Bad Seed

Henri Pasquier is the prodigal and profligate son. Daddy Warbucks takes away his car so the kid goes rogue. Steals a car and before long we're treated to an excellent car chase through the streets of Paris. Remember, this is 35 years before Bullitt and French Connection. Hollywood movies at the time barely left the studio.

Henri soon finds out the car-theft business is an organized racket. Luckily for him, they're hiring.

The plot then really gets going, with beautiful women distracting wealthy car owners from daring daylight car thefts on the streets of Paris. The head of the international car-theft ring is devious and charming in his own way. We get a plethora of interesting side characters. And a gorgeous love interest for Henri.

Complications arise when Henri goes to bat for better wages for the crew, so the boss cooks up a scheme to get rid of him.

Now I'm supposed to note that Bad Seed is Billy Wilder's directorial debut. He was temporarily in France after fleeing Natsy Germany. While the exterior scenes are very well done, the interior scenes are, at times, pretty stiff. Maybe that was the work of co-director Alex Esway.

Luckily, Wilder co-wrote the screenplay. The plot works on every level. The characters are believable, gritty, and lively. The setting is second-to-none.

When you watch this film ("Bad Seed"), you need to cut it a little slack. After all, the film lacks the polish you'd see in films from Hollywood from this same time period--mostly because French films weren't all that polished! The sound wasn't all that sophisticated and the camera-work left a bit to be desired--but the scripts were often quite clever. In fact, the French made some wonderful films in the 1930s--such as "Le Million", "Le Femme du Boulanger" and "Drôle de Drame ou L'étrange Aventure du Docteur Molyneux"--some of the best films ever, in fact. So don't let the look of "Mauvaise Graine" discourage you--despite being a bit rough, it's an amazingly clever film.

The film begins with an incredibly worthless young man (Henri) driving about town--enjoying the fruits of his father's labor. He is obviously very spoiled and is tough to like. When the father has finally had enough, he sells his son's beloved car and tells him to get a job! Way to go Dad! But Henri IS a jerk, so he follows the men who bought the car--and on impulse, steals it from them! This leads Henri in a direction he certainly never intended, as a real honest-to-goodness gang of car thieves spots him and decides to offer him a job! Where all this goes next, see for yourself.

The film has some definite comedic aspects, such as the one guy in the gang who is always bringing in the most bizarre cars (and buses). But the film isn't necessarily a comedy. It also has elements of romance and even drama--all of which work together well to create a film like you've probably never seen before! This originality of the script is what I really admired--even if the film does seem to glamorize evil...a bit!

A few final notes. First, this is the first film directed by Billy Wilder (he actually co-directed) and soon after this he came to America and became one of the top directors in history. Despite not being among the very, very famous names today, his string of film credits is tough to beat and the only director I can think of that had even more hits during his time was William Wyler. Even the ultra-famous Hitchcock would have probably killed to have achieved the success Wilder achieved during his very long and distinguished career. You don't see the best direction in "Mauvaise Graine"--but you have to start somewhere! Second, perhaps it's just me, but I sure felt strong gay vibes from the necktie lover towards Henri--perhaps it wasn't intended. Third, the way the film ended sure was different and I can't see Hollywood doing it this way....and I like that about the film.

Well worth seeing and a lot of fun.

This bothered absolutely no one but me, but back when I did the run through of Billy Wilder's movies I missed his first film, Mauvaise Graine, also known as Bad Seed. It's a minor work, made in the brief period he lived in France after he fled Germany with Hitler's rise to power and before he settled in Los Angeles to start his career as a screenwriter and, eventually, celebrated director. I didn't skip it because it's minor, though. I skipped it because I simply couldn't find a copy. I wanted to watch it, but I just couldn't locate anything anywhere. It's mostly skipped over in takes on Wilder's career, anyway.

So, I'm currently reading Billy Wilder: Dancing on the Edge by Joseph McBride, and I got to the point in his discourse of Wilder's life where he described the production and film itself. It just got me curious, and I looked again, finding that copies had gone online within the past year within about five minutes of searching. I'm quite happy that I've found the copy so that my unhappy sense of incompleteness that no one cared about is now addressed.

Anyway, the film holds a lot of Wilder's motifs, themes, and familiar character archetypes, albeit in very undeveloped forms. I remember being somewhat amazed at the polish brought to his first Hollywood feature, The Major and the Minor, and this feels much more like one would expect of a first film. Of course, in the interim between 1934, when he made Mauvaise Graine, and 1942 when The Major and the Minor was release, Wilder had a major education in storytelling, writing dozens of scripts alone and with his first major writing partner Charles Brackett, including the script for Howard Hawks' Ball of Fire and Ernst Lubitsch's Ninotchka in the still powerful studio system. That lack of polish is part of the charm of his first directorial effort, though.

