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Bookmark this pageLes Jeux sont Faits (1947)
Director: Jean Delannoy
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
Sartre wrote this rare survivor from those Left wing movies which loomed large in Europe after 1945. English liberal critics missed their class issues and saw only poetic fatalism. Stalinist hacks punished them for lacking positive heroes and singing tomorrows. Then English Marxists fell for Cahiers' twee formalism and whored after Hollywood culture. This forgotten genre cries out for rehabilitation. In this Heaven Can Wait fantasy, a de luxe lady (Presle) falls in love with the workers' militia leader just before they die. The afterworld (a Tati-like bureaucracy) gives them a second chance. The Communist street-fighting man is played by Pagliero, a Gabin-Montand hybrid who also directed bleak proletarian melodramas. The plot bitterly laments the lost opportunity for a 1945 French Revolution. Though it's sapped by Delannoy's stiffish direction, it's kitted out with 'cubist Heaven' decor and a L'Herbier-type aesthetic. Compulsive for connoisseurs.Author: RD
User reviews of this film
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- Vivienne said...
- Posted on Nov 01 2009 13:41 Is it possible to buy this film or see in somewhere in England?
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- PG said...
- Posted on Aug 14 2008 15:10 Where would I find a copy of this film. I read the book and would love to see the film???
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Cast & crew
Director: Jean Delannoy
Cast: Marcel Pagliero, Micheline Presle, Marguerite Moréno, Charles Dullin, Jacques Erwin, Marcel Mouloudji, Howard Vernon full cast
Duration: 91 mins
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