Sometimes you hear a famous actor or actress state in an interview that they never watch their own movies. If they are that self-conscious, how did they ever become actors? Don’t you improve your craft by watching your films so you can see what works and what doesn’t? But some directors are guilty of this too such as Billy Wilder, who has often stated he doesn’t like watching his completed films because he always sees things he wants to change and it’s too late. Wilder has even admitted that he never watched the first movie he ever directed, Mauvaise Graine aka Bad Seed (1934), and never wanted to see it. Despite his disregard for the film, which he co-directed with Alexander Esway, Mauvaise Graine is nothing to be ashamed of and, for most Billy Wilder fans, it is an unexpected treat.
You can sense the director’s personality imprinted all over the tone and style of the film which is a gleefully cynical boulevard farce. Charting the downward spiral of a wealthy doctor’s spoiled son, the film follows the aimless young man – Henri Pasquier (Pierre Mingand) – after his father cuts off his allowance. Henri soon falls in with a gang of Parisian car thieves and becomes quite adept at his new trade. Along the way he befriends Jean (Raymond Galle), the youngest member of the gang, and falls in love with Jean’s sister, Jeannette (Danielle Darrieux), who serves as the gang’s sole female operative, luring wealthy men away from their luxury vehicles so the gang can steal them.
Despite the lighthearted mood of the picture, Mauvaise Graine has a darker side which begins to emerge when Henri clashes with the gang leader (Michel Duran) over money matters, a confrontation which results in a plot to kill off Henri in a staged car accident. In the film’s finale, Henri finds himself on the lam from the police with Jeannette at his side, speeding through the French countryside in a booby-trapped vehicle.
In spite of some obvious print damage and signs of wear and tear on a film of this vintage, Mauvaise Graine looks as fresh and as spontaneous today as when it was first made. The editing, the freewheeling cinematography, and the use of outdoor locations reflect a playfulness and sense of improvisation that most studio-produced films of that era lacked. In fact, it’s easy to see Mauvaise Graine as a model for the French New Wave films of the sixties, particularly Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960) which seemed to imitate this film’s use of jump cuts, ellipses and shaky camera movements. Morever, Wilder’s distinctive ear for sharp, witty dialogue is in evidence and would later flower in classic Hollywood satires like Ninotchka and Midnight, both 1939.
The film’s visual celebration of Paris alone is reason enough to see the film; you get a whirlwind tour of the city’s parks, its broad avenues and narrow side streets, the cafes and the rustic countryside. Of course, it’s a Paris that no longer exists except in literature and photographs and this film, which captures the city’s eternal allure.
In an interview with author Charlotte Chandler for her book Nobody’s Perfect: Billy Wilder, A Personal Biography, Wilder recalled, “we did Mauvaise Graine on a shoestring. We didn’t use a soundstage. Most of the interiors were shot in a converted auto shop, even the living room set, and we did the automobile chases without transparencies, live, on the streets. It was exhausting. The camera was mounted on the back of a truck or in a car. We were constantly improvising.”
Shot in France during Wilder’s migration from Germany to the United States, Mauvaise Graine was scripted by Wilder and two friends of his from Berlin, Jan Lustig and Max Kolpe. Danielle Darrieux, the female lead, was still relatively new to films (she made her screen debut in Le Bal (1931), directed by Wilhelm Thiele), and she later claimed in an interview that Wilder did all of the directing and Esway was mainly responsible for raising the production money. Wilder, she added, “was the person you noticed because of his personality. He was the only director working with us actors, with the script, with the sets, with the technical, everything. He was young, but he knew just what he wanted, and he was totally in control.”
Darrieux, of course, would go on to become one of the leading French actresses of her generation appearing in several Max Ophuls masterpieces (La Ronde [1950], Le Plaisir [1952], The Earrings of Madame Du…[1953]) plus Anatole Litvak’s Mayerling (1936) and Marc Allegret’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1955) among others. Darrieux even appeared in a few Hollywood productions like the romantic comedy The Rage of Paris (1938) and the 1951 musical Rich, Young and Pretty featuring Jane Powell.
Most remarkable of all, the actress continued working right up to her death in 2017 at age 100. Some of her late period achievements include Francois Ozon’s wicked musical comedy 8 Women (2002) and her voice over work on the Oscar-nominated animation feature Persepolis (2007).
Later in life Wilder would reflect on Mauvaise Graine with author Charlotte Chandler, who offered to show him the film (he refused). “When Mauvaise Graine premiered in the summer of 1934 [in France],” he stated, “I wasn’t there anymore. I’d begun my life in Hollywood. Our little picture was well liked and got good reviews….After how hard it was to make, I was surprised how lively and spontaneous people found it. I still didn’t think of myself as a director, not exactly. I wasn’t certain I liked being a director; but I did know I could do it. That was satisfying.”
Film historians and scholars have reassessed Mauvaise Graine in recent years and most agree the movie is essential viewing for anyone interested in Wilder’s career arc. James Travers, writer for FrenchFilms.org, nails the movie’s appeal in his review, noting, “Billy Wilder’s penchant for lively comedy is very evident in Mauvaise Graine, although the humour is much blunter than in his slicker Hollywood offerings. This film’s funniest moments are the frantic car chases, which evoke a little of the madness of the earlier Keystone Cops films (thanks in part to the jaunty jazz-like score supplied by Franz Waxman), although there is plenty of humorous interaction between the car thieves, some of whom could pass for fully paid up members of the Crazy Gang. Wilder’s reputation for taboo-shattering subversion surfaces only slightly, in the hint of a homoerotic relationship between the two characters Henri and Jean-la-Cravate. (The scene in which they exchange their neckties is highly suggestive.)”
For many years, Mauvaise Graine was unavailable in the U.S. but in 2012 noted film archivist David Shepard restored the film and it was released on DVD from Image Entertainment, a distributor for The Blackhawk Films Collection. The disc was in French with optional English subtitles and included the bonus film, La Joie de Vivre, a 1934 animated short by Hector Hoppin and Anthony Gross. The eleven-minute narrative follows two female dancers, one blonde, one brunette, through a variety of imaginative settings as they are relentlessly pursued by a mysterious man on a bicycle. Then in 2013, Flicker Fusion released Mauvaise Graine on Blu-ray in a double feature set entitled French Revelations with the French musical comedy Fanfare d’amour (1935), directed by Richard Pottier.
Other links of interest:
https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/interviews/meet-whiplash-wilder-billy-wilder-interviewed-1967
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