Word: landru
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...Landru. A highly colored documentary on France's World War I Bluebeard who killed ten women for their money. Françoise Sagan's script drips cynicism, but Claude Chabrol's provocative camera work and the archly stylized acting of the cast (Charles Denner, Danielle Darrieux, Michele Morgan) manage to make it worthwhile...
...Landru. A colorful (and highly colored) documentary on France's World War I Bluebeard who killed ten women for their money, Landru is the work of New Wave Pioneer Claude Chabrol and Past Mistress of Tristesse Francoise Sagan. Mile. Sagan's script drips cynicism, but Chabrol's provocative camera work and the archly stylized acting of the cast (Charles Denner, Danielle Darrieux, Michele Morgan) manage to make it worthwhile...
...with the idea and switched from blue story to Bluebeard in mid-project. The film is mean to ladies in more ways than murder. Its closeups of fading Film Queens Danielle Darrieux and Michele Morgan constitute a photographic invasion of privacy. One corpulent beldam, a doomed weekend guest at Landru's Art Nouveau rookery near Paris, eats raspberries from Landru's hand and ends up with jam dribbling wretchedly down her chins...
...killed ten women is not shown, but his method of disposing of their remains is made clear: in the kitchen is a long black table, a meat grinder, and a small black stove. One victim sees the coal scuttles for her own cremation, and noxious black smoke puffing from Landru's chimney*hints at similar fates for others. Each smoke signal cues a clip from a World War I newsreel showing doughboys going over the top to their death. Chabrol thus seems to justify his Landru (to whom he and Sagan are lavishly sympathetic throughout the film) by suggesting...
...Charlie Chaplin did in Monsieur Verdoux (1947), based on the Landru legend...