Misdeal

Maldone has run away from his family’s estate and works on the canals. He is content with that life and answers to nobody. At a village festival he falls in love with Zita, a young Roma woman. Then his brother dies and he is called back to manage the estate. There he takes up the life of a landowner and marries a neighbour’s daughter. Years pass, but Maldone is never at ease on the estate. When he meets Zita again by chance one evening, the old want comes back. The film tells that restlessness with the means of silent cinema, through landscape and through faces. Charles Dullin and Geymond Vital take the leads, with Annabella also in the cast. Jean Grémillon’s eighty one minute French film was completed in 1928.