When the screen detonates

Edit The Hindu 14 Apr 2016
Four desperate men. Two trucks full of nitroglycerine that can blow up an entire city. And a suicide mission in South America on dodgy roads ... However, when good, Clouzot was simply incomparable ... Charles Vanel’s Jo is a bully who puts off everyone around him, but would appear as the frailest of the quartet, a reason for which the great French star Jean Gabin turned the role down ... ....

Wooden Crosses review – Philip French on Raymond Bernard’s first world war classic

Edit The Guardian 26 Apr 2015
An intense experience of pain, endurance and survival, Bernard’s film was aimed at making audiences ‘hate and despise war’. ‘One of the most important war films’. Wooden Crosses. Philip French ... Dorgelès insisted that every actor have combat experience, including platoon corporal Charles Vanel (later to play Javert in Les Misérables) and the matinee idol Pierre Blanchar (gassed at Verdun in 1916) ... More reviews Topics ... Show 25....

Les Misérables review – Philip French on the best screen version of Victor Hugo’s seminal thriller

Edit The Guardian 25 Jan 2015
(Raymond Bernard, 1934; Eureka!, PG). ‘A formidable presence’. Harry Baur as Valjean in Raymond Bernard’s Les Misérables. Philip French ... The great Harry Baur brings a formidable presence to Valjean, managing superbly the transformation from grizzled old lag to kindly imposing haut-bourgeois businessman, and Charles Vanel, whose career lasted more than 70 years, found a moving vein of misplaced probity in the remorseless Javert ... Topics ... ....
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