Le Roman d’un Tricheur *****

by Allan Fish

(France 1936 82m) DVD2 (France only)

Aka. The Story of a Cheat

No mushrooms!

p  Serge Sandberg  d/w  Sacha Guitry  ph  Marcel Lucien  ed  Myriam Borzoutsky  m  Adolphe Borchard  art  Henri Ménessier, Maurice Guerbe

Sacha Guitry (The Cheat), Jacqueline Delubac (Henriette), Rosine Deréan (The Jewel Thief), Pauline Carton (Madame Morlot), Serge Grave (cheat as a boy), Marguerite Moreno (The Countess), Roger Duchesne (Serge Abramovich), Pierre Assy (cheat as young man), 

The greatest comparison made when discussing Sacha Guitry is often to his English counterpart Noël Coward.  Both have the reputation of theatrical wits who dabbled occasionally, for their own amusement, in the waters of film that they generally thought beneath them.  Coward’s film output, however, consists nearly entirely of his partnership with David Lean, in which the latter was undoubtedly the greater creative force.  Guitry directed nearly all of his own films, in addition to writing them.  He was definitely theatrical, as witty and cosmopolitan – arguably even more so – than Coward, and yet somehow it might be more accurate to compare him to Marcel Pagnol.  Both had a very definite niche in film, and revolved around a world that they not only knew but almost perpetuated.  François Truffaut even compared Guitry to Lubitsch, and though Guitry isn’t quite in his league, he was a lot more cinematic than people gave him credit.

            Over the space of four years, from 1935-1939, he made over a dozen films, several of which still stand as fresh as ever as cultured, civilised entertainments.  However, unlike Pagnol, whose work is as known outside of France as within, Guitry remains a French national treasure whose popularity outside France never really hit the same heights.  Yet to overlook his contribution is criminal, especially as he also provided a definite stepping stone to the nouvelle vague, in his romantic and witty flashbacks, almost Schnitzler-like twists of fate, editing and stylistic touches. 

            Le Roman d’un Tricheur is both his best work and wonderfully typical of him.  It begins, like many of his films, with an introduction of the leading players and crew (years before Orson Welles did the same in the closing sequence of Ambersons).  In it, a fifty-something man sits himself down at a café table to write his memoirs.  He describes how he was, from the age of 12, seemingly pushed into a life of trickery and crime, from the time he was sent to bed without his mushrooms for stealing eight sous to buy marbles and waking to find the mushrooms were poisoned and the rest of his family dying.  He grows up and meets various women, including two very different but enticing thieves, and also a countess, who inadvertently, and without recognising him, enters the self same café as he is writing his memoirs.

            What is most miraculous is that Tricheur commits what would, to scriptwriting gurus like Robert McKee, be the ultimate no-no of using an off-screen narrator, but then uses the device completely, effectively turning the film into a silent film with narration.  It might seem the ultimate in theatrical artifice, but the reason it works so well is not just because of the quality of the writing but the fluidity of his editing and photography.  Among nouvelle vague directors one can certainly see the influence on Demy and Truffaut, while there’s also the barest hint of Cocteau in there for those with eyes to see it.  His description of Monaco (“it’s not a foreign city, but a city of foreigners…in the casino reigns a God called luck, in the palace reigns a prince“) is worthy of essays in itself, while the attempts at morality meet with disaster for the hero, most memorably when he is effectively fired from his croupier’s job for not cheating.  There are a few indulgences (such as showcasing a couple of card tricks), but for every one of those there are delights elsewhere, including a delightful extended sequence involving various disguises and a revolving door.  It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but there’s no questioning Guitry’s originality or his undoubted bravado.  One of the great French films of the thirties.