Plus ça va, moins ça va (1977)

User Rating:

5.5/10   

Director:

Michel Vianey

Writers:

Michel Vianey (adaptation)
Michel Vianey (screenplay)

Release Date:

17 August 1977 (France)

Genre:

Crime | Drama

Plot Keywords:

Police | Suicide By Drowning | Clown | Love Affair | Nudity

Cast

Jean-Pierre Marielle	...	Inspecteur Pignon
Jean Carmet	...	Inspecteur Melville
Niels Arestrup	...	Vincent
Caroline Cartier	...	Sylvia Rastadelle
Henri Garcin	...	Edouard Jesufard
Louis Jourdan	...	Paul Tango
Nadiuska	...	Zuka
Mort Shuman	...	Francis Million, le producteur
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Charles Demoulin
El Kebir	...	L'ouvrier arabe
Luis Gaspar
Carmen Guardón
Helga Liné	...	Annie
Charles Louzis
Alexis Ougrik
Tomás Picó	...	Alex
Sophie Rigal
Mostéfa Stiti	...	Salah
Máximo Valverde	...	Donald Passover

Also Known As:

Eróticos juegos de la burguesía (Spain)
The More It Goes, the Less It Goes (International: English title)

Runtime:

100 min

Country:

France | Spain

Language:

French

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Company:

Film & Cie

The Thompson twins(les Dupondt) investigate.

Though highly praised by the leftish critics when it was released,"Plus ça va,moins ça va " appears today for what it is: another of these after-May-68 flicks where the cops are nothing but dumb brutes for whom a good Arab is a dead Arab -as if only the cops were racist in a country-They are searching for a killer who slew a girl (in a horrible way)and that leads them to the desirable properties of posh showbiz people in the south of France:there's the rub:these characters are only sketches,silhouettes,they are inconsistent;for instance ,the has-been actor played by Louis Jourdan ,a French lover type who used to work with more interesting directors (Hitchcock;Minnelli;Max Ophuls),who dresses himself up as a clown to commit suicide would have made a stunning sequence,had the character been given some life before.Mort Shuman's (you read well:one of Elvis Presley's songwriters who teamed with Doc Pomus) character,talking about death ,would have been very moving too,when we know he would pass away some years later.

Jean-Pierre Marielle and Jean Carmet,who play the stupid detectives,had already teamed three years before ,in Yves Boisset's "Dupont-Lajoie " which also dealt with racism:some will say that Vianey's film is subtler,more "intellectual" than Boisset's down-to -earth style;that's all right but leave it to highbrows and get "Dupont-Lajoie".