“Two worlds meet: in one, love is vice or a trifle (or business); in the other, love is salvation” (Cine-Club). A mother and her daughter face each other in an art deco mirror. The modern melancholoy of Paris in the Thirties is written all over Françoise Rosay's face in this rich melodrama of love and class. Rosay plays the tough and tender Jenny, resilient demi-monde boss who keeps a man and, to impress her “serious” musician daughter, a commodious art deco apartment. As manager of Chez Jenny, a popular nightclub, she is the hefty yenta who fixes up wealthy men with pretty girls, for a price. Though the despair and decadence of Depression merrymaking is all around her, Jenny has an accepting, Cagney-like resistance. But she has a soft spot for two people: her daughter, and her man. When the two begin to slip away - together - one wonders if Jenny is not, after all, in the wrong world.
Jenny represents the start of a 10-year collaboration between Marcel Carné and Jacques Prévert; in its witty dialogue, its prominent sideshows (Jean-Louis Barrault as a fatalistic, hunchback barfly), and its moody photography, it previews the beauty of that team's culminating effort, Children of Paradise.
It was Rosay, the wife of director Jacques Feyder (who directed her in Le Grand Jeu and Pension Mimosas), who “discovered” Marcel Carné. Carné began his career as assistant to Feyder, and when he embarked on his first feature, he cast Rosay in a role ideally suited for her, the sad queen of the Paris nightlife, Jenny. (JB)

Note: Program repeated July 3.