La môme vert-de-gris

La môme vert-de-gris
Released in the USA as Poison Ivy

Poster of the French movie
Directed by Bernard Borderie
Written by Jacques Berland Screenplay
Bernard Borderie Screenplay
Peter Cheyney Source material
Starring Eddie Constantine
Dominique Wilms
Howard Vernon
Music by Guy Lafarge
Cinematography Gaston Raulet
Editing by Jean Feyte
Studio Compagnie Industrielle Commerciale Cinématographique
Société Nouvelle Pathé Cinéma (France)
Distributed by Pathé Consortium Cinéma
Release date(s) May 27, 1953 (1953-05-27)
Running time 97
Country France
Language French

La môme vert-de-gris (English: The Greyish-Green Dame), released in the USA as Poison Ivy, is a 1953 French movie, adapted from the 1937 Lemmy Caution thriller Poison Ivy by Peter Cheyney, which had been in 1945 the first title published in Marcel Duhamel's Série noire. It was French director Bernard Borderie's first film, as well as American-born French actor Eddie Constantine's. The story involves FBI agent Caution investigating gold smuggling activity in Casablanca.

Contents

Crew

Cast

Synopsis

Set in Casablanca, it recycles aspects of the atmospheric noirish French films of the 1930s together with pulp-fiction American detective films of the post-war period.[1]

Considered either "tongue-in-cheek"[2] or "doddery",[3] the film "utilizes all the rules of the genre, albeit without convictions: chases, fistfights, nightclubs, unusual settings, knowing winks at the public".[4] It was a commercial success in France (3,846,158 French entries in 1953) and was followed by 7 other Lemmy Caution films until 1967, not counting Jean-Luc Godard's "incomprehensible"[5] Alphaville, a strange adventure of Lemmy Caution,[6] casting Constantine and Vernon. Constantine's enduring success started with this. This film was considered "emblematic of French postwar attitudes towards the United States: a fascination for U.S. culture tempered by fear of U.S. dominance".[7]

References

  1. ^ Gimello-Mesplomb, Frédéric. "The economy of 1950s popular French cinema". Studies in French Cinema Journal. http://fgimello.free.fr/publications/1950-US.htm. Retrieved 2010-04-10. 
  2. ^ "Poison Ivy (La Môme vert-de-gris), 1953". Cult Movie Reviews. http://princeplanetmovies.blogspot.com/2007/09/poison-ivy-la-mme-vert-de-gris-1953.html?zx=6c164a77b477f1c9. Retrieved 2010-04-10. 
  3. ^ "La Môme vert-de-gris, 1953" (in French). Nanarland. http://www.nanarland.com/Chroniques/Main.php?id_film=momevertdegris. Retrieved 2010-04-10. "RIEN, mais absolument RIEN ne fonctionne" 
  4. ^ Borde, Raymond (2002). A panorama of American film noir, 1941-1953. City Lights Books. p. 129. ISBN 9780872864122. 
  5. ^ "La Môme vert-de-gris (1953)" (in French). Films de France. http://filmsdefrance.com/FDF_La_Mome_vert_de_gris_rev.html. Retrieved 2010-04-10. 
  6. ^ (in French) Policiers et criminels : un genre populaire européen sur grand et petit écrans. L'Harmattan. 2009. p. 120. ISBN 9782296081925. 
  7. ^ Marshall, Bill (2005). France and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History : a Multidisciplinary Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 9781851094110. 

External links