Jenny

Jenny, who runs a discreet nightclub in Paris, tries to keep her two lives apart when her daughter Danielle comes back after a long absence. The girl does not know what her mother does. Then Danielle meets Jenny's lover. The film is not interested in a love triangle. It is interested in a mother hiding her own life: Jenny will risk losing everything to remain what she is in her daughter's eyes, and the film chooses to show the cost of that sacrifice rather than exalt it. The form is thirties French studio cinema: the club set, foggy streets, night scenes and a wide surround of secondary characters. It is Marcel Carné's first feature. Jacques Prévert wrote the dialogue, beginning the partnership that would later reach Le Jour se lève and Les Enfants du Paradis. Carné had until then assisted Jacques Feyder, and Feyder's wife Françoise Rosay took the lead. Albert Préjean and Lisette Lanvin are also in the cast. Who it is for: viewers curious about the roots of poetic realism and the start of Carné and Prévert. Who it is not for: anyone expecting the director's mature period. The screenplay is scattered and the subplots sometimes obscure the main line.