Multi-tasker Sacha Guitry (playwright/ actor/director) left his Boulevard Comedies for rural Marcel Pagnol territory in this marital farce, a village fable both comic & cruel, burnt sugar on a crème brûlée. Michel Simon (at his rumpled best) & Germaine Reuver are miserably mismatched in a marriage from Hell, daggers in their eyes/murder in their heart. She’s bought rat poison from the druggist/he’s found a fancy Paris lawyer to confess to. And that’s where he goes before the crime, to let the celebrated defense lawyer suggest ‘proper’ answers. The lawyer has no idea he’s teaching Simon the best way to do in the missus and get off scot-free. So, the courtroom trial plays like a theatrical turn; the town gets windfall publicity & lucrative tourist trade; police & the legal system prove incompetent &/or corrupt; and Simon is Hero of the Day, while the poor druggist gets a taste of his own medicine. Technically, the film is one of Guitry’s most conventional, but in its ideas as cynical, bitter & subversive as he ever got . . . plus hilarious.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Guitry could always be counted on for witty credit sequences, and this film’s elaborate, deeply personal intros rank with his best.
DOUBLE-BILL: Orson Welles’ original idea for what became Chaplin’s MONSIEUR VERDOUX/’48 must have been closer in tone to LA POISON than the finished product. Which, in spite of many felicities, ultimately mistakes sanctimonious for serious. A charge Guitry could never be accused of.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: How this missed the ‘90s Hollywood remake boom (maybe for Jack Nicholson/Kathy Bates?) is a mystery.
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