and promptly stabs his wife in the stomach just before she can poison him.  Certain that no jury will find him guilty, Paul places himself at the mercy of the law...