Cinema: Comedy Manque

Don’t Tempt the Devil. Over a midnight snack, lush Marina Vlady mulls over legal problems with her lawyer-lover, Pierre Brasseur. She has recently disposed of her wealthy husband, neatly pinned the murder on his nurse-mistress. But things aren’t working out according to plan. “I wish I hadn’t bothered with the serum,” she pouts. Then, “Oh well . . . next time.” As a girl whose Mona Lisa face masks the soul of a Borgia, Actress Vlady almost turns Devil into an elegant spoof of French justice. Brasseur, too, seems drolly aware that Justice is a lady who can barely make it from bed to bench. The examining magistrate, dryly played by Bourvil, upholds the law’s integrity as though he would like to drop it and run. Given more opportunities, these accomplished farceurs might have brought off a dandy suspense comedy. But Director Christian Jaque and his scriptwriters apparently couldn’t decide whether to make a bad serious movie or a good funny one, so they tried both. Quel dommage.