Silence Is Golden

Silence Is Golden (1947)

Le silence est d'or

Emile is a French film producer at the beginning of the century. One of his friends leaves his daughter Lucette in his house, when he is starting a tour through France. Emile falls in love with her. Problems starts when his younger friend Jacques come back from military service and after complaining his misfortune with women, follows Emile's advice in starting affairs with women and he meets Lucette.

Date of release
1947-05-21
TMDB
6.9 / 10 (20)
Runtime
1h 40m
Genres
Romance, Comedy
Director
René Clair

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Awards: 1 · Nominations: 0. Including: Golden Leopard

Man About Town is a 1947 romantic comedy film written and directed by René Clair. It was released in a shortened version in the United States as Man About Town. The film marked Clair's return to working in France after 12 years abroad in the United Kingdom and the United States.

Production

After 12 years of working in the United Kingdom and then in the United States during World War II, René Clair returned to France in 1946 having signed a contract with RKO to produce his next film there. Other funding for the film came from Pathé. Filming took place at the Joinville Studios in Paris.

Clair chose as the background for his story the very early days of silent film-making. In his introduction to the published screenplay he wrote, "Without doubt some memories of youth have given birth to the comedy that follows. The action of this film takes place during the heroic period of French cinema. The advent of this industry does not form the subject of our story. It is, at the very most, only the background for the action.

Clair acknowledged an influence on his own script from Molière's L'École des femmes, with its story of an older man's rivalry with a younger one for the affections of the same woman.

The central role of M. Émile was originally intended for Raimu, but after his unexpected death in 1946, it was taken on by Maurice Chevalier, who was appearing in his first film for seven years.

For the release of the film in the United States under the title Man About Town, Clair experimented with an English-language version which did not use either subtitles or dubbing. Working with American screenwriter Robert Pirosh, he produced a running English commentary on the action and the dialogue which was spoken on the soundtrack by Chevalier during the pauses in the French dialogue.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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