KNAVE OF HEARTS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 940, 16 August 1957, Page 6

KNAVE OF HEARTS

(Transcontinental Films-Warner Bros.) R: 16 and over "TT is always delightful to walk in a city one loves, but to do so in pursuit of a woman-that is better still," says André Ripois, and anyone who has enjoyed the pleasures of the chase must agree with him. André, however, had a tenacity, and a talent for seduction, that not every man could emulate, though his passion quickly cooled when his victims become possesswe. Knave of Hearts is a short history of his London conquests as he confessed them to the only girl he ever really cared for-that was his story, anyway. French film-makers have a genius for films such as this, and though Knave of Hearts was made in England with a cast largely English-Joan Greenwood, Margaret Johnston, Valerie Hobson and Natasha Parry are some of André’s women-its director was René Clement (who made The Secret Game), and André Ripois is the charming incomparable Gérard Philipe. I doubt whether he has made a better film, or whether we shall see one more witty or adult this year or next. It’s also part of its charm that its apparent heartlessness has an occasional pathetic overtone. Apart from these more easily defined merits, Knave of Hearts has a quality _often found in French films that’s more elusive when you try to pin it on the page. We speak of a woman who has style-something much more than the clothes she wears or even the way she wears them-and that comes somewhere near it. Most obviously in Knave of Hearts it’s a quality of Gérard Philipe’s acting; less obviously it’s a quality which director and cameraman (Oswald Morris) bring to the film, particularly to the more intimate scenes between André and the women he made love to. It finds poetry in a prostitute’s flat and is an intangible presence even in the familiar streets of London.