The Phantom Wagon

Micheline Francey is the officer of the Salvation Army in charge of a new mission. They can't open until the New Year, but drunken Pierre Fresnay stumbles in on Christmas Eve. As he goes through the following year, in prison for beating his wife, unable to work because of tuberculosis, angry at everyone, she tries to look out for him. Will he show up, as he has promised, on New Year's Eve, or will the phantom carter, the angel of death, come for him to take him to his final judgment?

It's a Duvivier movie at the height of his powers, and his magic realism is bleeding over into the religious; he has cameraman Jules Kruger shoot Mlle Francey as a saint, a compassionate smile beneath huge eyes. He shoots the underclass as a carnival, with Louis Jouvert as its malign ringmaster, half educated beyond the understanding of his admiring fellow drunks. They're a company of individuals, not just in how they're written, but in their performances, from the old lady at the beginning who hears the grating wheels of the Death Cart, to the doctor who has fallen because of woman and drink, who diagnoses Mlle Francey. The fantastic elements are terrifying, the human elements very sad. How can you go wrong? It's Duvivier!