Mini #4 — The Underworld of Angels Synopsis: Lucette is an orphan released into adulthood from an educational home. Lucien is a teenager who lost his memory after being beaten by his father. They live in the slums of Paris among people like them, rejected by society. However, Lucien does not give up hope of finding his parents. One day he reads an advert about the disappearance of a teenager and goes to the address indicated in it. Shortly after his visit, the house is robbed. Police arrest Lucien on suspicion of a tip. Desperate for losing her only friend, Lucette wants to kill herself.
One of Christian-Jacques’ early films had a rather difficult fate. Filmed in 1939, it was banned because of alleged “communist propaganda.” It was released only after the occupation of France. The Nazis saw it as a critique of “Jewish capitalism” and happily incorporated it into their propaganda campaign. Although the director himself probably watched these whistles with complete bewilderment. After all, he only made a sentimental film about the life of the Paris bottom in the spirit of the novels of his beloved Victor Hugo, and did not dream or think of any political games. The film, however, turned out to be excessively "slutty" and unrealistic, to cause sympathy for the "grave and wretched", which the director counted on in the foreword to his film. To believe that the Parisian "gavroshi" in their free time from begging for alms build a "perpetual motion machine" and argue about mathematical problems - fire. The story of a teenager who lost his memory and loving his girlfriend can cause a sea of tears in sensitive people, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the real world. And the caricatures of small shopkeepers and bourgeois did not attach any side to the criticism of “world capital”. So the department of Goebbels, distributing the "Hell of Angels", is also unknown what was oriented. However, Christian-Jacques had the talent of a storyteller already then, twenty years before Fanfan, and therefore watching his film, at least, is not boring.