LA POUPEE (1962)
aka The Doll
Article 3777 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-5-2011
Posting Date: 12-17-2011
Directed by Jacques Baratier
Featuring Zbigniew Cybulski, Sonne Teal, Claudio Gora
Country: Italy / France
What it is: Political satire

In a mythical South American country, a dictator is impersonated by a look-alike revolutionary while a robot/cyborg version of the dictator’s wife stirs up revolution.

Like yesterday’s movie, here’s another title that ended up on my “ones that got away” list, only to finally make its way into my hands so I could see it. And, like yesterday’s movie, there are no English titles, so I am limited in my ability to understand and discuss the movie. However, whereas yesterday’s movie left me feeling that I wouldn’t particularly be impressed even if it were in English, this one really has me yearning to know what’s going on. It’s obviously a satire, and there’s a surreal air to the proceedings, and it has a real sense of style. I’m not sure exactly how to describe the the doppelganger of the dictator’s wife; I’ve heard it described as either a robot or a cyborg, but it’s hard to make out which based on a purely visual take on the movie. One of the most interesting comparisons between yesterday’s movie and this one is this; whereas I went through most of yesterday’s movie feeling that Asta Nielsen looked like a female impersonator, I discovered that the person who plays the wife and the cyborg in this one was indeed a female impersonator… and I would have never guessed. Sometimes, this project gets very strange.