O Vigarista

Saw this 8/26/15 in an unsubtitled version in French. Gabin offers a memorable take on aging aristocracy in a film released the same year as "Breathless". But where Godard's movie delights in the tacky, demotic, and the just plain sloppy, Gabin's baron never loses sight of who he is and what he stands for, whether mixing with cunning rustics after his boat breaks down (thus the title) or winning at the tables at Deauville. The baron is everything Melville's Bob Le Flambeur dreams of becoming at a similar stage of life. The machinery of the script hums along nicely, and it would be hard to ask for a more able cast – Micheline Presle, Blanchette Brunoy, Jean Desailly, with the operation ably helmed by Jean Delannoy. The version I saw was clear, the photography evocative of a time and place long gone. Then again, that last comment applies to every aspect of the movie, a cinematic artifact I am grateful to have seen. Jean Gabin's Hollywood phase did not last too long, but it did give us his English language performance as Bobo in 1942's "Moontide". Micheline Presle made an impression on me when I saw her in "Les Jeux Sont Faits" (1947), scripted by Jean-Paul Sartre and directed by Delannoy.