Dandy conception, but script development & execution leave a lot on the table in this French fantasy about a scientist who invents a different kind of ‘time machine,’ one that tells you how long you’ll live. With gears & gauges, bells & whistles, this analogue contraption takes up an entire wall, as electric bolts jump from vacuum tube to spherical receptor, plus head-set with contact points for the ‘subject.’ Final tally in years, months, days & minutes displayed on a machine fashioned like an old cash register. Obsessed inventor Claude Dauphin, first seen escorting a chatterbox tart to play guinea pig only to see the girl duck out with nary a franc once he turns the thing on. Confident all the same, he tells investor Erich von Stroheim not to worry, his gamble will soon pay off. It better, as Stroheim’s gone deep into debt with loan sharks. He’s hoping millionaires will pay thru the nose to see how long they’ve got. And think of the insurance scams! Meanwhile, his daughter, all but engaged to Dauphin, is getting tired of waiting and falling for Dauphin’s best pal, a handsome young doctor. Meantime, the machine is proving uncannily accurate; with global consequences as dying millionaires shut down factories to go on one last vacation. Yikes! And Dauphin starts playing God by switching longevity charts. Are his life forecasts predicting or causing suicides? Loads of personal complications & moral dilemmas to chart. Yet even with Henri-Georges Clouzot co-scripting, director Richard Pottier is left playing thru a thin set of events, especially after Stroheim leaves the scene.* Plenty interesting all the same, especially recalling the European political situation when this came out.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Stroheim had been acting in French films for a couple of years now. But he still sounds fresh out of a Berlitz crash course. Which makes his non-idiomatic French far easier to understand than those rattling native-born cast members.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Lots of lousy subfusc dupes out on this title. Perfect prints with excellent subtitles can be found under its original name. So sample first if possible.
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