Word: michell
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Directed by MICHEL DEVILLE Screenplay by CHRISTOPHER FRANK...
...rejection slips. Unfortunately, the people who made Love at the Top have not demonstrated the same critical wisdom as Fabré's prospective publishers. They are swept away by the power of such insights as material success corrupts; bedfellows make strange politics; and cash calms many qualms. Director Michel Deville (Benjamin) preaches his simplistic, satiric sermon with the help of a number of attractive women (Romy Schneider, Florinda Bolkan, Miss Birkin), who lend the movie a certain substance by getting undressed as often as possible. Jay Cocks
...hero here is a little baffled by the fear and quick violence all about him. His father, off in Spain, is never seen. His sister drops out of sight and becomes a fashion model who plays cozy with the Germans while looking for a chance to make her escape. Michel, the boy, lives with his mother and grandmother, and is subjected to playground and schoolroom humiliations because he is a Jew. His mother, trying to remain inconspicuous, changes the family name and shuttles from one apartment to another. But there is no way to avoid the pogrom except to flee...
Marie-Josée Nat, shows up in the flashbacks, playing-nicely if unspectacularly-his mother; Drach's son David shows up as the boy Michel. The familial casting forms cozy Pirandellian arabesques, but they are merely decoration...
...title translates literally as Violins at the Ball, or idiomatically-according to Drach-as Others Call the Tune) demands our sympathy with all the sanctimony of someone collecting door to door for a favorite charity. Drach grabs at the heartstrings with harpy's fingers. "Mama," says handsome little Michel, moist-eyed, "what's a Jew?" When the story threatens to go pallid, Drach drums up suspense. The episode of escape across the border could have come out of some prison-camp melodrama: snarling dogs, relentless Nazis armed with machine guns, and desperate scrambles through thick woods, open fields...