La fête à Henriette (Auf den Straßen von Paris)

After their last screenplay was shot down by the censors, a duo of writers (splendid roles for the character heads Louis Seigner and Henri Crémieux) devised a new film success: a love story set on a national holiday, in which the beautiful Henriette (Dany Robin) and her fiancé experience numerous adventures. The writers enthusiastically outdo each other with competing ideas, each one worse than the last: How about a super-starlet (marvelous: Hildegard Knef) as an amorous rival? Her movie-within-a-movie derails satirically in all possible directions between love story and crime thriller. This unleashed cinematic (self-)parody allowed Duvivier to let off steam in all directions, while prominently attacking his own Sous le ciel de Paris ... for a devastating portrait of the industry between commercial over-fulfillment and creative despair: a distorted image of French self-importance. The pre-postmodern virtuoso play was remade by Hollywood with Audrey Hepburn as Paris When It Sizzles (1964). (Christoph Huber)

Photo: Austrian Film Museum