A chemist is working on a very important and secret new formula in a quite isolated country house. He believes someone is wanting to rob this formula and informs a friend, who is a detective. One night when several guests are in the house, the formula is stolen indeed and the chemist is about to be poisoned with a drug out of a lacquered box... Danielle Darrieux is smart and funny and René Alexandre plays properly his part. But the name of the detective is not Poirot. You'll find some suspense and a bit of espionage in this "huis-clos" adapted from A. Christie's play Black Coffee. The movie follows all the rules of the genre, but I wouldn't say the plot and the detective's deductions are really mesmerizing.
Reviews
2 Reviews
Sanctuary
(1961)
a sanctimonious ending
6 January 2008
Warning: Spoilers
Not a bad movie actually. Well acted by Montand and Remick. But you won't find the complexity of Faulkner's novel in it.
As many others, the character of Popeye nearly disappeared (only one shot on a shed full of ears of corn, where he tries to hide Temple) and the plot focused on Temple and Candy's pervert romance.
*here begin spoilers!*
Temple Drake (governor's teaser but virgin daughter) and her boyfriend, Goodwin, came to a bootleggers house. The guys made Goodwin drink and drove him away. Candy (a Cagin) raped and seduced Temple. He kept her a long time in a room upstairs in a brothel. Miss Reba, a black junkie handmaid always tried to warn her about the degradation she was taking the way to. But one day, Candy's car, full of alcohol, was pursued by the police and crashed. He was assumed dead and the police delivered Temple. Scandal was covered up and Templed married Goodwin without loving him.
The ending of the movie is rather emollient and religious. After Temple married Goodwin, she took Miss Reba to her service (she found her in an institution for junkies). But Candy came back. In order to impeach her to escape with him and her baby (that would suffer and could die as Reba's baby did), Miss Reba sacrificed herself by killing the baby. So the police came and Candy went away. Miss Reba was condemned to be hung by neck, but this brought the redemption to Temple, who understood how good it was to live for her husband and her child. The last words of the movie are from Miss Reba in jail (the morning before her execution) to Temple: "Believe, you just have to believe"...
If André Malraux once wrote: "Sanctuary is the intrusion of the Greek tragedy in the crime novel", you cannot say the same about the movie.
As many others, the character of Popeye nearly disappeared (only one shot on a shed full of ears of corn, where he tries to hide Temple) and the plot focused on Temple and Candy's pervert romance.
*here begin spoilers!*
Temple Drake (governor's teaser but virgin daughter) and her boyfriend, Goodwin, came to a bootleggers house. The guys made Goodwin drink and drove him away. Candy (a Cagin) raped and seduced Temple. He kept her a long time in a room upstairs in a brothel. Miss Reba, a black junkie handmaid always tried to warn her about the degradation she was taking the way to. But one day, Candy's car, full of alcohol, was pursued by the police and crashed. He was assumed dead and the police delivered Temple. Scandal was covered up and Templed married Goodwin without loving him.
The ending of the movie is rather emollient and religious. After Temple married Goodwin, she took Miss Reba to her service (she found her in an institution for junkies). But Candy came back. In order to impeach her to escape with him and her baby (that would suffer and could die as Reba's baby did), Miss Reba sacrificed herself by killing the baby. So the police came and Candy went away. Miss Reba was condemned to be hung by neck, but this brought the redemption to Temple, who understood how good it was to live for her husband and her child. The last words of the movie are from Miss Reba in jail (the morning before her execution) to Temple: "Believe, you just have to believe"...
If André Malraux once wrote: "Sanctuary is the intrusion of the Greek tragedy in the crime novel", you cannot say the same about the movie.
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