La môme vert-de-gris

La môme vert-de-gris (French for "The Greyish-Green Dame"), released in the USA as Poison Ivy, is a 1953 French crime film.

La môme vert-de-gris
Released in the USA as Poison Ivy
Poster of the French movie
Directed byBernard Borderie
Written byJacques Berland Screenplay
Bernard Borderie Screenplay
Based onPoison Ivy
by Peter Cheyney
StarringEddie Constantine
Dominique Wilms
Howard Vernon
CinematographyGaston Raulet
Edited byJean Feyte
Music byGuy Lafarge
Production
companies
Compagnie Industrielle Commerciale Cinématographique
Société Nouvelle Pathé Cinéma (France)
Distributed byPathé Consortium Cinéma
Release date
  • 27 May 1953 (1953-05-27)
Running time
98 minutes
CountryFrance
LanguageFrench

It was French director Bernard Borderie's first film, as well as American-born French actor Eddie Constantine's. The screenplay is based on the 1937 Lemmy Caution thriller Poison Ivy by Peter Cheyney, which had been in 1945 the first title published in Marcel Duhamel's Série noire. The story involves FBI agent Caution investigating gold smuggling activity in Casablanca.

Crew
  • Director: Bernard Borderie
  • Screenplay: Bernard Borderie and Jacques Berland
  • Assistant director: André Smagghe
  • Cinematography: Jacques Lemare
  • Music: Guy Lafarge

Cast

Synopsis

Set in Casablanca, it recycles aspects of the atmospheric noirish French films of the 1930s together with pulp-fiction American detective films of the post-war period.[1] Considered either "tongue-in-cheek"[2] or "doddery",[3] the film "utilizes all the rules of the genre, albeit without convictions: chases, fistfights, nightclubs, unusual settings, knowing winks at the public".[4]

It was a commercial success in France (3,846,158 French entries in 1953) and was followed by 7 other Lemmy Caution films until 1967, not counting Jean-Luc Godard's "incomprehensible"[5] Alphaville, a strange adventure of Lemmy Caution,[6] casting Constantine and Vernon. Constantine's enduring success started with this. This film was considered "emblematic of French postwar attitudes towards the United States: a fascination for U.S. culture tempered by fear of U.S. dominance".[7]

References
  1. Gimello-Mesplomb, Frédéric. "The economy of 1950s popular French cinema". Studies in French Cinema Journal. Retrieved 10 April 2010.
  2. "Poison Ivy (La Môme vert-de-gris), 1953". Cult Movie Reviews. Retrieved 10 April 2010.
  3. "La Môme vert-de-gris, 1953". Nanarland (in French). Archived from the original on 7 August 2020. Retrieved 10 April 2010. RIEN, mais absolument RIEN ne fonctionne
  4. Borde, Raymond [in French]; Chaumeton, Etienne (2002). A panorama of American film noir (1941-1953). San Francisco: City Lights Books. p. 129. ISBN 978-0872864122.
  5. "La Môme vert-de-gris (1953)". Films de France (in French). Retrieved 10 April 2010.
  6. Policiers et criminels: un genre populaire européen sur grand et petit écrans (in French). L'Harmattan. 2009. p. 120. ISBN 978-2-296-08192-5.
  7. Marshall, Bill (2005). France and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History : a Multidisciplinary Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-85109-411-0.
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