... "l'Enfer des Anges" (nice title) is for you. I've always appreciated french movies shot on real location (Campement 13), being some kind of documentary of places that would be replaced around the 60's. In "l'Enfer des Anges", scenes seem shot in real squalid slums, inspiring the director of photography very fine shots, those places being dark at nightfall. There are some virtuoso camera movements, when Jean brings Lucette to his place (kind of Max Ophüls's crane movement) or a travelling showing all the kids and other people (great Jean Tissier playing a trifle like Jules Berry a nasty hoodlum, young Mouloudji, Bernard Blier as a bar owner,...). The dialogues are also very popular and strong, like in the scene when a father beats to death his child, a very hard scene (and not isolated at that time). Not a masterpiece but so interesting.
Add a Review
-
happytrigger-64-39051711 September 2017
-
philjeudy11 June 2020Release in a difficult period for French directors (1941) Christian Jaque found a good story to tell involving children, including Mouloudji who had a great singer career later on.
-
dbdumonteil14 April 2004...but not nearly so good as Wyler's work."L'enfer des anges" had reportedly problems with the censorship because it would be so called communist propaganda .But except for a plea at the beginning -lines on the screen urging the people to do something about the youth's poverty and thus make that there will never be films like this one- it's mainly a desultory melodrama..Although it was written by Pierre Very,the script seems today very weak, patchy , maudlin and finally unconvincing.
One can save two or three scenes:Frehel,a chanteuse who was one of Edith Piaf's main influences ,playing a shrew out in the street ,babe in arms;the meeting between a kid from the wrong side of town and a spoilt child in Neuilly where rich wealthy Parisians live.
Although made in 1939,it was only released in 1941.