BBB.5
(out of 5)
Billy Wilder made his directorial debut in France before escaping oncoming Nazi power and heading to Hollywood. He shows talent as a filmmaker early on in a charming story he co-helmed with Alexander Esway that also features an early appearance by a seventeen year-old Danielle Darrieux. She plays the sole female member of a gang of car thieves who get one more added to their number when a spoiled playboy takes back the car his father sold out from under him. Hoping to teach the young man some responsibility and announcing he will no longer support him, his father is naturally disappointed that, instead, his son ends up a part of a criminal enterprise who eventually get the police on their tail. Light-hearted and charismatic, the film shows off aspects of Wilder’s storytelling we would come to see in much more accomplished films later on, especially the richness of the characters and the clarity of the story that is never muddled by the primitive early thirties technology.
Compagnie Nouvelle Commerciale
Directed by Alexander Esway, Billy Wilder
Screenplay by Max Kolpe, Jan Lustig, Billy Wilder, dialogue by Claude-Andre Puget
Cinematography by Paul Cotteret, Maurice Delattre, Fred Mandl
Produced by Georges Bernier
Music by Allan Gray, Franz Waxman
Film Editing by Therese Sautereau
