In the French cinema ,the multiple POV trick began at the same time as "citizen Kane " and well before "Rashomon " (remade by Ritt as"the outrage" ) : in the occupation days,an unsung director ,Albert Valentin did it twice ("Marie-Martine"(1942) and "la vie de plaisir (1944) );it continued in the sixties with André Cayatte who made two movies called "la vie conjugale " ,one seen through the husband's eyes ,the other through the wife's .Besides ,the initial situation is a perfect example of what the French call "théâtre de boulevard" which deals with the love triangle and mistaken identities .
Although the title is taken from a well-known Christian prayer , religion,a subject Miss Carron has often broached ("l'apôtre" , "la morsure des dieux",even "le corps sauvage " begins in a church) ,is completely absent here ;the very first picture ,which shows an injured man walking aimlessly on a road to nowhere is that of a God-forsaken world.
Carron dynamites the theatre de boulevard ,twists its codes ,and ,if it were not enough , did the same for the traditional melodrama ; it is not always successful ,particularly in the second part ("Anna" ) which is too often a mere repetition of the first ; past the effect of surprise (the same situation again) , it does not bring anything really new to the plot,except for a secondary male character (too underwritten to be interesting). But the movie regains its strength in the last chapter ("Rachel" ) ;although the truth is revealed long before the ending ,it makes sense for Carron did not want to make a traditional thriller either ; " do not lead up into temptation " is a psychological drama , in which the director watches her characters a la Claude Chabrol the entomologist of the bourgeois ,as though they were insects. One feels the husband is a grown-up kid (see the way how the young girl ,his "niece" ,plays with him ) who has always been dominated by a woman who's got the dough ("I'm a tiny tiny lawyer") and whose biggest misfortune ("we could never get one) is revealed by the girl's gaffe (but is it really a blunder? Wasn't she aware of his situation? )
Carron also dynamites the thriller : the young couple ,planning a swindle, is it a red herring?
Although the title is taken from a well-known Christian prayer , religion,a subject Miss Carron has often broached ("l'apôtre" , "la morsure des dieux",even "le corps sauvage " begins in a church) ,is completely absent here ;the very first picture ,which shows an injured man walking aimlessly on a road to nowhere is that of a God-forsaken world.
Carron dynamites the theatre de boulevard ,twists its codes ,and ,if it were not enough , did the same for the traditional melodrama ; it is not always successful ,particularly in the second part ("Anna" ) which is too often a mere repetition of the first ; past the effect of surprise (the same situation again) , it does not bring anything really new to the plot,except for a secondary male character (too underwritten to be interesting). But the movie regains its strength in the last chapter ("Rachel" ) ;although the truth is revealed long before the ending ,it makes sense for Carron did not want to make a traditional thriller either ; " do not lead up into temptation " is a psychological drama , in which the director watches her characters a la Claude Chabrol the entomologist of the bourgeois ,as though they were insects. One feels the husband is a grown-up kid (see the way how the young girl ,his "niece" ,plays with him ) who has always been dominated by a woman who's got the dough ("I'm a tiny tiny lawyer") and whose biggest misfortune ("we could never get one) is revealed by the girl's gaffe (but is it really a blunder? Wasn't she aware of his situation? )
Carron also dynamites the thriller : the young couple ,planning a swindle, is it a red herring?