"Le Bon Dieu Sans Confession", perhaps aware of its own dullness, uses the hook of a whodunit to draw the viewers in: a man is found dead in someone else's apartment, and then flashbacks reveal his life story, leading us to expect that we will eventually discover the cause of his death. Ultimately, this whodunit framework turns out to be a fraud; the film is extremely talky, plodding, and very, very dull, with choppy continuity to boot. Danielle Darrieux is as luminous as ever, but this is not one of her best films; the male leads are interchangeable, at least until near the end when one of them practically disappears from the film. ** out of 4.
5 Reviews
love story, without love
happytrigger-64-39051710 September 2017
Warning: Spoilers
Very few reviewers (but the best ones about french cinema) for this less known Claude Autant-Lara movie. A very sad love story, without love, and watch how each actor play this sadness, Danièle Darrieux in first place. Enjoy how money rules "love", especially during WWII. And the saddest of all : that great movie isn't available on DVD : ?
jigsaw
ulicknormanowen28 February 2020
At the time, the movie was slagged off and it was Autant-Lara's poorest box office since the Liberation.
Although it cannot be mentioned in the same breath as the director's greatest achievements , "le Bon dieu sans confession" (butter wouldn't melt in his/her mouth ) has worn remarkably well. Its construction makes dizzy : the movie looks like a giant jigsaw puzzle , which can confuse the viewer : some of its pieces are only added in the last part ;Two thirds are made of flashbacks , and the story is never linear , flouting chronology .
As always in Autant-Lara's works,the actors are masterfully directed :Danielle Darrieux is not the romantic woman who married the wrong man ,but a selfish calculating one ;Henri Vilbert ,playing the not-so-handsome lover and Ivan Desny,the abandoned husband are cast against type and it works.
But it may well be the young generation who walks off with the honors: Claude Laydu ,as the idealist son who shows the director's anticlerical side ,and isabelle Pia ,who makes her great scene count , are Autant-Lara's hope against hope :"do you think that a child can be happy when he sees that his father does not love his mother?"Their last scene 's soundtrack was to be a working sound symphony ,but the producer had it replaced by JS Bach music .
In spite of his infamous last years, Autant-Lara's Occupation and post-war works are to be considered French finest hour.
Although it cannot be mentioned in the same breath as the director's greatest achievements , "le Bon dieu sans confession" (butter wouldn't melt in his/her mouth ) has worn remarkably well. Its construction makes dizzy : the movie looks like a giant jigsaw puzzle , which can confuse the viewer : some of its pieces are only added in the last part ;Two thirds are made of flashbacks , and the story is never linear , flouting chronology .
As always in Autant-Lara's works,the actors are masterfully directed :Danielle Darrieux is not the romantic woman who married the wrong man ,but a selfish calculating one ;Henri Vilbert ,playing the not-so-handsome lover and Ivan Desny,the abandoned husband are cast against type and it works.
But it may well be the young generation who walks off with the honors: Claude Laydu ,as the idealist son who shows the director's anticlerical side ,and isabelle Pia ,who makes her great scene count , are Autant-Lara's hope against hope :"do you think that a child can be happy when he sees that his father does not love his mother?"Their last scene 's soundtrack was to be a working sound symphony ,but the producer had it replaced by JS Bach music .
In spite of his infamous last years, Autant-Lara's Occupation and post-war works are to be considered French finest hour.
Goldilocks At Graveside
writers_reign29 March 2007
Warning: Spoilers
Irwin Shaw settled in Paris in 1951 and remained based there for two decades and it's fun to speculate that he saw this movie there and found the concept - during a funeral five people, the wife, son, daughter, mistress and a business associate of the deceased give their respective takes on his life - sufficiently interesting to borrow the opening for one of his finer late stories, Goldilocks At Graveside, published in his collection Love On A Dark Street in the mid 1960s. For that matter Joe Mankiewicz possibly borrowed the same motif for The Barefoot Contessa, released one year later than Bon Dieu. Arguably the opening are all the three have in common; the dead man in Shaw's tale was a promising State Department official whose career was destroyed by the eponymous Goldilocks and lived out his life in obscurity, the shoeless aristocrat was a major film actress and Monsieur Dupont was a small-time business man.
Autant-Lara ignores the rules of flashback and the film is stronger for it and if Danielle Darrieux as the mistress gets as much screen time as the wife, son, daughter and business associate put together by virtue of her star status this is not necessarily a bad thing given that Darrieux is the kind of actress the camera loves and riveting to watch. Autant-Lara extracts marvellous performances from the entire cast including Claude Berri and Julien Carette in relatively small roles and an Award winning one from his leading man. Released some five years before the new wavelet began lapping the feet of the Titans of French cinema the quality on display here makes one wonder just what Truffaut and his ilk found to cry about. One to savour.
Autant-Lara ignores the rules of flashback and the film is stronger for it and if Danielle Darrieux as the mistress gets as much screen time as the wife, son, daughter and business associate put together by virtue of her star status this is not necessarily a bad thing given that Darrieux is the kind of actress the camera loves and riveting to watch. Autant-Lara extracts marvellous performances from the entire cast including Claude Berri and Julien Carette in relatively small roles and an Award winning one from his leading man. Released some five years before the new wavelet began lapping the feet of the Titans of French cinema the quality on display here makes one wonder just what Truffaut and his ilk found to cry about. One to savour.
"A priest is a defeated man......
dbdumonteil14 January 2007
....a resigned man !" the son says to his bourgeois father .How not to think of Autant-Lara 's previous masterpiece "Douce" (1943)where the old dowager (Marguerite Moreno)consoled the Poor: "patience and resignation" Paul Vialar's novel "MOnsieur Dupont Est Mort" takes place during M.Dupont 's funeral.Behind the coffin car,all these who have known him,wife,children,-platonic-lover,associate ,remembers...Monsieur Dupont ,who used to look as if the butter wouldn't melt in his mouth ,was a good man .He was a bastard too.
The movie was faithful to the novel;but as Danielle Darrieux played the lover ,her part needed developing.In the book ,each character had a chapter.In the movie,Darrieux's prominent part throws the film off balance :the parts of the son -probably the hardest scene of the movie- and the daughter suffered accordingly.
This is a good Claude Autant-Lara effort though;the construction of the film is clever ,sometimes flouts chronology,which makes sense ,for the flashbacks come from different persons.All these memories which come back to haunt them,they resurface as the funeral procession is slowly getting to the church.Autant-Lara spares us the ceremony and his final message is a message of hope: the three young people hand in hand might represent a hope for a better future ,recalling Fabien and Irene when they were leaving the aristocrats' house ,with Christmas carols everywhere ,in "Douce" .
The movie was faithful to the novel;but as Danielle Darrieux played the lover ,her part needed developing.In the book ,each character had a chapter.In the movie,Darrieux's prominent part throws the film off balance :the parts of the son -probably the hardest scene of the movie- and the daughter suffered accordingly.
This is a good Claude Autant-Lara effort though;the construction of the film is clever ,sometimes flouts chronology,which makes sense ,for the flashbacks come from different persons.All these memories which come back to haunt them,they resurface as the funeral procession is slowly getting to the church.Autant-Lara spares us the ceremony and his final message is a message of hope: the three young people hand in hand might represent a hope for a better future ,recalling Fabien and Irene when they were leaving the aristocrats' house ,with Christmas carols everywhere ,in "Douce" .
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