with Dita Parlo, Pierre de Guingand, Germaine Rouer
Beautifully restored by the French Cinematheque and Lobster Films
The rise of the department stores during the 20th century, through the story of an orphan who comes to Paris to work at her uncle's, a cloth merchant, in the late 1920s in Paris.
It is the last silent movie directed by Julien Duvivier.
Adapted from French naturalist novelist Emile Zola's 1883 eponymous novel and transposed into 1920s Paris, Duvivier's 1930 silent film Au Bonheur des Dames (Ladies' Delight) at once pits grand department store against petite boutique and portrays the passion for progress and its attendant pain and destruction. The orphaned Denise Baudu (Dita Parlo) arrives in Paris for the first Duration in hopes of being hired by her uncle Baudu. But old Baudu's failing family-run shop is the last one in the neighborhood putting up a fight against the aggressive and alluring department store Au Bonheur des Dames across the street. Denise Baudu is employed as a model in the emporium and her boss Octave Mouret (Pierre de Guingand) develops a love interest in her. Meanwhile, old Baudu's daughter is deserted by her fiancé, the apprentice in the boutique, for a seductive model working in the department store.
In this new cinemix Jean Yves Leloup continues the work he has started 15 years ago with Radiomentale about silent movies.
He mixes various electronic and pop influences, inspired by film original soundtracks or jazz.
