Demasiado tarde

Considering it won an honorary Oscar in 1949(before the category of Best Foreign Flm became a competitive affair) and garnered awards for both director René Clément and actress Isa Miranda at Cannes, the subsequent neglect of this film is indeed mystifying.

Its critical success was not reflected in box office returns however, perhaps because the public did not want to be reminded of post-war austerity.

I have revisited this film on a few occasions and it never fails to move me.

Gabin's career seemed to be in free-fall at this time before Jacques Becker came to his rescue with 'Touchez-pas au Grisbi'. His air of world-weariness, no doubt influenced by his war service, suits the role perfectly. Gabin was certainly no stranger to characters pursued by implacable Fate but this is his final appearance in such a role.

The performances that haunt however are those of Isa Miranda and fifteen year old Vera Talchi as mother and daughter. Miranda would never again to my knowledge be gifted such a part and she is absolutely wondrous. Her chemistry with Gabin is palpable. Talchi was a great find but her career thereafter did not alas amount to much apart from playing the love interest in the first of the Don Camillo series. What a pity.

This and his films 'Battle of the Rails', 'Forbidden Games' and 'Gervaise' guarantee Clément a place in the Pantheon of great directors. Roman Vlad has written a powerful score and the images by Louis Page of war-torn Genoa add to the film's neo-realist feel.

Visconti maintained that the most important thing on screen is to portray the burden of being human. Clément's film certainly fulfils that criterion in no uncertain terms.

Just watched it o0n TCM and the Janus Films copy they showed was terrible and barely watchable in HD. Someone, somewhere need to a restoration. Nonetheless, it was a good film with Gabin being Gabin, and I mean that with all the respect and accolades he deserves. But the real star performance (IMHO) is by Vera Talchi as Chechina. Sadly she has only four other films on her resume'. 8/10.

Le mura di Malapaga (1949) is a Italian/French movie directed by René Clément. It stars Jean Gabin as Pierre Arrignon, a French criminal who escapes to Genoa, Italy.

René Clément was a famous French director in the mid-20th century. He is sometimes called the father of French New Wave Cinema, although the directors in the New Wave were younger than Clément.

Jean Gabin was the leading French male actor of his day. Clément and Gabin made a great team, and what resulted was a great movie. As others have pointed out, this film is a mixture of film noir and neorealism. We see film noir touches everywhere--shadows, steel bars, crimes. Neorealism was easy if you were shooting in 1949 Genoa. The rubble left behind by WW II was everywhere. People speak of "living in the rubble" or "playing in the rubble" is if this is just part of everyday life. (I assume it was part of everyday life.)

The movie also stars Isa Miranda as Marta, the Italian woman who falls in love with Pierre. She's easy to distinguish--the beautiful, slender woman with high cheekbones. (That's a joke, because it describes every French movie star of her day. However, she really was beautiful, and she really was a great actor.)

However, for me, acting honors go to Vera Talchi, as Cecchina, Marta's daughter. At age 15, it couldn't have been easy to play alongside Gabin and Miranda, but she managed it extremely well.

This film won the Oscar as Best Foreign Language Film in 1950. We saw it in 35mm at Rochester's wonderful Dryden Theatre in the George Eastman Museum. However, it will work almost as well on the small screen. If you love film noir and 1940's neorealism, it's a must see. Even if those are not your favorite type of films, it's still worth seeking out and seeing.

P.S. The Walls of Malapaga in Genoa still exist. It was hard to get information about them, because my search brought up either the movie or a restaurant in Genoa. However, I finally tracked down the fact that Malapaga was a terrible debtor's prison for centuries. It's these walls that physically keep Pierre from getting away. Of course, there are emotional walls as well.

Coming just after "les maudits" ,perhaps René Clément's best film -and of course totally overlooked-,"Le mura di Palapaga" aka "Au-delà des Grilles" displays the same respect for the audience as far the languages are concerned.Italians speak Italian between them,and Gabin speaks French with Isa Miranda.There the comparison ends.

For "Au Delà-des Grilles" highly praised at the time, lauded far beyond its station,and incomprehensibly awarded at the Festival de Cannes ,has not worn well.The screenplay borrows lots of ideas from "Pépé le Moko" ,Duvivier's masterpiece (1937) and the atmosphere tries to capture that of the Italian neo-realism .Gabin does not seem to be interested in his part -he had played this kind of role of the good-guy-with-policemen-hot-on-his-heels many times before ;outside "Pepe" there 's also "La Bandera" "Quai des Brumes" "Le Recif de Corail" ,etc.Isa Miranda is the stand-out but in that context,it does not mean much.Try to see "les Maudits"!

A criminal, played by Jean Gabin is on the run, and no spoilers but he gets stranded in Italy, in Genoa which is still coming to terms with the aftermath of the war. Rene Clement who had not yet directed ' Les Jeux Interdit ' arguably his masterpiece, with ' Le Mura di Malapaga ' which uses both the Italian language and the French language. Visually it is stunning and full of people coming to terms with the inevitable desolation around them. He meets Isa Miranda, an abused wife, and a relationship begins. Their struggle to attain happiness in the ruins around them is the core of the film, and although I do not count this as particularly Neo-Realist or Film Noir it is ultimately a dark vision of life set in dark times. Isa Miranda stands out as being one of Italy's finest actors and gives a performance which will linger in my mind for a long while. There is one superlative scene where she is bought a glamorous dress that is deeply moving, because probably this is one of the few times in her life that she looks and feels literally transformed by happiness. I am not so happy about Jean Gabin as I feel he going through the acting motions, having played fairly similar fatalistic parts before, and does not quite inhabit his role as Isa Miranda does. A very good film, and well worth seeking out.