The story is of a young man, Henri (Pierre Mingand), whose father (Paul Escoffier) takes away his car in an effort to get him to grow up and take responsibility in his life. Henri, having made a date with an attractive young woman where his car was a selling point, steals another Buick like his own and picks her up, also picking up a tail of three men. After a chase around Paris, they stop him, take the car and Henri, and head towards a garage run by the Chief (Michel Duran) where he offers Henri a job stealing cars. Henri quickly befriends the youngest member of the gang, Jean (Raymond Galle) and falls in love with his sister Jeanette (Danielle Darrieux) who also works with the gang, distracting wealthy men and giving Jean time to steal the car.

Henri takes to the work, and Jeannette takes to Henri. However, Henri's increasing popularity within the gang and his ability to stand up to the Chief in front of everyone threatens the Chief's power. He sends Henri off on a suicide mission with a car carrying a bad axle designed to break with too much stress. Henri brings Jeannette along, and on the road to Marseille, they end up in a chase with the police. There isn't a whole lot more story after this (the movie is only 73 minutes long), but it ends on a combination of sweet and sad that Wilder would more commandingly deliver in later films like The Apartment.

So, you have a transient young character who gets into some kind of seedy life in order to survive who ends up in love and deciding that love will conquer all, all while the subtext of the film is satirical in nature, providing comedy and dramatic pathos along the way. Yup, sounds exactly like a Billy Wilder movie to me.

The problem is that Wilder's writing (alongside Jan Lustig, Max Colpet, and Claude-Andre Puget) ends up thinner than necessary. Henri has none of the interesting depth of someone like Joe Gillis in Sunset Blvd., Jean's obsession with ties is amusing but doesn't really mean much, and Jeannette is little more than a pretty face (though Darrieux would use it as the starting point for a very long career in French film). There are fun quips of dialogue here and there, like when one of the other gang members, trapped by the police, tries to get his way out by wondering what kind of reward he'll get for turning in the stolen bus he's sitting in and the police respond by saying two to five years, but it's not at the same level as the nearly nonstop fun as in Some Like it Hot. Speaking of that gang member, I imagine a longer version of this film (twenty minutes or so), giving him more character than someone who can't steal cars right.

Made on an extremely tight budget where Wilder was essentially just the one who volunteered to direct in a period of transition from Wilder's life in the Berlin film industry to when he would find a home at Paramount a year or so later, Mauvaise Graine is an amusing trifle of a film from a young man who wasn't even sure if he wanted to direct movies. Unsure of where he belonged in the world, it's easy to feel his confusion even here in the unrefined form. The light tone through most of the film carries it a lot, and the ending holds a surprisingly firm grasp of competing emotions. Wilder still had a lot to learn, but he wasn't starting from nothing when he directed his first film. He'd definitely learned something writing at Ufa.

This film was actually co-directed by Wilder and a Hungarian named Alexander Esway, who I'm not familiar with. Having seen only five films by Wilder at this point, I can't offer a great deal of input into how this film relates to the rest of his body of work, but there are a few things worth mentioning here.

First off, it's well known that Wilder was a massive admirer of Ernst Lubitsch, the great German film director who came to America in 1923 and forever transformed Hollywood cinema, bringing to it his European sensibilities, sophistication, and sexual innuendo. Wilder, an Austrian by birth, also would leave Germany and come to America, although both his trip and the reasons for it were quite different than Lubitsch's, who left Germany by choice, not necessity.

Wilder had been a successful screenwriter in Germany from 1929 through 1933, when, aware of his Jewish ancestry, he fled the country upon Hitler's rise to power. He went to France, and shortly after came to America, where he broke into Hollywood, first as a screenwriter, then later as a highly successful director.

While he was in France, before arriving in America, he co-directed this film, "Mauvaise graine" ("Bad Seed"), in 1934. The first thing that struck me was that the film was very much in the vein of other French comedy-dramas from its time (for example, I was immediately reminded of "Under the Roofs of Paris" by René Clair, and, to a lesser extent, "Boudu Saved From Drowning" by Renoir and "L'atalante" by Vigo). Despite the fact that the two significant portions of Wilder's career were in Germany and America, this film feels neither German nor American. It sounds like Wilder was only in France for about a year, maybe less, yet he managed to perfectly imitate the style, aesthetic, and overall feel of other, similar French films of the time. I considered the possibility that this was more a result of Esway's influence than Wilder's, but even Esway, I believe, had only made one French film before this. So, either the general style and feel of French cinema permeated his film largely without his knowledge or intent, or Wilder was simply born gifted in absorbing and regurgitating the milieu and aesthetic of his environment. I lean toward the latter, though I'm sure both are true, to some extent.

