Waiting in the Wings

Clouzot: The Early Works Six films, France/Germany/Austria, 1931-1933; Kino Classics + La vérité France/Italy, 1960; The Criterion Collection

THE TWO-DISC SET CLOUZOT: THE EARLY WORKS SHOULD BE called Writer for Hire, or, better yet, With a Song in My Heart. This record of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s cinematic apprenticeship contains his directorial debut, a short called (1931), and six features that employed him only on their script teams. Clouzot’s 15-minute burlesque/heist film, complete with an O. Henry twist, does anticipate the sardonic sensibility of Clouzot classics such as the poison-pen saga (1943). The rest draw on the musical stage and popular theater of the 1930s. Even Carmine Gallone’s (1931) turns out to be a singing-boxer movie. Gallone’s extramarital romp (1931), Victor Tourjansky’s amnesiac melodrama (1931), Jacques de Baroncelli’s operetta-like (1931), and two romantic larks about mistaken identities, Anatole Litvak’s (1932) and Géza von Bolváry’s (1933), all