CANNES CLASSICS – Panic, the bleak outlook of Julien Duvivier

Directed in 1946 and starring the brilliant Michel Simon, Julien Duvivier‘s most personal work required lengthy photochemical and digital restoration as the original negatives had disappeared..

Panic © RR

Renowned for his bleak outlook and pessimism, the French director, who was a member of the Feature Film Jury in 1959, created his darkest work with this story of the unnerving Monsieur Hire and the beautiful  Alice (Viviane Romance). Starring Michel Simon (born 120 years ago, just like the filmmaker – a fact the latter enjoyed recounting), and a series of portraits that are more cynical than ever, this free adaptation from the novel Monsieur Hire’s Engagement by Georges Simenon uncompromisingly reveals the mediocrity of the human soul, in a number of tightly filmed scenes. In this first post-war film made in a working-class area of Paris, Julien Duvivier struggled to experience the same flamboyant success he had known in the 1930s. Following his return from the United States where he shot five films between the wars (including The Impostor with Jean Gabin), he nevertheless created one of his major works with Panic.

Cannes Classics offers you a chance to rediscover this masterpiece in a version restored in 2K by Digimage, and presented today by TF1 DA.

Charlotte Pavard
 

SCREENING

Thursday 14 May / Salle Buñuel / 7.30 pm
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