The second thing that struck me was that, already, at such an early point in Wilder's career as a filmmaker, Lubitsch's influence was evident. Peter Bogdanovich, in discussing Lubitsch's "Trouble in Paradise", made the observation that, while the film's protagonists were obviously thieves, Lubitsch made a point to never show them in the act of thievery. As Bogdanovich said, "Lubitsch was much too sophisticated for that." Lubitsch being the master of innuendo and implication that he was, everything in his films was, strictly speaking, implicit, even when he often left no doubt as to what he intended to convey. Of course, censorship plays its role in such things, but there's no doubt that this method perfectly reflected Lubitsch's unique sensibility as a director, and Wilder had clearly taken notes. Early in the film, when our protagonist first steals a car, he is shown standing nearby it, looking it over, and then after a cutaway to some gangsters watching him, the next thing we see is him driving away in the presumably stolen car. It was not smoothly executed, and lacked that notorious sophistication that Bogdanovich referred to in Lubitsch's films, but the important thing, in an early work such as this, is to take note of the influence. And Wilder was clearly heavily influenced by Lubitsch, even in '34. (Note, also, the way the main character models much of his demeanor after Maurice Chevalier, a frequent star of Lubitsch's films in the early '30s, and even does an impression of him early in the film.)

Another thing I found interesting watching this film was the recurring theme of the youth's reluctance to work, to live by the 9-to-5 and sustain any kind of "respectable" job. The film even seemed to sympathize with this attitude, although I'm ambivalent as to whether or not the screenwriters (Wilder and three others) were really supporting this mentality, or simply acknowledging it as a reality for many youths of the day. In either case, there was certainly nothing condemnatory about their depiction of these kids. These are about the most innocuous car thieves you could ever conceive of.

"Mauvaise graine" stars Danielle Darrieux as the female lead, who I recently saw in Anatole Litvak's 1936 film "Mayerling". She's a quality actress. The film is also notable for having Franz Waxman as one of two musicians working on the film's score. Waxman later went on to score films for directors such as, to name a few, Alfred Hitchcock, Sam Fuller, Lewis Milestone, Victor Fleming, George Cukor, and many of Wilder's later films.

This is by no means a great film. I really can't even say that it's a truly good film. But it's very decent, and worth the watch for anyone who's interested either in Wilder himself or in French cinema from this time period. The film is generally lighthearted, slightly poignant, and on the whole solidly executed. It lacks thematic substance and narrative impact, but given that its main interest is as a curio for Wilder fans (or as a necessity for Wilder completists), it ended up being somewhat superior to my expectations. I don't suspect anyone will write home over this one, and yet, I can't imagine many will consider it a waste of time either. For a debut feature, I'm fairly impressed. Especially considering the very early work of other great Hollywood filmmakers like Kubrick or Coppola, "Mauvaise graine" is a respectable piece of cinema, and an entry into Wilder's filmography that should not be tossed aside lightly, or at all.

RATING: 5.33 out of 10 stars

Cocky son of a doctor Henry (Pierre Mingand), a frankly wreckless driver, has the keys to his father's car taken away from him. Even with his Maurice Chevalier impression he is unlikely to be able to impress the girls by bus. He is tempted to steal a car in order to fulfil a date, is hijacked by a real car-stealing gang and throws in his lot with them. And so we find ourselves in what I think is called a Straßenfilm - Henry rejects his comfortable background for Paris's streets of crime.

The gang at work are entertaining, with cravate cleptomaniac Jean, and le Zèbre who keeps turning up with a string of old bangers. It's good to see a black actor (Gaby Héritier) shown as part of the city's makeup, and Michel Duran is excellent as the gang's wily boss.

In this film Danielle Darrieux (still only sixteen or seventeen) escapes her role as the ballroom-frequenting daughter of the aristocracy. She is funny as the gang's honey-trap and hilarious as the sullen secretary.

There are clunky but exciting night-time chase scenes through French villages as the plot moves into something more like a road-trip movie, and there's a noticeable change in mood as Darrieux and Mingand find themselves walking down the mountain road. Here, for a while, you get the feeling of two real people talking to each other and just the hint of a different movie again.

Certainly it's an uneven sort of film in tone but still a good watch and of interest to fans of Darrieux and of Wilder.