LES TRICHEURS (1958) aka \'The Cheaters\'

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This is LES TRICHEURS ("The Cheaters"), director Marcel Carné's controversial 1958 drama, starring Pascale Petit, Andréa Parisy, Jacques Charrier, Laurent Terzieff and Jean-Paul Belmondo. It evokes the mood of its time in a way that few French films of the period did, depicting young people as pleasure-seeking rebels, rejecting the austerity and discipline of the previous generation, while pursuing a life without cares, responsibilities or love. The original story was written by an uncredited Charles Spaak, and adapted for the screen by Carné and Jacques Sigurd.

Middle-class student Bob Letellier (Charrier) enters a new world when he meets Alain (Terzieff), a free-thinking rebel who, along with his group of young Parisians, has opted for a life of instant gratification, instead of work and commitment. At a party, Bob meets Mic (Petit), a young woman, who appears to be just as carefree and cynical as Alain. Mic's friend Clo (Parisey) discovers she is pregnant and, not knowing who the father is, she asks Bob to marry her. When they next meet at a party, Bob and Mic deny that they have any feelings for one another -- a declaration that soon leads to tragedy.

LES TRICHEURS was a controversial film, not least of all, because of its blatant depiction of adolescent free-love, and was even banned in some regions of France. It also received some intensely unfavorable reviews, most notably from the young hotheads on the "Cahiers du cinéma", who cited this film as an example of the decline of French cinema into mediocrity. In spite of all the negative press, LES TRICHEURS proved to be an astonishing commercial success, attracting 5,000,000 cinema-goers, and was awarded the Grand Prix du Cinéma français in 1958.