by Allan Fish
(UK/France 1954 103m) not on DVD
Aka. Monsieur Ripois
No more Manchester puddings
p Paul Graetz d René Clément w Hugh Mills, René Clément novel “M.Ripois et la Nemesis” by Louis Hémon ph Oswald Morris ed Vera Campbell, François Javet m Roman Vlad art Ralph W.Brinton
Gérard Philipe (André Ripois), Valerie Hobson (Catherine Ripois), Natasha Parry (Patricia), Joan Greenwood (Nora), Margaret Johnston (Anne), Germaine Montero (Marcelle), Diana Decker (Diana), Martin Benson (Art), Eric Pohlmann (landlord),
“It is always delightful to walk in a city one loves, but to do so in pursuit of a woman, that is better still.” Question, starter for ten, no conferring; name the city? Only a Frenchman, right? Paris? Non, think again. Roll through the rest of the great French cathedral cities, still non. Exasperated I give you the answer…London. No, that cannot be. No Englishman would say anything so continental. And you’d be right, no Englishman did. Yet it’s still London all the same.
Knave of Hearts is better known as Monsieur Ripois, but that refers to the French language version of the same film. That film can be tracked down, but how many know and have seen the English language original? How many indeed have heard its star Gérard Philipe use the king’s modern Anglo-Saxon? Sadly, the answer to both questions for many would not be in the affirmative. I only finally got to see the film myself thanks to a friend’s generosity and when I did, it’s safe to say that it was like a breath of air being let in on a warm summer’s day (OK, it’s only May as I write, but it’s been warm enough).
Philipe plays André, a Frenchman in London, married to a rich man’s daughter but already thinking of extra curricular activities. Indeed, it wouldn’t be the first time, but this time it’s his wife Catherine’s best friend, Patricia. What he doesn’t know is that Catherine has had enough of the infidelity that once vaguely amused her and asks her friend to go along with his attempted seduction in his flat and report back. There André tells of his sorry period in London, of his various affairs, and speaks candidly of his love for Patricia. They kiss, bus she beats a hasty retreat, leaving him with his hollow threats of suicide. Then, in feigning one such attempt, he actually does fall from his second floor balcony and finds himself a cripple, tended to by Catherine and Patricia.
It’s been compared to Kind Hearts and Coronets, albeit about a lady-killer rather than an actual murderer, but the same cynicism is there, as are Hobson and Greenwood as two of the women in his life as a more blatant reminder. Yet there’s something incomparably French about the whole thing. For starters it’s happy to go out onto the streets and show a side of London rarely seen in other films of the period, with Oswald Morris’ camera perfectly capturing the gloomy foreboding of a rainy spell in the Capital, with Trafalgar Square and the embankment leant a somewhat other-worldly air. The script meanwhile has just the right mix of English wit and Gallic naughtiness, with numerous lines to treasure, from André’s complaining about his lack of funds (“what amazed me was that there was so much money in the world and so little of it in my pocket. Where did it come from? Where did it go to? Where could I get some?”) to his bemoaning the habits of one of his conquests (“she had a weakness for horror films, discouraging to enterprise in the dark”). Even the detail is handled in a wonderfully light way, from the dog that plays Cupid and cocks its leg against a freshly lit gas lamppost before toddling off with another potential master to the meeting and sequence in the rain leading up to that with Philipe and Greenwood seeking shelter. All the women are fine, but it’s Philipe who carries the film with a light touch bordering on the miraculous, more than enough to make one wish he’d crossed the channel more often (imagine him as the Burgundian in Passport to Pimlico, perhaps, or, despite the excellence of Peter Finch, as Flambeau in Father Brown). And what of that end, one which predates the famous fade-out to Divorce Italian Style, as he eyes up another shapely creature on the golf course. The beginning of a movement that sadly never was.
Another of your tantalizing finds, Allan. Thanks for bringing it into view. I love British films of that period. (I’m especially fond of I Know Where I’m Going, starring Wendy Hiller, whom I adore.) And although this is a bit atypical in its French connection, it sounds as if it carries loads of wit, charm and professionalism.