Dedee of Antwerp + Dilemma of Two Angels
Two superb Simone Signoret vehicles filmed at the height of her youthful beauty return to the Roxie after their memorable screenings in the first two years of the FRENCH festival.
Dedee of Antwerp / Dédée d’Anvers
6:45 PM: A beautiful streetwalker (Simone Signoret) dreams of a better life and falls in love with a hard-bitten sailor (Marcel Pagliero), much to the violent dismay of her rotten pimp (Marcel Dalio). There are many consequences… Dedee of Antwerp was directed by Signoret’s then-husband Yves Allegret (whose The Proud and the Beautiful will play Sunday evening, December 3. (1948, dir. Yves Allegret, 95m)
Dilemma of Two Angels / Impasse des deux anges
8:30 PM: In Dilemma of Two Angels (named after an alley in Paris), Signoret is a singer “marrying up” in Parisian society whose rich husband is gifting her with a fabulously expensive necklace—the same necklace that her former lover (Paul Meurisse), now a professional thief, has been contracted to steal for a criminal syndicate. In the midst of his efforts, he meets up with Signoret and they have a bittersweet sentimental journey before he must decide whether to go through with the theft or incur the wrath of those who’d contracted him.
One of the last films directed by the great Maurice Tourneur (whose son Jacques had a notable career in America), Dilemma of Two Angels is a quintessential French noir with a perfect mix of wit, charm, and fatalistic irony. (1948, dir. Maurrice Tourneur, 85m)
The tenth in a series that began in 2014, THE FRENCH HAD A NAME FOR IT ’23 is a masterful mixture of newly rediscovered rarities and re-screenings of past festival favorites that exemplifies the unique programming touch of mercurial Midcentury Productions executive director Don Malcolm. FRENCH ’23 screens November 26-27 and December 3-4.
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