L'enfant de Paris
Think two-hour “epics” are reserved for tales of war or larger-than-life heroes, as in Cabiria (1914), The Birth of a Nation (1915), or J'accuse (1919)? Sorry, but this golden-to-ghetto melodrama came before those. Here - “epic” this:
- Credits: 3 minutes
- Gomez is called to smack down uppity desert hanky-heads, leaving Uncle Fester responsible for the family: 3 minutes
- Gomez unleashes the fury of the French Empire, hanky-heads let loose the juice and served him like couscous: 6 minutes
- Morticia seizes the chance to bail on Fester and her boring brat: 3 minutes
- Fester is called to smack down uppity audience members demanding refunds: 3 minutes
- Audience punished for uprising - forced to watch nothing more than a boring brat weeping: 15 minutes
Finally, after 33 minutes of bourgeois colonialist weepfest, things get real when Edmond “The Graduate” enters - but he exits less than 5 minutes later, and is gone for 15 minutes. After his return, he disappears again, and the final 47 minutes of the film is little more than watching a nookie-starved snitch run back and forth to the cops.
Sure, the street scenes look nice, but the investigation of those scenes by The Cine-Tourist is much more interesting.