Crainquebille

Name: Crainquebille
Director: Jacques Feyder
Genre: Drama
Released: 1922
Duration: 1 h 30 min
Cast: Maurice de Féraudy, Félix Oudart, Jean Forest, Marguerite Carré, Jeanne Cheirel

1922 Drama 90 minutes (original release) Directed by Jacques Feyder

About Crainquebille

Jérôme Crainquebille has sold vegetables from a cart at Les Halles for more than forty years. A policeman, Agent 64, orders him to move on while he is waiting for a customer's change. He protests and is arrested for supposedly insulting the officer. A farcical trial sends him to jail, where the bed and the food are better than what he had outside. After release his old customers avoid him. He drinks, and he is about to take his own life when a street boy called Mouse takes his hand and talks him into starting again.

Cast & crew

More about Crainquebille

Jacques Feyder wrote, directed, and produced the film from Anatole France's 1901 novel L'Affaire Crainquebille. Léonce-Henri Burel and Maurice Forster photographed it. France released it on 15 November 1922. The United States release, as Bill, was 2 September 1923 through Red Seal Pictures. In Britain it was called Old Bill of Paris and Coster Bill of Paris. Maurice de Féraudy plays Crainquebille. Félix Oudart plays Agent 64. Jean Forest plays Mouse. The original runs 90 minutes. A restoration runs 76.

Themes

A cart told to move
A trial over an insult he may not have made
A boy who stops him in the street
Crainquebille
Les Halles
Agent 64
Mouse
Anatole France
vegetable cart
Maurice de Féraudy

Making

Feyder keeps the arrest on a market technicality: Crainquebille is still waiting for change when Agent 64 tells him to move the cart.

Look

Léonce-Henri Burel and Maurice Forster photographed the Halles cart, the courtroom, and the street after the release from jail.

Music

Silent.

Preservation

A restored 35mm print was made by Lobster Films in 2005, running 76 minutes against a 90-minute original. Home Vision released it on DVD in 2006.

Notes

Marguerite Carré plays Mme Laure. Jeanne Cheirel plays Mme Bayard. René Worms plays M. Lemerle. Françoise Rosay is also in the cast.
Hugo Riesenfeld is listed among the U.S. distributors.
A sound remake, also called Crainquebille, came out in 1934.
Lobster Films in Paris, with Lenny Borger, struck a restored 35mm print in 2005.
Home Vision Entertainment issued that restoration on DVD in 2006.
The picture was a French-Belgian production.

Scenes

Agent 64 arrests him while a customer is still counting out change.
In jail the meals and the bed are an improvement on his room outside.
Mouse takes the old man's hand in the street and turns him back from killing himself.