Un chien qui rapporte

Why reviewing "un chien qui rapporte" ? Who on earth is going to read that?But why write the 12,896th comment on "the whatsisname redemption" anyway?

"Un chien qui rapporte" has in French two meanings:"a dog that fetches " and " a dog that brings in" .And in Jean Choux's work ,the title does have these two meanings.The dog fetches rich men (who bring in a lot of money) .Then he brings them back to his mistress.

And the mistress is none other than Arletty,who would become one of the biggest actresses France had ever known ,whose career would reach an unsurpassed peak ten years later with "children of the paradise" .Arletty was ahead of her time:she appears briefly topless,and in some scenes ,she does not wear any bra.(in 1931!)

Choux's film lacks tempo ,and many musical interludes get in the way.It was originally a play and the director made laudable efforts to transfer it to the screen in a cinema way(Pagnol did not do better at the time for that matter;all his movies resemble film stage productions ,which they were anyway).His dream scene is quite interesting:for that sequence,he comes back to the silent cinema technique,which was smart:most of the dreams are silent.

Best scene : the dog brings home a person with leather boots.Then the movie camera shows the face:it's a woman!Some of this lady's lines suggest she might possibly prefer women.

This could easily be a mere product of its time, an adaptation of a successful risqué comic play as there are millions of examples but thanks to director Jean Choux, "Un Chien qui rapporte" is better than just that. First thanks, as DB Dumonteil puts it quite rightly in his comment, to the presence of Arletty in her first leading role. Tall, at ease with her body and witty, she brings a modern cool touch to her character. And also because Jean Choux is not content to film the play flatly like the majority of his colleagues at that time. He experiments throughout the film, trying his hand at strange angles, using slow motion or else paying homage to the silent era with the concierge's dream, a wonderful sequence which has nothing to do with filmed theater. His editing is also striking and the sound effects (often tied with the image editing) are inventive. Remember this was 1931 and how difficult it was to shoot a picture at the time because of the constraints of mikes, enormous spotlights and big cameras. Even if this film is no masterpiece (the subject is a bit light), Jean Choux is not a lazy director. His passion for cinema shows through and "Un chien qui rapporte deserves better than a 3.3 out of ten given by viewers who are persuaded his ridiculous-sounding name (Choux means "cabbage" in French) means he is hopeless.