Trois jours à vivre (1957) User Reviews

Stage fright

[dbdumonteil · 6/10 · 26 February 2009]

According to the Cahiers Du Cinema theory,Gilles Grangier was a mediocre director ,cause he did not "innovate" .These hackneyed ideas do not stand up to hindsight.Cause Grangier did innovate in this movie: 1)He begins his movie with the end of a play ,with all the actors bowing to the audience! 2) The subject is eternal,still relevant today:a stage actor (Daniel Gelin)who generally plays secondary characters was a witness in a gangland killing.For him,opportunity knocks:he becomes a celebrity overnight and is given the great parts he has always been dreaming of.

3)But this nice guy is perhaps not so nice.Might it be perjury? 4)The lines the actor delivers on stage ,he could as well say them in real life ,now that the gangster he sent to jail escaped and told him he would die within three days.

Essentially a psychological thriller,where the gangsters work behind the scenes,"Trois Jours A Vivre" is a nice little flick.

"I don't know how to act,but I know how to sew."

[morrison-dylan-fan · 8/10 · 17 September 2018]

Gathering up all 4 of the films Jeanne Moreau made in 1957,I started trying to decide which would be the last one I'd watch over the one film a day over 4 days. Finding this to have the shortest run-time of the 4,I was also happy to see that this featured the second team-up between Moreau and Lino Ventura of the year, (the other being the excellent Film Noir L'étrange Monsieur Steve) which led to me counting the days left to live.

View on the film:

The lone non-Noir title she made in 1957, Jeanne Moreau gives a sweet performance as Fortin,with Moreau's measured approach allowing Fortin to offer a note of calm in the middle of chaos. Terrified over crossing paths again with Lino Ventura's imposing Lino Ferrari, Daniel Gélin gives a terrific, on-edge performance as Belin,who leaps with bags of energy from his new found-fame, but leaps back to fear over the event that gave him this fame.

Opening with the curtain going down on a show, co-writer/(with Michel Audiard & Guy Bertret) director Gilles Grangier teams up with The Wages of Fear cameraman Louis Née and cinematographer Armand Thirard to playfully go behind the scenes of Belin's stage shows, via striking flickers of light opening the high stakes of each production, and the stakes on Belin's life. Swimming in Joseph Kosma's jolly score, the writers put Peter Vanett's novel on stage with Crime (not Noir) and Comedy zest, as the high-jinxs roll out from Fortin and Belin's romantic high-drama in front of,and behind the stage curtain, whilst a threatening call from Ferrari, causes Belin to countdown his three days left to live.

interesting black-and-white thriller

[myriamlenys · 8/10 · 8 January 2019]

A travelling company of actors tours the country with a production of "Lorenzaccio". By accident, one of the younger actors witnesses the murder of a gangster. Before you can say "ooh ! scary !" he has his photograph plastered all over the newspapers, under captions such as "Random bystander becomes key witness"...

A good psychological thriller, this one. At first sight it may seem a quiet, even staid movie, but there are some seriously disquieting undercurrents here. The cast features a lot of (relatively) young talent bound for later superstardom, such as Jeanne Moreau and Lino Ventura.

"Trois jours" also contains a good evocation of the life of a travelling company of actors, complete with amours, rivalries and money troubles. This also gives rise to some nicely ironical lines. ("Did you hear that bloody door slam in the middle of my speech ? I've been an actor for the whole of my life, I've suffered every mean and underhand trick in the book - but a door ! That's a new one !")

It helps if the viewer is somewhat familiar with "Lorenzaccio", a dark and complex drama set in the Italian Renaissance. "Lorenzaccio" treats themes such as playacting, deceit and the unreliability of appearances. In his play, De Musset also explores various facets of courage and cowardice - real, feigned or ambiguous. These subjects are immediately relevant to "Trois jours" too...