Really Surprised!

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

I was stunned to see a very touching Michel Simon playing a lonely man who learns his fatal illness. He gets rich and pays a young and unknown woman to have a child to love before dying (both agree to separate after the baby's birth). She understands his lack of love when he plays with tenderness with a young boy they invite to eat : Genevieve Page is also very touching in this sequence, but she remains apart in other scenes. Michel Simon will not remain so sensitive when confronted with his family, he gets mad and we find back the eccentric Michel Simon, but these are just a few scenes directed in long shots, sensitivity is the main subject of the movie.Michel Simon is helped by Yves Deniaud to express to the young woman his project. Yves Deniaud is a typical sincere and devoted french man with his cigarette stuck in the corner of the mouth. He is the opposite of the family's lawyer who tries to condemn him to madness so he cannot use his money. And this lawyer is Louis de Funès who finds one of his best character in his first part of career when still unknown : he is not grinning like in most of his comedies but plays cruelly the nasty lawyer.A very sensitive subject, great cast, fine dialogues : the Austro-Hungarian director Géza von Radvànyi has directed and written an authentic sensitive gem I was glad to discover. And maybe there are more surprises in his filmography, he has worked in several European countries.

This Cri de Coeur was present in many a Michel Simon movie,often his best ones:Duvivier's "La Fin du Jour" and "Panique" ,Carné's "Quai des Brumes".Hungarish Radvanyi was no match for these giants of the French cinema.But he displayed originality and anyway Simon is so great an actor he can overcome the worst directing.The film begins with a prologue using "Sur le Pont d'Avignon" an old French folk song as a metaphor of life.There are many childlike songs in the movie anyway ("Nous N'Irons PLus Au Bois" "Il Etait Un Petit Navire"and more).Simon portrays an ugly man whose days are numbered cause his heart is not in good shape.His family is hateful and he wants somebody to love.He wants a child and he needs -a subject that was risqué for the time- some kind of surrogate mother.The plot is often meandering and the fable is somewhat ponderous,with hackneyed symbolism (the clock)but when you've got Michel Simon ,you do not need anything else to enjoy a movie.

Living in Australia at the time, it was unusual to see a French film as they were not often shown. I was a young boy at the time and was very impressed by both story and actors.As I remember an old single man wants to have a child of his own and therefore makes a young girl pregnant in the understanding that there are no further strings attached as he is doing this to spite his relatives who are waiting for him to die. He can leave what he owns to his child. I know I was young but the way he starts to love his mistress and than goes and marries her out of love touched me very much and after all these years I still think of this film with regard. Michael Simon was a leading French actor pretty highly regarded and Genevieve Page managed to get an international career.