Cinema
The Story of a Cheat
Le Roman d'un tricheur
Sacha Guitry · 1936
Synopsis
On the terrace of a Parisian café, a middle-aged man writes his memoirs. As a child, he stole money from the house; punished by being sent to bed without dinner, he thereby escapes the poisonous mushrooms that kill all his family that very evening. He draws from this the lesson that honesty does not pay, takes on various jobs, doorman, bellboy, croupier, then becomes a professional cheat, while his voice narrates and comments on every scene.
Context
The film is drawn from the novel that Guitry had published the previous year under the title Mémoires d'un tricheur. It opens with a spoken credit sequence, in which the author introduces his team, and then the narrator's voice carries almost all the dialogue, the other characters speaking hardly at all except in the scenes set in the present. Guitry plays the lead role, with Marguerite Moreno and Jacqueline Delubac. Received with mixed feelings in France, it has appeared since 2008 on the list of the hundred most important films drawn up by the Cahiers du cinéma.
Who it is for
About an hour and twenty minutes; the story is told through a single narrator, and one must accept being told rather than shown.
Prizes and reception
Released on 19 September 1936, it enjoyed a more outright success in England than in France, with four months on the bill in London.
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