"Renoir has never attacked the bourgeois ethos of profit...with more rigorous logic than he has in this film....It is no coincidence that some of Opale's expressions and gesticulations remind one of Boudu."-Jean Douchet "I wanted to tell a story about rich people....People like Cordelier are bored, and I believe that the only way to cure oneself of this illness is to address spiritual questions."-Renoir In Renoir's modern-day version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Jean-Louis Barrault gives a portrait of untortured evil-as Opale (the film's Mr. Hyde), he becomes our favorite character in the film, so vicious, yet so witty and mischievous. This metamorphosis from the icy Cordelier, who seeks to prove the existence of the soul in material terms, is hardly a matter of make-up. His presence lends a bizarre air of menace to the streets of Paris, where the exteriors were shot. The Testament of Dr. Cordelier was a fascinating experiment in which Renoir adapted theatrical techniques (including long rehearsals) to those of television-direct recording, multiple cameras, long takes. The result, as Raymond Durgnat writes, "made at the same time as Godard's and Truffaut's first features, parallels many nouvelle vague characteristics before they had fully developed. At 65 Renoir had become a contemporary of his grandchildren's generation."