The Devil Who Limped

The Devil Who Limped (1948)

Le Diable boiteux

The film is a 125-minute, black-and-white biography of French priest and diplomat Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754–1838), who served for 50 years under five different French regimes: the Absolute Monarchy, the Revolution, the Consulate, the Empire, and the Constitutional Monarchy. Its title comes from one of the main historical nicknames for Talleyrand, that he shares with demon king Asmodeus and English poet Lord Byron.

Date of release
1948-07-11
TMDB
6.5 / 10 (14)
Runtime
2h 5m
Genres
History
Director
Sacha Guitry

Casting

Interesting facts

The Lame Devil is a 1948 French black-and-white historical film written and directed by Sacha Guitry. A biography of the titular French diplomat Talleyrand (1754–1838), it stars Guitry in the lead role. Originally forbidden by the French censor and turned into a play, the film went on to be released into six languages.

Production

Under French law, a film has to be presented to the Censorship Board (commission de censure) in order to obtain a French film-license (visa d'exploitation). During the French Fourth Republic (1946–1958), post-war regulations mandated that a movie script be submitted for approval even before filming.

As explained by Guitry in 1948, his synopsis was originally rejected by the Board: they underlined various dialogues in the script as being liable to cause public outrage. Guitry scoffed that all of them were actual quotes he had lifted from Talleyrand, Napoleon, and other historical figures, but his film being in effect forbidden, he immediately adapted it into a play, Talleyrand (1948).

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

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