Poison

The wit of Sascha Guitry comes to the fore in this tale of a tottering marriage and the aim of husband and wife—to kill each other. Michel Simon, Jeanne Fusier-Gil, Jean Debucourt, Louis de Funes. Well acted., Sacha Guitry both wrote and directed the witty black comedy La Poison. This time, however, Guitry does not star in the film, relinquishing that honor to Michel Simon. Through a series of circumstances and plot twists too numerous to mention, an enterprising man (Simon) manages to get away with murdering his wife, even though he cheerfully admits his guilt in court. The murderer’s defense strategy is targeted towards every man who has ever wished that his wife would simply disappear. If this notion seems familiar, it is because La Poison was loosely remade in 1966 as the Jack Lemmon comedy How to Murder Your Wife. While the original is more clever, the remake has more popular appeal.