This is a region-free DVD-R without case or artwork.
In French with English subtitles. Also known as
Miquette et sa Mère.
In 1900, Miquette (Danièle Delorme), the pretty daughter of the widow Grandier, decides to become an actress after seeing a play performed by the Monchablon theatre company. Unfortunately, Madame Grandier has other plans, knowing that the old Marquis de la Tour Mirande is eager to maker her his mistress. It is not the Marquis that Miquette loves but his son Urbain (Bourvil), who is being coerced into marrying a wealthy heiress. Accepting the protection of the Marquis, Miquette follows him to Paris, where she is determined to begin her career as an actress...
Miquette may seem to be an odd digression for a director who had come to be associated with more serious fare, but it is less surprising when you discover just where
Henri-Georges Clouzot began his career. In the early 1930s, Clouzot started out in German film studios, scripting and later directing a slew of French versions of German comedies and operettas, such as
Tout pour l'amour (1933) and
Caprice de Princesse (1934). It is easier to accept the myth than Clouzot began his directing career with the devious whodunit
L'Assassin Habite au 21 (1942) but by then he had already been cutting his teeth for almost a decade on much lighter mainstream entertainment. For Clouzot,
Miquette may have been a nostalgia trip as much as anything else, a chance to revisit his past. It is certainly not a film that appears to have been made by someone with an aversion to or lack of experience with comedy. This is the film in which Clouzot reveals his human side perhaps more than any other.
