Lovers of Paris

Pot-Bouille

France, Italy

1957

115 Min

Black and White

French

Currently 3.0/5 Stars.
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PROD Raymond Hakim, Robert Hakim

SCR Julien Duvivier, Léo Joannon, Henri Jeanson, Émile Zola

CAST Gérard Philipe, Dany Carrel, Jacques Duby, Anouk Aimée, Henri Vilbert, Jane Marken, Jean Brochard, Danielle Dumont, Olivier Hussenot, George Cusin, Claude Nollier, Jacques Grello, Micheline Luccioni, Danielle Darrieux

Paris, 1865. Octave Mouret is a young man filled with great ambitions. He is also a consummate Don Juan and it his talent for seducing members of the opposite sex which he intends using to make a rapid ascent of the social scale. He finds work as a salesman in an upmarket drapers’ shop, Au Bonheur des Dames, and soon makes a positive impression on his employer, Madame Hédouin. When the latter repels his amorous advances, Octave resigns and finds work with a rival shop managed by Auguste Vabre, the weak-willed son of his landlord. When Auguste discovers that Octave is having an affair with his wife, Berthe, he challenges him to a duel… —Filmsdefrance.com

Director

Julien Duvivier

Briefly enrolled at the University in his home town of Lille, France, Julien Duvivier dropped out to study acting in Paris. Hired by Andre Antoine’s Theatre Libre, Duvivier was retained as Antoine’s assistant when the latter began directing films in 1916. After apprenticing under several notables of the French cinema, Duvivier was allowed to direct his first feature, Haceldama ou le Prix du Sang (1919). Working steadily and successfully throughout the 1920s, Duvivier emerged as one of the major French film talents of the early talkie era. He was particularly adept at handling multi-storied films, all-star efforts in which several short vignettes were tied together by a central theme. His two biggest European hits, Un Carnet du Bal (1935) and Pepe le Moko (1937), won Duvivier his first Hollywood contract. He made his American bow with a stylized and heavily romanticized biography of Johann Strauss, The Great Waltz (1938). Duvivier’s best-remembered Hollywood efforts of the 1940s were… read more